If your livelihood doesn't depend on the capture of fast objects, this will give you 95% of the image quality of the 5D III or 1D X. It's a major upgrade to the original 5D, though marginally inferior to the new 6D.
I bought a 5D II to replace a 50D and a 40D. I've also used a 7D professionally. The latter three bodies have higher framerates, superior AF tracking, and a higher pixel density that benefits distant subjects. The 5D II is preferable for any other purpose if you can swing the cost of lenses that'll do justice across the frame to such enormous resolution.
HANDLING:
This is a 50D-generation camera, so the learning curve from that one (and the 40D) is essentially nil. A handful of custom functions differ. The original 5D is a bigger jump; button placement is about the same on the new model, but the menu system has been completely revised (for the better). The 40D/50D have marginally lower weight, smaller size, and a superior grip. Buttons have a positive click. The 5D II has mushy buttons that activate at some indeterminate point.
In use, the 5D II's viewfinder is massively larger than the tunnel-like crop bodies. This pulls you into the scene, though framing is actually easier with the smaller finders. Balancing that is comparatively lethargic shutter and mirror response. The 40D/50D are 40% quicker on this front; the difference between 220ms and 160ms. You can't afford a lazy reaction time with this body.
I've also detected a rare playback hesitation. I tend to a snap a shot and immediately press play if it doesn't appear on the screen. For perhaps 1 shot in 40, my 5D II has been unresponsive to that button for seconds at a time after the shot. The image appears eventually. The 40D/50D are impossible to trip up like this. This smacks of a software glitch, though I may query Canon at some point to verify.
Exposure seems less reliable in difficult lighting. Set to evaluative metering, the 5D II tends to overexpose dark scenes and underexpose backlit people. It's not that clever. I've had to rely on EC and spot metering modes more than with the 40D.
Like the 40D/50D, Auto-ISO is next to useless, so you end up fiddling with settings more than with, say, the 5D III, 7D, or 1D X. In aperture priority, Auto-ISO will set a shutter to the lens focal length or 20% less. Prone to hand-shake? Too bad. In shutter priority, it'll start dropping your chosen shutter when it reaches ISO 3200. That's the maximum ISO it'll use in any mode. And in manual mode, Auto-ISO isn't; it just fixes itself to ISO 400. So if you want to control your depth of field and shutter and the let the ISO dynamically adjust, you're SOL on this body. Major oversight.
Note that this body doesn't have a popup flash. I'm not lamenting the absence, it's always been a bone to casual shooters more than a serious tool. Max sync speed for most Canon bodies is 1/250, so it only worked for outdoor fill with narrow apertures. Indoors as a main light source, the tiny size and close proximity to the lens led to red eyes and a flat, unflattering high-contrast look. A much preferable setup for event photography pairs a 430EX or 580EX, ideally diffused or aimed to bounce off a nearby surface.
Nitpicking aside, the 5D II handles as well as any recent Canon DSLR. It's much quicker if you take the time to configure it to your preferences.
FOCUS:
Better than expected. The 40D/50D have 9 cross-points. The 5D II has one center cross-point, 8 outer single-axis points, and 6 invisible AF assist points near the center point. In practice, the 5D II is a center-point camera unless you're shooting at wide apertures (f/2 or lower).
Center-point AF is very accurate and hits in almost any lighting. Better than the 40D/50D (and even the 1D IV, I've heard) when the lights dim. The only environment where I've had trouble grabbing focus had an exposure of ISO 25600, f/2, 1/50.
Surround-point accuracy is questionable. This is the major weakness of the 5D II. You'll want to use wide-aperture lenses like the 85/1.8 and 50/1.4 to take advantage of the thinner depth-of-field and superior foreground/background blur that full-frame offers. These apertures punish focus-recompose, so you need to use the outer points for off-center compositions. They're fast enough, but not consistent or accurate. If your results are critical, take a lot of refocused safety shots.
