David Ziser got his hands on the new 5D Mark II and has shared his thoughts on it’s performance, focused mostly on its ISO performance. If you’ve seen any of the early hands-on previews, the ISO performance certainly looks promising, and according to Ziser, 6400 ISO is the new 800 ISO:

So how far could I go with the 5D Mk II? OK, folks - here it is - how about 3 stops higher than 800 ISO!!! Let me re-phrase, as Law and Order Jack McCoy would say, at 6400 ISO, I’d say I see the same noise characteristics as I see currently see on my 40D at 800 ISO. When I run Noise Ninja on both the Canon 40D and the 5D Mk2 file at 6400, I’m am getting the same “noise index” number. That calculates for to me to be the same amount of noise in the two images. Only thing is, one of those images was exposed at 6400!!! That means, dear readers, the the old 800 ISO is the new 6400 ISO!!!!

-David Ziser/Digital ProTalk

There seems to be a pretty consistent pattern in these early previews of big raves over the high ISO performance in particular the usability of 6400 ISO, which means the only catch to the higher resolution sensor is file size, something I’d be willing to look past. Combine the price point and feature set, it’s hard to see how the 5D Mark II doesn’t rack up big sales. Of course there is that whole global economic meltdown thing….

Check out David’s blog for more details on the 5D Mark II as well as a few high ISO samples.