Canon 5D Mark II updates

The cameras are slowly arriving in peoples hands, and more reports and sample images and clips are appearing.


Phil Holland has put up a review of the Canon 5D Mark II. He’s generally happy about it, noting that the image quality compares very favorably with his 1Ds Mark III. He finds the low light capabilities impressive and he's included some sample images and video. He notes the problems with adjusting and setting exposure settings in video mode, and suggests getting Nikon AI-s lenses and a lens adapter so that you can at least manually set the aperture!

Or, perhaps Canon will let you set things in a future upgrade. Or maybe we should just wait for the next camera?



There’s whispers of a “Black spot” issue that seems to occur in some cases when shooting bright highlights. Reportedly Canon is looking into it.



DVInfo has created a dedicated forum for the 5D Mk II, suggesting that this camera is really popular with video freaks (and I mean that in a nice way.) And Charles Wu has suggested a trick for selecting ISO, shutter and aperture manually.


1. Setting to M mode. Use your hand to cover the lens, controlling the amount of light coming in. You will see the ISO going up and the aperture and shutter going down.

2. Remove your hand in bright light, you will see the ISO going down and the shutter going up quickly within 1 second. Press the AE lock "*" immediately. Because AE adjustment order is ISO, followed by shutter speed, followed by aperture, if you can press the AE lock within 1 second, you can lock the changing ISO, shutter, and aperture in certain values.

3. If you can set the timing by pressing AE lock, you can lock the exposure values you want. Combine with the control of light, you can get almost every exposure values you want. Just like controlling the exposure manually, although it may be troublesome.

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