Focus tracking is surprisingly decent with a high-contrast subject that you can hold exactly in the center of the viewfinder, provided you've enabled the invisible assist points with CF III.7. Once your object starts straying to the outer points, all bets are off; the 40D/50D excel here. Still, contrary to expectation, the 5D II can follow moving objects. The outer point accuracy was a greater letdown.
STILLS IMAGE QUALITY:
Excellent. Per-pixel sharpness is very high and superior to crop bodies-par for the course for a full-frame sensor near this pixel density. It's not a subtle difference. Load the comparison tool at The Digital Picture for this body and any crop body on the same lens. Pixel for pixel, the crop bodies always look blurry by comparison.
Noise is better with some caveats. The 5D II is not a magical darkness camera. You're not going to be able to shoot by candlelight with high fidelity. My 40D went to ISO 3200. This camera goes to ISO 25600, but the actual difference in raw is more like 1.5 stops on the outside. Unlike the 40D, boosting the shadows multiple stops reveals color banding that's difficult to remove in post. Blue channel noise is also more severe than expected. Still, I don't have qualms about running it to ISO 6400 for professional gigs. The 40D and 50D, I wouldn't push past 1600. The 5D III gets you an extra stop in raw and less shadow banding for a usable ISO 12800.
Dynamic range is somewhat better on the 40D than the others, interestingly. The 5D II's performance is typical for most DSLRs. You'll be blending exposures or pulling the shadows way up in scenes with high contrast.
LENSES:
I want to segue into this section because it's entwined with image quality. Comparing full-frame and crop isn't quite apples to apples. It's much easier to find crop lenses with good edge performance. This 5D II makes hash of almost all the mid-range variable-aperture zooms Canon has released over the years. I was pleased with my 28-135/3.5-5.6 IS on my 40D. Very consistent sharpness across the frame, even wide open. On a 5D II, the same lens falls down. Poor edge performance, lots of aberrations.
Expect to pay 30-50% more on glass to feed this camera relative to EF-S lenses. Full-frame L glass costs a mint, but most of the third-party wide to mid-focal lenses don't emphasize edge performance. I've used a 14/2.8, 24-105/4, 100/2, and 200/2.8 among others. The latter two are stellar across the frame, as is the Samyang ultrawide. The 24-105/4 and a 17-40/4L I once had are merely adequate. Neither perform that well in the corners at f/4. Even older L zooms like the 17-35/2.8 are subpar on the 5D II.
What should your kit be? Some considerations:
* Primes are lighter, smaller, cheaper, often available in wider apertures, often optically better, and have less manufacturing variation. They're less convenient, less versatile, updated with new technologies (e.g., stabilization, better lens coatings, weight reductions, faster or more accurate AF) less often, and can cause you to miss shots in fast-paced shooting environments.
* There are different requirements for movie lenses and still lenses. No Canon full-frame zooms are optimal for movies. Some are more optimal than others (e.g., less focus breathing, more parfocal, less distortion, smoother operation, distance scale). Primes often fare better.
* An f/2.8 lens on this body is just fast enough for most indoor use without flash. You'll want a flash for anything slower. A flash can provide more even, pleasing pictures, at the expense of a bulkier, attention-attracting rig.
* Kits with more than three primary lenses can become unwieldy in use. Two is preferable. My walkaround kit is a 16-35/2.8 and a 100/2, or a 24-105/4 alone if I expect to shoot movies. Professional event shooters tend to rely on the 16-35/2.8, 24-70/2.8, 70-200/2.8, and faster primes like the 85/1.2 as necessary.
* Third-party lenses tend to have less upfront cost, better warranties, and more aggressive designs. AF and optical performance is often (but not always) inferior to OEM lenses, quality control is less consistent, and resale values are lower. Value varies by lens model. Some are better than the OEM equivalents (e.g., Tamron 70-300 VC). Some fill holes in the OEM lineup (e.g., Sigma 120-300/2.8 OS). And some are near-substitutes for less cost (e.g., Sigma 70-200/2.8 OS). Where a third-party lens duplicates the OEM and has similar performance, I tend to choose a used copy of the OEM model.
