Can a 5D MkII handle sports?

You meant 50 rolls of film ..did you ? .

int2str wrote in post #10934840
You only see the one good shot. You didn't see the 50 they threw away...

airfrogusmc wrote in post #10934266
Its about learning to see the moment and thats timeless.

And if you learn to do that the 5DII is fine and can shoot sports.

You know, I see the moment a lot, shooting dogs...but my 5DII gets a very, very small amount sharp! I'll be at the dog park, or, shooting dock diving dogs, or dog sport, and maybe 1 out of 20 is a keeper. I've perfected technique over 6 years, and did much better when I had a 40D, so I'm thinking it's the camera.

I just wish I had the money for a Mark IV.

Sometimes I use my 5d2 for powerboat racing and if I use the centre point it focuses fine.

Like people have stated I think you have to know how to shoot sports in order to get quality photos. People are comparing two great cameras, in the end they both do a great job. Ah remember the good old days when we used actual film...ha ha. If you can get great sport photos with thoses old cameras, then this thread is not really important.

heartdog wrote in post #10935207
You know, I see the moment a lot, shooting dogs...but my 5DII gets a very, very small amount sharp! I'll be at the dog park, or, shooting dock diving dogs, or dog sport, and maybe 1 out of 20 is a keeper. I've perfected technique over 6 years, and did much better when I had a 40D, so I'm thinking it's the camera.

I just wish I had the money for a Mark IV.

Many people can see the moment most don't have the skill to capture it and most automated equipment will give you average results in average situations. Most great images happen at time and in light that falls far outside the average and the part that separates the greats from the herd is the skill and the vision to capture what they see.

I would say without film more images are being shot with maybe even less finals because of the ease of delete and I will take one great image over 1000 average images. The problem today it seems, with the machine gun approach, its quantity over quality. Thats cool. It just leaves the really good paying and better work for those that create the 1 not the 1000.

int2str wrote in post #10934688
Just got back from a soccer game. Inspired by this thread I actually tried the 5D II again. I should have listened to myself and not done that.

I only shot ~35 images before I gave up. About 50% if the images are unusable due to AF tracking (or lack there of). With the 7D, it's maybe 1% if even...

Show me a burst of 5 images of a runner/dog/vehicle coming STRAIGHT at you at > 5 mph. I've not seen it happen and I *OWN* the 5D II. I'm not dissing it from a distance. Lateral motion, panning etc, sure, that's easy. The focal plane isn't moving much. Back/front is where the problem is.

Yes, people have shot sports before there were "proper" AF cameras, but that doesn't mean it was any fun! People also drove cars without seatbelts, synchronized gearboxes and power steering.

Anyway, I already made up my mind (AND put my money where my mouth is), but my simple advice would be: If you shoot a sport that requires actual (non lateral) motion, the 5D simply sucks at it. Go get a better body.

Really?

Did you look at my link about 5 posts up?

.......looks like those bikes where coming straight at me......and sure more than 5mph. But sorry, I don't shot in bursts, I don't like deleting shots I don't need. I just push the button at the right moment......I'm funny that way Old school film guy and I still haven't got the mind set each shot is free......LOL

But yea, soccer & football are tough to shoot. I've had better success adjusting the af tracking speed (on my 1 series) more than anything. In the case of those sports it's not (IMO) the AF speed it's more about keeping it locked as other players pass though my af point. Those (again IMO) are the toughest sports to shoot. And yea, that being said I probably would take my 5D to shoot that.............howev​er, now that you said you couldn't get much I'll sure be looking to take mine to a game and see.......lol

I don't understand these kinds of threads. I see a bunch of photographers whining about how a picture taken with a (great) camera 7D are so much worse or better than the ones taken with a (great) camera 5D2. I see things like "oh, the 8 fps is so much better than 3.9 fps" as if such a thing were the reasons behind a potentially crappy picture.

I think that it needs to be pointed out: maybe it's the photographer and not the equipment?

Look, I think the best sports photo ever taken was "The Catch" by Walter iooos. Lots of people think this too. It was shot with a Canon F1 on a 50 mm lens with a motor drive that went 3 frames per second(!). In spite of all the hoopla of the advances of digital photography THIS photo still ranks up there as one of the best--if not THE best--sport photo ever taken.

So don't insult my intelligence about this 7D versus 5D thing. The two cameras are so close to each other that any "bad" photos you take are more likely due to the human factor than it is the equipment.

FWIW, I have both the 7D and the 5D2. I'm going to Italy in a week. I'm bringing the 5D2 because I wanted the full frame. I could have just as easily chosen to bring the 7D instead--I'm not that bad a photographer that I can't compensate for a 1.6x crop.

I have a 5d and 1d3, and the answer is, the 5d can shoot sports, it just depends on the sport, or how much you want your results to suffer

There is no question that my 'keeper rate' when shooting field sports/anything that requires autofocus is so, so much higher with the 1d, but not all sports need fast AF.