Canon 5D Mark II Digital SLR Camera:Hands On First Look

Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape was lucky enough to get his hands on the new Canon EOS 5D Mark II and has posted his first impressions mostly centered around the 5D Mark II’s video capabilities. The good news is that the 5D Mark II looks to have significantly less (Reichmann says none) “wobble” than the “other” DSLR with video capability (Nikon D90 we’re talking about you):

As for the Canon 5D MKII – I see no jello-ish artifacts. I’m not saying that they may not be there, but in the day of shooting that I did, taking quite a few shots to specially look for it, I didn’t see any.
-Michael Reichmann (Luminous Landscape)

Combine this with 1080p and H264 codec recording at 30FPS, and you have a serious video recording machine. (Yes they have a video demo of the 5D Mark II’s ability here, and it looks damn good). There does appear to be a potential hardware problem though, and that is because the Canon 5D Mark II records such a tremendous amount of data ( at 47 megabytes per second ), that:

I did not have time to try H264 video footage straight from the camera in a variety of viewers and non-linear editing programs. But Quicktime 7 can read the files properly, and so can the latest Final Cut Pro. In both cases on a 2.6Ghz dual core Macbook Pro with 2 Meg of RAM, while the video could be played, there were dropped frames. The machine simply isn’t fast enough to keep up with that amount of data.

-Michael Reichmann (Luminous Landscape)

Translation: You’ll need some serious horsepower to play with the Canon 5D Mark II.

Oddly not a word from Reichmann on a little known feature of the Canon 5D Mark II, the ability to take “photographs”.

Get Reichmann’s take on take on the 5D Mark II here.

You can order the Canon 5D Mark II now at:
Amazon (body only $2700 or with EF 24-105 L IS for $3500)
Adorama (body only $2699 or with EF 24-105 L IS for $3499)

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1. 

   Eolake Stobblehouse says:

   September 24, 2008 at 7:48 am

   “Oddly not a word from Reichmann on a little known feature of the Canon 5D Mark II, the ability to take “photographs”.”

   LOL! Well said. Me, I care more about this than video, at this time.

   Mike has been talking about this convergence for a while, and seems excited about it. Not that he’s alone.

   reply
2. 

   Patrick says:

   September 24, 2008 at 8:26 am

   Striking though isn’t it? Literally never discussed image quality from a camera we’ve been waiting 3 years for.

   reply
3. 

   Eolake Stobblehouse says:

   September 24, 2008 at 2:11 pm

   In his defense he only had a day with the camera, and he probably had to choose one or the other.

   Also video is the big unknown, whereas it’s a pretty safe bet that an upgrade to the 5D will have wonderful IQ.

   reply