VIDEO:
Out of the box, 5D II video has four characteristics: lovely depth-of-field-control with the right lenses, clipped colors, high contrast, and about 720p worth of actual detail at the 1080p setting.
There's no autofocus worth using. It's possible to gauge focus from the bare LCD screen, though you're still liable to overshoot and undershoot constantly. Video here is very much a professional feature, despite the shortsighted exclusion of manual exposure and audio control in the original 5D II firmware. The latest firmware provides both, but if you're at all serious about video, install Magic Lantern. It's a third-party piggyback firmware with dozens of new controls. To do it justice would require a review larger than this one, but a key feature is focus peaking, which shows little noise outlines on the area of maximum sharpness. With wide-aperture lenses, you'll be dead-on with manual focus every time.
In terms of post-processing flexibility, Canon EOS video is like shooting JPEG, but worse because the H.264 video codec throws away even more unseen data. You have none of the lossless adjustability of raw, so it's pivotal to lower contrast to preserve detail in the highlights and shadows, dial back the colors to prevent clipping, and lower sharpening so you can add it back in post without causing nasty artifacts. You do that by setting the correct white balance in advance and by creating or downloading a custom tone curve with low contrast, color, and sharpening. The latter won't affect your stills if you shoot in raw, so you can cater it solely to video.
Camera shake is another issue. If you're going to shoot without a tripod, get a stabilized lens. In fact, just buy the 24-105/4L IS. No other lens has the combination of size, weight, edge performance, range, stabilization, consistent aperture, speed, and partial parfocal (holding focus through the zoom range) ability.
The next best choice might be something like the Tamron 24-70/2.8 VC. Anything over 50mm that isn't stabilized will challenge your ability to record smooth footage. You can fix that later by transcoding to an editable format and using the anti-shake facilities of Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, or Virtual Dub with Deshaker, but that's a pain and they all crop the frame. Start with stabilization from the outset and save yourself the bother.
Stabilized lenses cause a new problem: the IS system is audible on the audio track. It's obvious with the 70-200/4L IS, noticeable with the 24-105/4L IS, and a background hum with the 70-200/2.8L IS I/II. That's in addition to dial clicks, finger movement, and wind noise, which obscure what would be fairly mediocre sound quality in the best case. The 5D II records CD-quality 48 KHz 16-bit stereo tracks; the fault is with the internal mic and amplifier. The simplest, most portable solution is to attach an external battery-powered mic to the flash hotshoe. The two most popular are around $250 from Rode. Zoom's H1 stereo recorder is a cheaper, more versatile alternative that can also be camera-mounted.
ACCESSORIES:
For video, buy CF cards 32 GB or larger. 1080p/30 video is 350 MB/minute. My pair of 16 GB cards have been inadequate for even a one-day event. Choose SanDisk. I've never had a SanDisk card of any size fail, they maintain higher resale value than other brands, and they tend to write somewhat faster than competitors with the same speed rating.
Camera operation isn't much affected by card speed. The difference appears when you start leaning on the raw buffer with more than 15 continuous shots at 4 FPS. Faster cards clear the buffer faster. Raw write speed with a 200X Sandisk is about 22 MB/s. With 400X, it's 36 MB/s. With a 1000X Lexar, it reaches 50 MB/s. Video only needs about 6 MB/s; I couldn't make the video buffering icon appear until I tried a 512 MB PNY CF card from 2005. The choice is easy if you're opting for 32 GB; SanDisk doesn't sell the 200X Ultra in that size, so you're left with either the 400X Extreme or the 600X Pro. The latter is 15% quicker with raw for 80% more money. It only makes sense if you're time-limited on card-to-computer transfers.
If you buy protection filters for your lenses, choose Hoya's "DMC PRO1 Clear Protector Digital" line. They have 99.5% light transmission and don't cause flare. Digital sensors filter UV natively, there's no reason to pay more for that feature. I've written reviews on the relevant Hoya product pages with more details and why you might (or might not) want a filter.
