Canon 5d vs 5DmkII | Will Robb Photography

I’ve seen a lot of debate about the canon 5D versus the 5D mark II recently on the net. It’s easy to find the stats and the lab tests, most favour the 5D mark II in terms of performance, but say that with the big price difference unless you are using it for work, you can’t really justify the expense that the newer 5D mark II carries. In a nutshell, I think this sums it up, overall the 5DmkIIis a more versatile camera, but the older 5D is in no way a slouch. I use both cameras for work, so I know a bit about them both, so I’ll put in my two pennies worth on the debate and why I favour the 5D mark II over it’s predecessor and I will leave out most of the jargon. To be honest, I don’t know what most of the stuff means. I learned to shoot with film, I know how photographs work and I apply the same principles to digital photography and I am learning more about the technical aspects as I go along. I’ll justify why I favour the 5DmkII below, but before that I’ll do a quick summary each camera below of which situations they are both good for:

canon EOS 5D. Now only available second hand, usually around 70-80′000 yen.:
*ISO 100-1600, manual setting only.
*Menu functions easy enough to flick through for settings, but a bit time consuming compared to the 5DmkII
*No video
*Small back screen. When you zoom into an image the quality isn’t great.
*Great for portraits, travel photography, photojournalism, any events during day time such as weddings. Actually, AMAZING for portraits. I really like the images this camera produces, skin tones possibly look better with this camera.
*Good for prints up to about A3 size.

canon EOS 5DmkII. As of November 2011 the price has really dropped, now around 160′000 yen new, second hand for 130′000 yen. Rumour has it a 5DmkIII is in the pipeline, perhaps this is why the price has dropped.
*ISO 100-3600 and 50-24000 with expansion on. Very useable at 3600, even at a push at 6400. After that the photos get noisy.
*Much better designed menu, easy and quick to change settings.
*HD video, the quality is great.
*Larger back screen, better than the 5D but still not great quality when you zoom in.
*Great for portraits, travel, weddings, photojournalism, anything low light such as corporate events, wedding receptions. I even use them for runway fashion. All round a good camera.
*Pretty good for large prints, A3 is no problem, I haven’t tried larger..

I started using the 5D in 2008. It was my first full frame DSLR and I reaped the benefits immediately, especially on the wide shots. It’s a 12 megapixel camera, that’s more than enough for jobs I did for The Japan Times newspaper when I worked there and it was more than adequate for the photos I had to send to Lonely Planet. It was canon’s lightest full frame DSLR, so it is easy to carry about when I am out on jobs, I also bought a battery grip for it to make it a bit more practical for work. It shoots ISO 100-1600 which I find to be fine for most situations. When I’m using it with off camera lights, it’s perfect. The back screen is pretty small, but I don’t look at images so much during a shoot, so it doesn’t make that big a difference for me. To get to the landscape, portrait shooting functions you have to go through the menu button on the back which is a bit of a pain, you have to scroll through it for everything actually which isn’t so good when you are in a hurry. The biggest drawback I find from it though, is the fact that when you are changing lenses a lot during work (especially when traveling in foreign climes) you do get some dust spots. No problem when it’s just pics for yourself, but when you have to send them off to an agency you have to spend a lot of time during your edit removing dust spots. Going through 500 shots and taking each dust spot out (sometimes between 5 and 10 on a shot) can be a right royal pain in the bum. I have to say though, the nice people at the canon shop in Shinjuku did clean it for me for free a few times (although I have heard they started charging for the service now….maybe designed to make us all go out and buy new models with sensor cleaners). Also, when you are shooting rapidly, the sensor was a bit slow so after maybe 15 shots in rapid succession I wouldn’t be able to take shots until it was all saved to my card which was a bit of a pain when I was shooting fashion week in Tokyo this Spring. Other than that, it never gave me any problems in terms of writing data to cards.

Then, canon released the 5D mark II and it took away most of the gripes you really could have had about it’s predecessor. Most importantly for me, there is an inbuilt sensor cleaner which makes my editing life much easier. It DOES NOT clean your sensor 100%, but it does help a lot! The ISO goes from 50 to something ridiculous like 24000. I would never use that, but at ISO 3200 I find it to be very useable. In low light conditions such as weddings, corporate dinners and even some runway fashion shows I have shot at 3200 and had image quality better than the 5D at ISO 1600. The updated sensor really does rock. Also, you can set the ISO in the 5DmkII to automatic which I find to be great during the day when you are moving in and out of very bright and then dimly lit areas. Makes for a much better exposure and you don’t have to mess about with it. At night though, if you don’t set the ISO manually it usually defaults to a high ISO like 3200, so then I usually manually set it to 400 or 800, depending on what I am doing, what lens I am using etc.. Another big plus for me is the fact that on the back panel there is a button dedicated to shooting mode, so you can flip between modes a lot quicker. In terms of frames per second, it’s not a lot faster, you get almost an extra frame per second with the 5D mk II, but importantly the new sensor (digic 4) is a lot faster and writes the data more quickly. I do find the colour processing of the 5D mark II to be a bit sharper as well, so all round I get much better images. It’s a whopping 21 megapixel camera, the images are huge, it does help me for images I send to Lonely Planet as they sell on to customers who may require large prints for posters and the likes, but unless you are doing this, you don’t need the whole 21 megapix. I always shoot on RAW as it makes editing easier, the new 5D mkII does have 3 different RAW modes which gives different size images (21 megapix, 10 megapix and 4 megapix). I find this very useful, if I am shooting for the web, I don’t need 21megapix, 4megapix is fine. Additionally, the HD video function of the 5D mark II (not available on the 5D)
really is cool. I use L series lenses which makes the videos really sharp, I do hear though that with the regular lenses it’s not quite as good.

All in all, the 5D mark II is a much better camera than the 5D. It has to be, otherwise it wouldn’t sell. It is expensive, but you get what you pay for. For a pro who uses it for work, the mark II is a must, for someone who wants to advance their skills and start to get some more photo work, the 5D is more than enough. These are both wonderful full frame cameras, you’ll get great results from both, so shop for what you really need and what you can budget for.

Anyway, here are some example photos:

Canon EOS 5D

ISO 100