Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1MP Full Frame CMOS Digital SLR Camera with EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens (OLD MODEL)

I am an enthusiast photographer. I understand the relationship between aperture, shutter and ISO; I understand the basics of composition, rules of thirds and all that; watches youtube constantly and try to learn more; and I process my RAW in Lightroom because I am not a professional and just a bit lazy to learn layers and Photoshop. I am budget conscious, not rich or anything. Therefore it is a bit hard for me to justify buying over 3000 dollars of equipment for mainly weekend and vacation shooting. I've used it for almost 2 weeks and I would say overall I don't regret buying it. I will list some pros and cons from my perspective. Pros: A lot of detail is available from the RAW files. A bit of brushing and those blown out while sky comes back to life easily. Just tweaking with LR, I can get those HDR looking photos where everywhere is exposed without doing bracketing. Its not perfect HDR of course, but pretty good and amazing in my opinion. And of course, the details in the images are very crisp, a big upgrade from my old camera. The rate of 3.9 is pretty good in my opinion. I use a 600x card and shoot RAW only; the camera shows 13 shots continuously at that rate before clogging, which is pretty good. The weight of the camera makes shooting at slower shutter speed easier. When I was hand holding my old camera(I rather not say model), I usually have bluish image at 1/15, but this one seems to do it pretty well. Some people probably can hand hold 1/15 easily with any camera, but this is just something I noticed. I think the extra weight gave me this extra stability or maybe there is something going on inside. Knowing that this is a Full Frame camera with the ability to capture pretty much the best quality images is satisfying. I travel whenever my finance allow, and some of the destinations I probably will never go again or just simply change from time to time. Therefore the biggest justification for myself buying this camera is to be able to capture images without later regrets. Before, I had images with the sky fully blown out or the face of my subject poorly lit and by recovering from LR, I just loose a lot of detail and make everything look unpleasant. Professionals probably can shoot better I know, but I am not pro and the comfort of not paying so much for my mistakes and no regrets is the main reason I am happy with my decision. now onto the Cons: Like everyone said, the focus is the downside of 5DII. Maybe I am overshadowed by all the other reviews; but from what I feel, I just think its a bit slow, more noticeable during darker situations. I have not used a lot of cameras so maybe I am just nit-picking. When I mount the 50mm 1.4 on the 5DII, the focus is a bit slow, and also the minimal focus distance for the 50mm 1.4 is quiet long at 0.45m. I was inside a museum, and sometimes I'm just too close to the subject, or sometimes its just too dark, so the focusing seems to be confused once in awhile. I don't have anything technical to back this up, just my feeling. The lack of focus point don't bother me at all since I only use the central one and rarely shoot birds or sports. Its not a problem when I'm outside, I hardly notice it, but when I do, it bothers me. The weight adds stability while shooting, but is definitely not good for walking. Having this magnesium alloy brick hanging on my neck without support is not pleasant. Shutter is a bit loud and lower pitch. I think each and everyone have a different preference for shutter sound. I actually like the sound of short higher pitch, for example the Rebels. Vignette and Light fall off. Coming from a cropped, the vignetting and light falls off at the corners is much more noticeable. I know different lens behaves differently, but this is definitely more noticeable. Build-in Mic is nearly useless during recording. It is very noisy. Even if you want to record something simple, the quality of sound coming out of the mic makes me mute it all together. The large megapixel makes my Lightroom 4.1 a lot slower. I have an Acer Laptop, i5-2410, 8GB Ram, Nvidia Geforce GT540M laptop. No SSD, just regular 640GB, 5400RPM Hard drive. The laptop is not something blazing fast, but I had no problem with 10 Megapixel RAW files. Now the full 21 Megapixel RAW files from 5DII are making my LR a lot slower. I already rooted my comp to clean out the bloatwares and tried to render 1:1 when importing and all the other tweaks I can find on the internet but it is still quiet slow. It is noticeably slow while editing (applying different presets and brushing) and slow when exporting. Its not anything bad for the camera, but something every buyer should consider, as I am now planning to dropping more money to buy a better desktop. Recommendations: I think for those non-professionals, this is probably the best pick for the money. The new 5DIII is obviously better, but the price is a big factor for me. For people who have the money, buy it; but I don't, so I rather save that extra dollars and spend it on a vacation. The focus is good enough in my opinion, probably because I don't shoot sports or things that are moving like crazy. All the other nitpicks such as power switch position, dop preview position, slow rate are completely irrelevant in my opinion. 5DII is a solid camera, and I think its best buy for the money since the ability to produce good image is the most important factor. For those who wants to buy a full frame, I would say make sure you know why you want to buy it. The desire of getting better gear is always with us, and I recommend for anyone buying anything really, make sure you justify your purchase. Please don't buy a good camera like this and simply put it away in your closet after the first few month. It pains budget conscious people like me who have invested so much time to find the best pick. If you have the extra cash, knows that photography requires lots of hard work, and want to advance in photography, I would say its worth it.

Having made the transition from medium format professional film cameras to cropped sensor digital (i.e. the T2i), I was looking forward to upgrading to professional digital equipment. Canon's 5D Mark II has dampened my enthusiasm for going into the full frame world. Fully understanding that the Mark II has a less densely packed sensor than do cropped frame sensors, it is natural to anticipate that the Mark II images will be a little less sharp. Of course, the trade off was supposed to be that the larger Mark II sensor would allow for greater enlargement without pixilation or noise while delivering a flattering portrait image. That was the theory. It must be assumed that my copy was defective and therefore not typical of Mark II quality overall, nonetheless the fuzziness of so many of the images was grossly disappointing. Originally guessing that maybe the 24-105 f4 L was the culprit I purchased additional lenses (e.g. 50mm f1.8, 70-300, 28-70). Some improved the sharpness situation (which did not speak well for the f4 L), and some did not. Even making the AF micro-adjustments did not help. Ultimately, I concluded that the AF was performing erratically. That problem coupled with an apparently very soft copy of the f4 L and the less-dense full frame sensor, the net outcome was a great number of unusable out-of-focus images. This was particularly acute on shots beyond 15 feet. What are my five Mark II disappointments? Defective AF, overly soft copy of the 24-105 f4 L, heavy weight of the Mark II, no real gain over the T2i in image quality when enlarging images, and the loss of my esteem for the quality control efforts of Canon on their professional line. However, Canon should get credit, in the form of 2 stars, for making a less expensive full frame DSLR. They also get some credit for the bright viewfinder on the Mark II and its large LCD. I have returned the Mark II and its companion f4 L lens (my appreciation to Amazon for their integrity and standing behind their sales). Instead of upgrading to the full frame line I am just going to buy another T2i (through Amazon) and hope that it will also be as tack-sharp as the one I already own. Of course the good part of this experience is that the EF lenses I bought for the Mark II are still useful on the T2i because of Canon`s foresight in making the EOS mounts substantially interchangeable.

good