GREAT IMAGE QUALITY BUT…

With all the hype surrounding the 5D Mark II's HD movie feature, one of the least talked about aspects of the camera is, ultimately, the most important one for photographers—the photos. I was testing the 5D Mark II at the same time as I was looking at the Sony A900 (see review here) for PDN so comparing the two was unavoidable.

For the most part, the two 20-megapixel plus cameras offered some of the best image quality I've seen in a digital SLR—though the Nikon D700 and Canon 1Ds Mark III might edge them out slightly—but with some distinct differences.

Though you can read more about the A900's performance in the A900 review, in moderate to good lighting it was a notch better than the 5D Mark II, particularly when it comes to dynamic range. I really felt the A900's incredibly smooth transitions from light to dark areas; its delicate, natural looking skin tones; its excellent, rich but not oversaturated color; make this a great, relatively inexpensive tool for studio photographers which seems to be the audience that Sony is targeting. (At the time of this writing, I hadn't been able to compare it to the 24.5-megapixel Nikon D3X—which is $5,000 more than the A900—but was looking forward to stacking the two against each other.)

This is not to say the 5D Mark II, which uses 14-bit analog-to-digital conversion, is a slouch in good light. In fact it's a wonderful camera, producing skintones that came very close to the A900 (12-bit A/D) and a reliable consistency in a range of lighting conditions. Wedding and portrait photographers will certainly like the 5D II and if it had a faster frame rate (3.9 fps) I might even recommend it to sports photographers because of its versatility in a range of lighting conditions. (There are, however, some major caveats which I'll explain later.)

First on the positive tip, the 5D II is one of the few cameras I've tested recently that has a Low ISO 50 setting which offers optimal quality in bright outdoor light. Though, as I mentioned before, I still favored the A900 in crisp, outdoor conditions, it was a pretty close call, with the Sony camera capturing just a slightly more life-like image. At ISOs of even just 800 though, the A900 was disappointing, producing noticeably noisy shots. (Read more about those results in the A900 review.)

Conversely, the 5D II is, for the most part, a stunner in low light, offering very clean images from up to ISO 6400(!), topping its stablemate, the 50D, along with a host of recent DSLRs. Though it's about on par with the Nikon D700, the 5D Mark II has almost twice the resolution of that camera and the size of its individual pixels are smaller, 6.4 microns compared to 8.4 microns for the D700. Quite clearly something, probably the new DIGIC 4 image processor, is working overtime to keep the noise down on the 5D Mark II's images.

Jason shot an engagement session with the 5D Mark II in several tricky Manhattan locations, including the 110th Street subway stop; and inside the main concourse and surrounding tunnels of Grand Central Terminal—never going lower than ISO 3200—with superb results. "Sharpness and clarity are two things I noticed right away about the 5D Mark II," Jason remarked later.

Images he captured of the couple in the darkened "whispering gallery" in Grand Central—where it's said a person can whisper in one corner and be distinctly heard on the other side—at ISO 6400 looked clean as a whistle, holding up even better when they were converted into black-and-white in Photoshop. So while it's been said that the Nikon D3 is the camera that made ISO 3200 the new ISO 400, the 5D Mark II has pushed the usable image spectrum to ISO 6400. Great news.

The high ISO H1 & H2 settings of 12800 and 25600 on the 5D II are still mostly novelties, however. I shot with these extreme ISOs at night in and around several subway stations; in a park; and along the Hudson River near the George Washington Bridge with just mixed results. Some night shots at ISO 12800 which looked great on the 5D II's bright LCD were only so-so when I transferred them later to the computer, showing significant chroma (color) and luminance (light) noise.

Having said that, there were definitely more "keepers" at ISO 12800 than any camera I've shot with aside from, perhaps, the D700. At ISO 25600 though, RAW images from the 5D II were a multi-colored mess, with chroma noise striating all my night shots of the park. Nice try guys, but this level of ISO is still not ready for prime time.


…SOME ANNOYING HICCUPS

The 5D Mark II is not without several minor and one major problem though. (As my colleague David Schloss put it: "Manufacturers can't seem to release cameras without defects anymore.")

For one, those reports of "black dots" showing up in images captured with the 5D Mark II that have overexposed highlights still hadn't been cleared up at the time of this review. I saw quite of few of them, particularly in small bright point lights, such as Christmas lights, which were everywhere at the time I shot with the 5D Mark II. (Incidentally, had Canon not released the 5D Mark II during Christmas time, the issue might not have been spotted so quickly!)

As in other reports, the black dots appeared on the right side of blown out highlights in my images. I also caught some black banding on the right side of bright windows I shot at night from the street. Honestly, these dark spots and banding were not really evident unless I zoomed in on my shots at 100 percent. They also only occurred occasionally. That doesn't excuse the problem though and, hopefully, a firmware update will solve the issue quickly. (As PDN went to press, Canon released Firmware 1.0.7 which seems to remedy this problem.)

I also noticed, as some other reports have mentioned, a slight problem with Chromatic Aberration, aka "Purple Fringing," in certain high-contrast, boundary areas in my images, such as around tree branches. This is less excusable and, unfortunately, more problematic than the black dot issue because it can be caused at the microlens level in the CMOS sensor itself.

But before everyone starts dialing Canon with complaints, the issue with Chromatic Aberration, at least in my experience, was not the sort of hideous Purple Fringing that turned up in digital cameras in the early days. Again you have to look closely at branches and you might notice some of them appear stricken with a violet cast. Not pretty but also not especially noticeable to the naked eye.


SLOW FOCUS IN LOW LIGHT

A bigger issue is the annoyingly slow speed of the 5D Mark II's autofocusing in low contrast, low light situations. These are the sorts of situations where the 5D II should really shine especially since the High ISO/low light capabilities of its 24 x 36mm CMOS sensor are so impressive.

Though we didn't experience problems with the focus while shooting inside the dimly lit subway station and in Grand Central Terminal, when I later went to photograph the park at night, I found that the 5D II would often hunt for focus, racking in and out until it would finally lock in. On occasion, the camera couldn't find focus at all.

The problem really lies with Canon's resistance to updating the 5D II to a new autofocus system. The camera uses the same 9-point selectable AF with 6 assist points around the center as its predecessor, a system which clearly is getting a little long in the tooth. While Canon's resistance might be understandable—after it upgraded its Mark III series pro cameras to a new 19-point/16-assist point autofocus system it faced many complaints from photographers about autofocus misfires—it still doesn't solve the problem of putting a creaky old autofocus system in a brand new camera.