Third-party LP-E6 batteries are hit or miss. Even the highly-rated models have their share of duds. I had an STK battery fail two weeks after purchase. I've never had, and have rarely heard of, a Canon OEM battery failure. They also tend to retain more charge capacity for a longer period. Your call whether that's worth five times the price.
SETTINGS:
Some settings only affect JPEG images. Turn them off if you shoot raw. These include:
* Peripheral illumination correction (reverses edge darkening from some lenses)
* High ISO speed noise reduction (affected raw on the 40D, doesn't here)
* Auto lighting optimizer (pulls up the shadows in high-dynamic-range scenes)
These affect raw:
* Highlight tone priority (an extra half-stop of highlight range, more shadow noise)
* Long exposure noise reduction (dark-frame subtraction and the like for long exposures)
Two major new features with the 5D II are the C1/C2/C3 custom dial settings and the personalized menu page. This is my menu page:
* Format (erase the CF card)
* Mirror lockup (flip the mirror before taking the shot; reduces blur from mirror vibration)
* Highlight tone priority (only enabled in bright, high-contrast conditions)
* Shutter button/AF-ON button (binds AF to the shutter button for handing the camera to someone else)
* Exp.Comp/AEB (exposure compensation and bracketing; useful for HDR)
* White balance (irrelevant for raw, important for video)
COMPARISONS:
vs. 5D I The old 5D ($700 used) has fine image quality. Per-pixel noise performance is only about a half-stop worse than the 5D II in raw. Dynamic range is about the same. In every other way, the 5D is archaic. Old-style menus, no AF-on button, no MFA, slow operation, a terrible low-contrast and low-resolution screen, and no facility to easily change settings on the fly. You basically shoot it like a film camera. If you have all the time in the world to set up a shot and you don't need video, the 5D is fine. Otherwise, the 5D II ($1500 used) is worth every additional penny.
vs. 5D III The new 5D (~$3000) has a massively better AF system, a 50% faster 6fps framerate, and about a stop of extra noise performance. Image quality is otherwise very similar. Buy the new one if you need superlative tracking and shooting of fast or unpredictable objects. Otherwise, save the difference.
vs. 7D Like a 5D III without full-frame or the noise performance. Choose it for AF speed and tracking (inferior to the 5D III but well above the 5D II), 8fps continuous shooting, and the telephoto reach that comes from a higher pixel density. Don't expect the same detail as the 5D II at wider focals. It's also about a full stop worse in noise.
vs. 6D Compared at the same price, the 6D is a better body in most circumstances. Compared to a $1500 5D II, it may not presently be worth the cost difference. It'll be more interesting when prices drop in the $1800 range, probably before the new year. Here's a breakdown of the 6D vs. 5D II:
+ GPS (to tag photos)
+ Wifi (to share directly online and for easier tethering/remote storage)
+ 1 stop less noise in raw
+ 4.5 fps vs. 3.9 fps
+ 10% smaller by volume
+ Silent shutter capability
+ 30% less shutter lag
+AF center point is better in low light, but missing the 5D II's assist points for tracking
+SD instead of CF (only matters if you already have CF cards)
1/4000 max shutter vs. 1/8000 (matters for wide-aperture lenses shot in daylight)
No sync port
No joystick for direct AF selection; have to use a rocker panel inside the thumb wheel
No Magic Lantern as yet
If you can pick up a 5D II for a song, don't feel like you're missing out.
WHERE TO BUY:
Canon often sells refurbished bodies at a 20% discount as part of their loyalty program (wherein you send back a broken Canon camera of any type), which puts them perhaps 10% below market rate. These bodies are vetted by Canon, in as-new condition with all accessories, and often have shutter counts under 1000. They're warranted for 90 days. This seems preferable to used bodies of unknown provenance.
If you intend to downvote, please leave a comment. I do try to be accurate, I'd much prefer to know the issue.
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