5D mk2 & 50D I touched them! They'll be floating around chicago

Last nite I was at a Chicagoland Professional Photographers Association meeting hosted by Canon. The Canon reps there were Brian Matsumoto & Ed Meyers, Pro-Market Tech Reps and Eric Allen (I think) tech guy from New York.

On display they had a lot of cool Canon goodies like 200mm 2.0 / 2 - 16-35mm 2.8 / 14mm 2.8 / 1ds mk3 / 1d mk3. Free CF card wallets.

Most importantly there were a couple of cameras you might have heard - 50D / 5D mk2.

The 5d MK2 would not have been there if Eric hadn't come. I think that he has the 5D mk2 and was the only one authorized to have. The purpose is to barnstorm around the midwest showing it off. I thought I overheard that they would be somewhere else in Chicago on Friday. He mentioned that there are about 8 Mk2s floating around the country and we were the 1st civilians to see them. The particular one we saw I think was used by Vincent Lafloret and Clay Blackmore.

The 50D's were preproduction models and didn't have badges. One neat thing is that on both cameras the neck strap actually hade the camera model names embroidered on the strap.

I didn't pay too much attention to the 50D since I was more interested in the 5d Mk2. Got to hold and shoot it a little. I couldn't take the images out so my impressions are from the lcd on the back. ISO 6400 looked very clean but 25600 was really noisy even on the back of the screen.

As far as video, they had the Lafloret video presented on a projector playing from a laptop. I admit I was one of the people who wasn't too thrilled about the video when hearing it. Seeing the video has changed my mind. I think the video is kick butt! There are all kinds of creative applications that I can think of now.

Anyhow if you're in Chicago, I think Calumet would be in the know about where the cameras will be this week. Joseph from the Chicago store was at the show last nite so he might know where the cameras are going.

So can the 5D mk2 autofocus while in video mode?

And I've seen a 5D neck strap with 5D embroidered on it. Looked like a Canon strap, too.

infinite012 wrote in post #6332424
So can the 5D mk2 autofocus while in video mode?

And I've seen a 5D neck strap with 5D embroidered on it. Looked like a Canon strap, too.

Honestly I don't remember if that was asked. A lot of the older photogs were all aghast about the video function it was kind of funny. The canon guys were hilarious too, they said basically what a lot of the members here say - "don't like it, don't use it".

I own a 5d that was purchased recently and the strap is a regular EOS digital strap.

infinite012 wrote in post #6332424
So can the 5D mk2 autofocus while in video mode?

Yes - it uses phase contrast ( or something like that!) AF, accessed thru the Live view system.

I think the ability to shoot short video clips at high quality with good lenses is an excellent bonus !

Would love to know what you thought of the focussing - on paper it seems to be the Achilles Heel but there's always a chance it could have been improved with better software or processing.

Hermes wrote in post #6332482
Would love to know what you thought of the focussing - on paper it seems to be the Achilles Heel but there's always a chance it could have been improved with better software or processing.

to be honest, there were about 40 other drooling photogs wanting to touch it and smell it, so none of us had any extensive time with it. The focusing seemed fast but I did only use the center point. No flash or st-e2 was on the camera, a 16-35 f2.8 was mounted.

i don't know if this was a production sample or pre-production sample so things could be better than even what I saw.

Hi,

Does the 5d Mk2 still have slight shutter lag like the original 5d?

I love the specs of the Mk2, but just wish they included 2 card slots and increased the flash sync to 1/250 or higher.

Cheers

Mark P.

PS: Is the camera body feel more like a 1 series or like the original?

Mark Passmore wrote in post #6332528
Hi,

Does the 5d Mk2 still have slight shutter lag like the original 5d?

I love the specs of the Mk2, but just wish they included 2 card slots and increased the flash sync to 1/250 or higher.

Cheers

Mark P.

PS: Is the camera body feel more like a 1 series or like the original?

shutter seemed pretty quick.

the camera feels just like a 5d. Which honestly I don't really remember what that's like since I got a 5d and grip at the same time, lol. The demo wasn't gripped.

The new battery seemes a lot smaller than the old 5d battery, also the bqck wheel seemed to be a bit smaller, IIRC.

Can you imagine, video with a high quality, low DoF, IS lens? 70-200 f/2.8L IS would be awesome.

LUCKY! I wish I could play with one!

Village_Idiot wrote in post #6332656
Can you imagine, video with a high quality, low DoF, IS lens? 70-200 f/2.8L IS would be awesome.

why not go the 85 1.2 route with iso 6400 and get nighttime wildlife video?

so wait you got a free CF card wallet? man, why don't they have these sorts of things around here

steved110 wrote in post #6332478
Yes - it uses phase contrast ( or something like that!) AF, accessed thru the Live view system.

I think the ability to shoot short video clips at high quality with good lenses is an excellent bonus !

Has Canon confirmed that AF works during video mode? I expect it would not, just like Nikon's. I might have missed it somewhere?

EDIT: Never mind found it on DPreview...

TeamSpeed wrote in post #6333986
Has Canon confirmed that AF works during video mode? I expect it would not, just like Nikon's. I might have missed it somewhere?

Supposedly it has the Live-View Contrast AF - not the fastest thing in the world but it works. This is according to DPReview and Gizmodo.

Chuck Westfall emailed me that the shutter lag on the mk 11 is 73 as opposed to 75 milliseconds on the original the 1ds mk 111 is about 52 as I recall.