How 'bad' is the AF in the 5d MK II

mystik610 wrote in post #13724894
or some noisy low-light shots from the 7d (yes I went there lol)

I kid, I kid.

Ask and you shall receive! I find that the 7D is excellent at producing noisy low-light shots. If that's the kind of photo you're after, then the 7D is definitely the camera for you!

I recommend you pick one up while you still have the opportunity. You wouldn't want to miss out, would you? Canon might "fix" this problem at any time, and then you wouldn't know the joy of high noise shots, such as this:

I'm not sure what to make of the picture above ( I might have missed the joke?)..... I have the 550D and it has virtually the same sensor and digital processing that the 7D has (7D might have 2 where the 550D only has 1). Anyhow, I have a shot from the other day, very similar to what you're showing above. This was shot at night and that side of the house was pretty dark (no direct light).

No noise reduction, straight from the camera. The only thing I did was downsize it.

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davidc502 wrote in post #13727151
I'm not sure what to make of the picture above ( I might have missed the joke?)..... I have the 550D and it has virtually the same sensor and digital processing that the 7D has (7D might have 2 where the 550D only has 1). Anyhow, I have a shot from the other day, very similar to what you're showing above. This was shot at night and that side of the house was pretty dark (no direct light).

No noise reduction, straight from the camera. The only thing I did was downsize it.

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Guess you didn't detect the self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek humor in my last...


The shot in question was at ISO 12800, which I then pushed 3 stops. So it's as if I shot it at ISO 102,400.

ROTFLMAO

End of discussion. Much better things to do like play Freecell, etc.

Note to self: pay less attention to trolls.

jdizzle wrote in post #13726604
Here we go. Shot with the 5D MK 2 with the Zeiss 100 f2. Bear in mind the Zeiss is a MF lens. These were shot in over cast light. Does it look oof?

So what you're saying is that the 5D2's autofocus is so bad that you had to revert to manual focus when using your Zeiss manual focus lenses?

Wow the 7D and the 550D look way better than the 5D2. The 5D2 may have less noise, but oh for the love of god, the banding is atrocious.

5D2 + 25600

airfrogusmc wrote in post #13725338
We could all share OOF stuff from any camera. How 'bout the fact all this technology (bells and whistles) its seems that the quality of work has gone down in the past few years. More images have been made in the past 10 years than in the entire history of two dimensional work with all this technology but yet the vision and the work has not increased with the level of technology. No one seems to have the time to learn to use what they have. Instead most are on the gadget train (fueled by the manufactures by the way) chasing the so called latest and greatest. They rely on the gadget so instead of trying to be the best they want their gear to be the best. Instead of trying to find the moment they want to blast through it with FPS. Instead of learning and mastering their gear, the first time they take it out, they're not taking so called "perfect images" its the gears fault and they move on to the next magic bullet.

The focus on the 5DII works fine if you just take the time to learn how to use it. Again I prefer the 5D & the 5DII over the 1d series. I prefer Hasselblad 500 C/M to the 5DII. To bad they don't make a real square low light really high res back thats affordable for those great old blad bodies. But with those type of cameras its the photograpers brain that needs the magic, not the gear. but thats to hard for most now.

Ain't that the truth.

As much as I belittle Canon for putting in an outdated autofocus system into the 5D2, the fact of the matter is that the results you get are going to depend much more on how well you learn the characteristics of your camera (which includes its autofocus system) and how to get the most out of it than on the capabilities of the camera itself.

At the end of the day, what matters is the results you get. The capabilities of the camera generally determine how easy it is to get the results, and less about how good the results are after you put the required work into it. The proof is in the results: 7D landscape shots that rival those taken with the 5D2, and 5D2 sports shots that rival those taken with the 7D (or 1D series, for that matter).


Photographers back in the day had much less to work with than we do today. Despite that, they were able to get outstanding results. The difference is that it took them a lot more work and a lot more knowledge of the craft. With the equipment we have today, we're spoiled.


But I still want a digital EOS 3, and am annoyed that Canon has thus far steadfastly refused to make such a thing available.
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kcbrown wrote in post #13727585
So what you're saying is that the 5D2's autofocus is so bad that you had to revert to manual focus when using your Zeiss manual focus lenses?

Hehe! I'm not gonna comment. The 5D 2 is great at what it does. I just wish the outer points were larger with greater sensitivity like the center point. The 1D's 45 AF points are better in this regard. Just sayin'. Tbh, this topic about AF shouldn't stop people buying the 5D 2. If one is happy with it, fine. I certainly know the limits these current Canon cameras have.

I have both cameras, both have their strengths and weaknesses. I love my 7d, and I love my 5d M2. I grab the 7D more often, but I've gotten surprising shots with both. Autofocus isn't the 5dm2's best quality but it's adequate. It's good enough for me to set my camera down, pick up a frisbee, throw the frisbee, pick the camera back up, focus on my dog catching the frisbee and snapping a shot of him at the moment. If I'd listened to all of the reviews I'd think that the 5dM2 would almost never be able to do that, but in reality, it does it more often than it doesnt.

kcbrown wrote in post #13727202
Guess you didn't detect the self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek humor in my last...


The shot in question was at ISO 12800, which I then pushed 3 stops. So it's as if I shot it at ISO 102,400.

Yup I missed it...... You can clearly see my frame of mind in this thread....

Cheers,

David

smorter wrote in post #13727632
Wow the 7D and the 550D look way better than the 5D2. The 5D2 may have less noise, but oh for the love of god, the banding is atrocious.

5D2 + 25600

I would like try to bump up the ISO on my T2i. How do you get the effective ISO above its maximum... In the case of the 550D = 12800?

kcbrown wrote in post #13727769
Photographers back in the day had much less to work with than we do today. Despite that, they were able to get outstanding results. The difference is that it took them a lot more work and a lot more knowledge of the craft. With the equipment we have today, we're spoiled.

Oh here comes the romanticising of the past. I'd argue that it's only outstanding in the context of what they had to use.

Then again I'm a technician more than an artist. I want crisp, colorful, well lit, relatively clean, as-if-you-were-there photographs whenever possible.

I know. I actually had a relative that kept a lot of old magazines, so I'm pretty familiar with what was acceptable commercial work from 2-3 decades ago.

There are a lot more photographers today turning out consistently better work, IMO.

cdifoto wrote in post #13728230
Oh here comes the romanticising of the past. I'd argue that it's only outstanding in the context of what they had to use.

Then again I'm a technician more than an artist. I want crisp, colorful, well lit, relatively clean, as-if-you-were-there photographs whenever possible.

So, since you have much more capable equipment today, your photos blow the photos from say the 90's out of the water...right.

And to go further, I can blow away the photos you get by getting even a better camera than you have right?

Hogloff wrote in post #13728290
So, since you have much more capable equipment today, your photos blow the photos from say the 90's out of the water...right.

And to go further, I can blow away the photos you get by getting even a better camera than you have right?

Yes Hogloff.... You just won't improve, until the sensor is larger than the one you have now.