5D II Hands on Comments
November 18th, 2008 Posted in Canon 5D Mark II
David from DigitalProTalk was kind enough to post on his blog last week about his experience with the 5d II for a few hours. He has gone on to share some images as well.
His findings:
“So how far could I go with the 5D Mk II? OK, folks – here it is – how about 3 stops higher than 800 ISO!!! Let me re-phrase, as Law and Order Jack McCoy would say, at 6400 ISO, I’d say I see the same noise characteristics as I see currently see on my 40D at 800 ISO”
ds
November 18th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Thanks for the link. This was one of the most interesting reviews I’ve seen, because a pro discussed the autofocus, and I also noted that contrary to the manual, his recommendation was to get a super fast UDMA card for video. The manual’s recommendation of 8 MB/sec does not make sense for the 1080P video, since it is a 35 MB/Sec rate. I assumed that early on, and bought 2 additional 8GB 300X UDMA cards.
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November 18th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
We all know how good 5DII is by now. Let’s just hope we can actually get one in the near future.
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November 18th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I will say that Chuck Westfall addressed that blog and UDMA statement:
“The comment you quoted on card writing speed requirements for movie mode with the EOS 5D Mark II is totally off base. Canon’s actual specification for minimum card writing speed in movie mode is 8MB per second, which works out to approximately 64X according to the speed rating terms used by most of the popular memory card manufacturers. Most CF cards that are currently being sold are much faster than that, so generally speaking card writing speed is not a big issue for movie mode with the EOS 5D Mark II.”
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November 18th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Now I know what I will get for my new primary body. Just waiting for the 1D replacement.
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November 18th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Actually, the 8 MB/sec data stream seems pretty accurate to me. If the codec is 35 – 50 MBits (not bytes) per second, then the resulting data stream will be somewhere in that range. At 35 MBytes/sec the video would be taking up approx. 2GB per minute!!
I base this on my experience with the professional Panasonic DVCPRO HD cameras, which record 1080/24p video at a data rate of approx. 100 MBits/sec, and the MB/s in Final Cut Pro comes out to ~14.6 MB/s. (approx. 1GB / minute)
Hope this helps…
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November 18th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I NEEEEEDS IT. THE PRECIOUS!
Possibly delivering in a few days/couple of weeks. I can hardly wait!
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November 18th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
You are right, I mixed up mbits/sec and mbytes per sec in my calculations. The camera records video at about 47 mbit/sec which is 5.6 mbytes/sec. Still, I wonder why actual experience of the user indicates that his Extreme III card could not keep up. Perhaps a bad card?
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November 18th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Bebopcola, what if I throw one over the fire, would you jump and get it :-) Just kidding, I know a lot of us actually think the same thing as you do… NOW, NOW, NOW, CAN’T WAIT ANYMORE !!!
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November 18th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Ed – when a card says that it is xMB/s, that is it’s peak, ideal performance. While this is sometimes almost achieved when writing photos, flash cards do not sustain writing very well, and their speed fluctuates a large amount. Therefore, the Extreme III card may not be able to consistently perform at the data rate required.
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November 18th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
i am confuse, so is Extreme III 8gb able to keep up with the movie mode? or do we have to go with Extreme IV ?
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November 19th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Your III’s will be just fine.
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November 19th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Yes, Extreme IIIs will be fine for video mode. As people have already stated… it’s about 40Mbps or 8MBps (give or take).
It pisses me off that retards like that get to try out new tech and give false information.
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November 19th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Of course the rated speeds are maximums (often not ever achieved) but an Extreme III would definitely be able to write a constant 8MBps. I tested mine (new IIIs rated at 30 – 8GB and 16GB) with HD Tune Pro and got at least 25MBps sustained for short and long tests.
If you have fake eBay Extreme IIIs then that would be a problem.
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November 20th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Rox, of course! Especially if it means getting it a little sooner : )
I hear the 5DmkII has good fire resistance due to it’s new environmental seals and an aura of awesomeness.
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November 20th, 2008 at 1:11 am
This is exactly the kind of review I was hoping not to see. Two stops over my current kit? That just sounds too good to be true… but also too good to pass up. Still want to see a couple more reviews first, though.
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November 20th, 2008 at 1:12 am
(For clarification, this is the kind of review I wanted not to see so that I wouldn’t be tempted to buy this camera.)
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November 22nd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Maybe you need the fast card when you are shooting a 13 raw frame burst?
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