Thoughts on the Canon 5D firmware update

Back when people were first complaining about the limitations of the Canon 5D Mark II, there were a lot of people who wanted to write and complain to Canon, and get them to fix it with a software upgrade.

I remember distinctly posting on a couple of forums that I was quite certain it would never happen. I was certain of this because for as long as I could remember - as long as Canon has been making cameras that can be updated with firmware - they had never issued new functionality updates. Yes, they'd issued fixes for things, but the frame rate limitation wasn't a fix, it was a major addition (and that's regardless whether you think it should have had that feature to begin with.)

So big egg on my face.

Stephen Shankland at CNET writes about this new departure, and wonders if this heralds a new era in camera evolution. Will we see more new features added in software, or was this an aberration?

I'm not certain, but then I've been proved wrong before.


I'm still waiting for Canon to announce an update for the Canon 7D that adds the histograms and audio features added to the 5D...

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