This is a review of the new Canon EOS 5DII - the latest off the line of sexy Canon camera bodies. I came across it on loan from the awesome ProPhotoRental, and am reviewing it as the hack-amateur I am. Read this page to get context about my reviews. Naturally, the photos interspersed into the post are those I took with the 5DII.
My impression is that the camera lives up to the hype. It’s well constructed, it makes sense, feels right, and takes killer shots. The interface is pretty intuitive… which makes it easy for people like me to shoot real nice stuff (without knowing a lot about technical stuff). It did well shooting across a dimly-lit bar at high ISO, and did equally well in my sunlight apartment the next day. It has a killer video feature that captures in 1080P HD, and that allows you to take still shots while shooting (which I think is a cool feature). It’s nice-looking too… pair it with a nice lens, and you have a chick-magnet worthy machine. Top-of-the-line gear always has a way of making you step up your game; The 5D2 qualifies.
I took some nice pictures with the 5DII - the three here are what I believe to be the three best. You can see the clarity the 5DII shoots with, and you can see I had some success with shallow-Depth of Field closeups. I like those shots, but next time, I’d like to work on shooting better with larger subjects and higher aperture settings - I’d like to capture more of the story of each shot, in other words. I’ll definitely post them up here, so keep an eye out for that in a couple weeks!
All in all, I highly recommend the Canon 5DII to anyone. It’ll run you upward of $3k, but if you’re willing to invest the money, I can guarantee you’ll be pleased with the shots you get. If I can do this well with the 5DII, I know you can do better.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Lovely camera indeed. I got into dSLRs out of the need to take some pics I needed for my product and my wife’s point-and-shoot was broken. In the process I whipped up some lights using al-foil, wood, fan stands and day-light incandescent bulbs. The rest is history! The K100D I opted for was quite good but not quite anything like this machine!
One I would point out about your review is that maybe you should be making the links to the corresponding flickr images more apparent and more specific. At the moment, the pics with flickr links link to your profile and not the flickr photo itself. I really liked your Christmas tree picture on flickr too!
Keep the reviews coming!
ARIS: Good spot about about the picture links… I’ve got those fixed up now (and redirecting properly). Thanks!
I forgot to add this earlier… the included 5DII shots were taken paired with a 35m fixed focal length lens