The 5DII is a worthy upgrade to the iconic Canon 5D. It's head line feature is the 21mp sensor with bette low iso ability. It's a chip that is simular in resolution to the current Canon flagship, the 1DsIII but with superior iso ability.
I picked up my 5DII in late January and i've been using it as my primary camera for the past 4 months. My 5D is relegated to 2nd camera/backup duties.
What do I think of the increase in mp? Well lets get the negatives out of the way first. A 21mp raw is a pretty big file. Once opened in CS, I'm looking at 55mb per image. My usual 4gb cards have all been upgraded to 8gb...that was the first shock.
A 4gb card is good for about 80 shots, fine for general shooting but not for weddings. I also bought a few 16gb cards for general use too. The next shock is that the combined file size is eating into my HD space very quickly. So I've just swapped
my 4 500gb drives for 4 new 1tb units. Sounds like over kill? Not really, I deliver slide shows as well as finished image discs to my clients and a single wedding will generate around 50gb, once I have preocessed the images, made a slide show, web site proofs and Album design. I never wash down my computer mid season, so once a year (usually about xmass) I clear down the machine and archive off my previous season. I really don't have the time in my wedding workflow to work on disc clearing mid season and it's too dangerous, one mistake can do a lot of damage.
The next cost is things like ancillaries. I use RSS L brackets and the old 5D version isn't compatible with the new 5DII version....more cost.
My version of Lightroom didn't support the newer 5DII's raw files...so I needed to upgrade to lightroom 2.0 as well and modify my workflow to suit.
The last cost was quite a surprise to me. Spare batteries are extreamly hard to source and rediculously expensive. Why should a simple battery cost me £70 (UKP), that's just silly. The good news is that a simgle battery can almost cover a whole day's shooting. With my 5D backup, it's not an issue of the battery dies but a spare battery is just plain good business prudence.
Ok, so that's the extra cost involved. What about it's output?
21mp is essentially double the resolution of the previous camera. Which equates to about 25% more pixels in each direction. The detail that can be seen on a well focused image is truely stunning. Yes it can out resolve the 12mp predessor by quite a big margin. But, and this is a big but...it's is far harder to get a photograph to resolve this level of detail. Most consumer zooms can't optically resolve enough and camera shake reduces the IQ a lot. Tripodding is the only way to ensure sharp images...and I have a steady hand! I can see movement from handholding, and it's not poor technique. 21mp demands perfect technique and perfect focus from a quality optic.
What about it's iso ability. It's nothing short of stunning. My 5D used to have an IQ/iso max of iso 1250. Over this, I had a danger of banding and the iso noise was just too much for my tastes. This is far higher than film or slide have ever got me and the 5D files are completely usable at this iso. The 5DII pushes this to 4000iso easily and iso 6400 isn't too shabby either. The colours and metering remain stable at these iso values too, where as the 5D meter and WB seems to wander or drift. I'm sure the current Nikon cream is about a stop superior in it's iso handling, but my Canon glass doesn't work with Nikon bodies and many of the current Nikons iso starts at iso 200. For my landscape work I like to use iso 100. Also the D700/D3, great cameras that they are, are limited to just 12mp...I've been shooting at 12mp for the last 4 years! It's time to push forwards!
The detail that is possible is quite startling, but achieving max sharpness at 21mp is quite a challenge. I may even consider shooting in sRAW more often. For my wedding work, 21mp is total overkill. But for landscape work...it rocks, tripod, remote release and sharp optics are my forte. I just wish that this camera was available last year when I was in Slovenia, maybe it gives me the perfect excuse to return
Prints added this month:
Viva 2010 
Love
Only a few years ago an A3 was the biggest I thought that anyone would ever want. These days I'm sending clients away with (dare i say it...stunning) prints that are bigger than their glossy Plasma screens or fireplace wall art. No one makes money from taking pictures....only by selling finished prints.
