Stop whining "I don't want video" - it [the whining] is stupid - video is a software feature. It makes the camera zero dollars more expensive. To not include video; consider this: To produce two versions of 5D, one with video, another without, would cost significantly more, because two different variants will cause overhead for not only R&D, but also marketing, logistics, sales, service etc. In fact it would be idiotic to release today new SLR from Canon without video and it would be very uninformed to wish one to happen.
I need one camera which does both video and stills, because I can't carry both stills and video camera around on my travels, and I want it to be as small as possible, so I can pack more lenses to the carry-on luggage (and still meet the stringent weight and size limit).
I have successfully utilized 5D mark II for both video and stills for few years now. It is not perfect for video due to line skipping which causes aliasing and loss of resolution, that's why I am looking for the next model. However, other than that, it is a very capable for doing both. It has every function I need from a camcorder, I don't need other functions (such as pumping autofocus, only less informed consumers who shoot their vomiting shaky zooming family videos care about autofocus and motor zoom). I record audio separately with audio recorder.
In every other aspect than the moire, it outperforms my previous camcorder. It even has better resolution than the camcorder, because something being fullHD does not mean that it resolves the full hd resolution despite it would be storing 1920x1080 pixels. 5D mark II resolves quite ok enough for me to find it usable. I am going to even shoot a short film with it (I would not do that with my old camcorder, that is a piece of junk in comparison). What it comes to workflow and everything, the 5D mark II with the file based video format is so superior to the old camcorder that there is no moving back. There are better camcorders these days on the market which will clearly outperform 5D mark II in video, yes, however, these are not exactly affordable, here is the list: Arri Alexa, RED One, RED One MX, RED Epic M, RED Epic X, RED Scarlet (unreleased), Sony F35, Sony F65, and Sony F3. Sony FS100 and Panasonic AF100 outperforms 5D mark II with small margin. The list pretty much ends here. There are some less expensive camcorders from Sony and Canon out which resolve more few more lines than 5D mark II but have at the time small sensor (large depth of field, wide angle performance poor) and poor low light performance.
5D mark II is still a super deal for someone looking for camera to do cinema style work and your budget for a single camera body is not on the realm of professional camcorders. Of course these days it is possible to get a bit better results if you pay 3.2 times more, you can get Sony FS100. Or if you pay about 3 times more, you can get Panasonic AF100. The video quality will not be 3 times better yet. To get 3 times better video, you have to go for RED or Alexa really or the super high end Sony which costs something like 100K.
I can do very professional looking videos with my 5D mark II despite of the downsides (like aliasing, if I want to fix that I can these days buy anti-aliasing filter that comes in front of the sensor), however, people that I have made videos for haven't even seen the aliasing despite it irritates my eye personally so much. I have to point them with finger that "there on this place if you look closely, you can see some rainbows, that's caused by aliasing due to line-skipping instead of pixel binning". Anyway, if you are super irritated with the aliasing, here is a example video how video looks with the antialiasing filter installed on 5D mark II:
http://vimeo.com/27069461
To my eye the video looks very good and professional, despite being shot on DSLR. Shooting it with higher end cameras such as RED or Arri would have given very negligible benefits. Also even if there was no antialiasing filter, the same commercial would have looked almost exactly the same, but people like myself would have found few places where there would have been some extra fake details that should not be there. This being a TV commercial, most commercials have worse quality (e.g. SD resolution), and interlace and aliasing effects even worse (SD has typically horrible aliasing when displayed on a sharp 1080p display due to stretching the lines to fill the screen).
Those people who say "get a proper camcorder instead of DSLR" and complain about lack of autofocus and motor zoom tend to typically do videos that look so bad that I would be needing 1) someone forcing me with gunpoint to watch them and 2) vomit bag to put my vomit when I would get sick from the pumping shaky picture which also looks like jumping soft jelly in motion due to the combined shakiness, zooming, pumping autofocus and non-time aligned reading of the sensor. And then this video would have block artifacts and would have gradients cut because there is not enough latitude to capture the dynamic range and then there would be comb artifacts due to interlaced source material in movement looking super crappy and there would be lots of work in post to try to deinterlace it in attempt to making it look proper.
Why DSLR is a good cinema camera substitute? Because a motion picture camera really is a still camera that takes 23.976 stills per second. It is very similar to SLR and it is very different from some interlaced crap camcorder.
The argument by the way that "you need all kinds of rigs, dollies, sliders, steadicams etc." to make DSLR footage to look great is invalid, reason being that you need those same things for camcorders as well to not make vomit-inducing footage.
If you have budget for RED, by all means, go for it, you will not be disappointed. However, if you can't afford RED, DSLR is still today (despite Canon has been extremely slow in doing the 5D3) an option that is good for photographers who also want to shoot video and also for videographers on limited budget. Of the video DSLRs, after all these years, 5D mark II still is the best overally. GH2 resolves a little more and has less moire, but still overally, 5D mark II outperforms in overall image quality the competition, including Canon's other models such as 1D mark IV, 7D, 60D, 600D etc. 5D mark II still has best latitude and best resolution, and least aliasing of the Canon DSLR gang. I have also 60D as a second body, but I use it only for stills because the video quality is worse than 5D.
but... WOW!!
