Possible 5d ii metering problem

Hi,

So I received my Refurbished 5d ii from the canon ebay outlet and finally managed to take it outside for some testing. I have found that it seemed to be under exposing the images even in bright daylight in both manual mode and Aperture Priority mode.

When i got back home i took some pictures with my 55od for comparison and found out the images from the 55od were usually brighter than the 5d ii also the 5d ii had yellwish tint to it, I used the same settings on both cameras to for the comparison.

5dii

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I would hardly consider these a valid representation of what the camera is doing. Why don't you take the cameras outside in sunlight and try this test again...

I will do that tomorrow, I came home late and i didn't have both cameras at hand while i was outside to the this test.

also the 550d histogram is slightly higher than the 5d ii

robertwsimpson wrote in post #14248811
I would hardly consider these a valid representation of what the camera is doing. Why don't you take the cameras outside in sunlight and try this test again...

Waste of your time. Go outside and take some real pictures then report back. My T2i seems pretty spot on with metering. With my 20D and 30D I usually had 1/3 - 2/3 of + EC dialed in most of the time.

Just to experiment, I did some stuff to your trial... First, I cropped an area out of the center of the brightest photo from each camera. This does 2 things. First, you took different angles with each camera. Look at the edge of the computer screen... something like that could make a huge difference in your histogram. Secondly, the full frame 5d is much more prone to vignetting, which is very evident. This will change the histogram as well. Secondly, I looked at the EXIF data from the two photos and noticed that the white balances were set differently. That is why they have different "tints." you need to set a manual white balance if you really want to do a test like this. Set it the same on both cameras. I color adjusted the 5D2 photo to closer resemble the same white balance of the T2i. Then I screen capped both photos and both histograms. The histograms are pretty much identical, as are the photos.

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Yeah...looks fine to me other than white balance.

Meters in different cameras are different. Some are better than others. They can vary a 1/3 stop here or there sometimes. You just have to learn how your camera meters and adjust accordingly if necessary based on the scene you are shooting.

Man, there are a lot of these threads popping up questioning different camera bodies and comparing to what the user are familiar shooting.

Different bodies meter differently. Be diligent in reading the manual. Do static testing. Understand that with evaluative metering you're going to get inconsistent results even shooting the same frame consecutively.

@ Robert, I will do some test outside tomorrow in bright day light Then I will no for sure if there is a huge difference in the metering, it could be something to do with the fact that my 5d ii is a refurb but I could just be paranoid. I have never bought a refurb before so I guess i may just be hunting for a problem but we will see tomorrow.

You gotta spot meter an exposure target to get a baseline, you're pounding sand otherwise 'cause you have no reference point.

I had the same issue switching from an to the same camera. There is nothing wrong, they are different cameras you just need to get used to it.

yep. the 5d isn't going to make you a better photographer either. Just enjoy the new camera body and stop dissecting everything!

robertwsimpson wrote in post #14249136
yep. the 5d isn't going to make you a better photographer either. Just enjoy the new camera body and stop dissecting everything!

no one said it should

Geez...

For one thing, is that a backlit LCD screen you are photographing? If so, well those use a fluorescent lamp, and FLs are notoriously difficult to get correctly exposed. They cycle on and off at a rate of 60X a second, which we don't see with our eyes, but the camera records. Try to avoid testing in any sort of fluorescent lighting.

Second, the poorly exposed images (M, ISO 100, 1/200, f4) looks equally underexposed, 5DII compared to the same exposure settings with the 550D... And equally slower shutter speed in each also look the same, too, camrea-to-camera. What that tells me is that there's nothng wrong with the lens aperture or shutter or sensor/ISO settings in the 5DII. Since you are using M for all these samples, it tells us nothing about the metering systems of the cameras.

There's bound to be some difference, though minor... 5DII is a four year old model that uses the same 35 zone metering system as the 50D, 40D, 500D/T1i (I think). The 550D/T2i uses the newer 63 zone metering system that's in 60D, 7D, 600D/T3i, 5DIII. I don't see a great deal of difference between these systems switching back and forth between 5DII and 7D (for the large part, but also 50D sometimes). But there are some differences, the newer one handls backlit situations a bit better.

It would be better if the same lens was used on both cameras, too.

How about showing us some of the outdoor "real" shots that you felt were underexposed?

Oh, and by the way.... would you mind reducing the images you post in size a bit, to maybe no more than 1000 pixels on the long side?