I took delivery of a Canon EOS 5D Mark II yesterday. Throughout the day, in between work and family, I played with the camera and read through the manual. Here are some first impressions, likes, and dislikes…
- I’m pleased with the overall build and ergonomics. Much of the button, wheel, dial layout is familiar (coming from the 30D).
- The viewfinder is large and bright and the LCD is quite nice.
- The menu redesign is much improved.
- Live view is cool (coming from large format) and the grid, info and histogram overlays are fantastic. But you can’t shoot with mirror lock-up from live view? Bummer. Although, its easy enough to compose in live view, then switch off and shoot with mirror lock-up.
- The customizable mode dial settings (C1, C2, C3) and “my menu” are great features that I will use a lot. It will be great to be able to jump from one type of shooting situation to another with the flick of the dial. Here’s how I’ve configured them (for now)…
- C1 – Landscape from tripod: Aperture priority starting @ f/16, ISO 100, mirror lock-up, 2 sec. self timer, etc. I’ll likely often use live view with this setting.
- C2 – Trail and Travel hand-held: Aperture priority starting @ f/11, Auto ISO, single shot
- C3 – Wildlife and quick grab: Shutter priority startting @ 250th, Auto ISO, AIServo, multiple shot.
- My Menu – Exposure bracketing, format card, mirror lock-up, date and time (I set this often to sync with GPS), long exposure noise reduction.
- Image quality – wow! I haven’t made any prints, yet. But on screen pixel peeping shows lots and lots of details. I post more on this after I do some printing.
- Video – fun! I probably won’t use the video for more than casual, documentary. But my kids thought it was cool that we shot video, plugged the camera directly into our HD TV and watched “movies.”
I ventured out early this morning for a sunrise shoot. The light was less than stellar, in fact boring, and the few clouds did not light up. But I shot a few frames anyway and processed them in Lightroom. It will take a bit more practice to get the best out of the 5D II files, but here’s a preview…
