Canon EOS-1D Mark II

Opinion: 1DII = 5D's chip (cropped), superb AF, 8fps,good LCD,bad JPEGs

In short: Here we are in the middle of 2010, and the 6 year old 1D Mark II is still a fantastic camera with hardly any usability drawbacks. JPEGs suck, high ISO isn't jaw dropping and it doesn't do video, but that's about it, in my opinion.

You could say the 1DII has the 5D's sensor (little cropped) with the 8.2um pixel array, but with great AF, ergonomics, short blackout time and 8fps. LCD resolution is still good (same as 1DMkIII...) - unique for a camera this old. But throw away the JPEGs!

I am a Nikon shooter (D50, shortly D80, shortly D3, now F100 & D40) but used to shoot with Canon (50E, 300D, shortly 40D). I am eyeing a Nikon D300 for its AF, but recently bought the 1DII because of the similar pro-caliber AF and because it was 60% price of a used Nikon D300 - a great deal with recently replaced shutter, no brassing and extra battery. D300 used price is still too high for my taste, and I also like to play with various cameras... I have an adapter for Nikon glass and also the Canon EF 50/1.8.

The 1D Mark II is in my opinion the oldest "old, cheap, but still great" Canon camera you can get and therefore the best bang for the buck. It's got a high resolution LCD with 230000 dots, which lets you check focus in the field. Even the Mark III's (sold new to this day) still have the same LCD resolution. The old 20D has 120000 dots only and the first prosumer Canon to get the better LCD is the 2 years newer 30D. (But then I'd maybe already get the 40D with its magnified live view etc.)

But back to the 1D Mark II. The pixel pitch is 8.2um - the same as the original 5D. I haven't seen the implications of this discussed, but I expect the pixel array to be exactly the same, and thus what you read about the 5D's image quality can be appropriated to 1DII, too. I don't think Canon did much if any tweaking to the array in the time between the two cameras' releases. If that was the case, the new tech would have gone into the 1D Mk II N in my opinion, and we all know the 1DII N's sensor is the same as the 1DII's. In the 20D to 30D transition Canon also didn't provide any sensel tweaks.

The pictures are just great. If you want to know more, read 5D reviews which there are more of than of the 1D II. That's about it for RAW image quality :) But stay away from the JPEGs! The JPG engine is doing the camera injustice. This has been reported early on e.g. by Rob Galbraith, but you have to see the difference between in-camera JPGs and Lightroom3 *automatic* rendering for yourself - then you'll understand why I'm using exclamation marks. In the light of Lightroom demosaicing, the camera JPGs are in my opinion throwaway, and if you shoot this camera in JPG, you are shooting yourself in the foot. It's astonishing how much LR3 automatic setting is better than the camera. My workflow is to shoot RAW, import into LR, apply AutoTone on everything, export into DNG with full size previews, and first then start looking and deleting non-keepers. That's extra 1 minute for 100 pictures + 3 minutes waiting for LR to finish the job to basically "get a new camera".

Couple more points:

I was worried about the user interface. I got used to it in 2 days fiddling with the camera and came to like it very much. Now I wonder how the newer 1D cameras handle and have doubts towards the new UI - similar to the doubts I had before getting the 1D II with the old UI, haha.

At the end of its life, the NiMH battery pack can be cut open and the cells replaced with off-the-shelf AA batteries, e.g. the much better Sanyo Eneloop AA's that don't self discharge.

There's a great feature called "Registered AF point", which lets you register a 'favorite' AF point somewhere in the frame. With some custom functions fiddling, you can have one button on the back of the camera initiate focus with the regularly selected point, and have another button set to tempoarily override that AF point selection and initiate focus with the "favorite" point instead. After the 2nd button is released, the AF point goes back to the regularly selected one.

The free 1Dcount utility calculates the shutter count from the EXIF codes (author's original site doesn't exist, but the 1dcount.zip can be googled). I read multiple reports that Canon service centers don't reset the shutter count when replacing shutters and that looks to be the case with my camera, too. -> Hard to tell how many actuations the camera has after shutter replacement if you buy it used. You can only estimate by invoice date or information from the seller.

Opinion: This is the best camera for sports, action, wildlife photography available today.
It has amazing image size and speed. The lack of noise is amazing. It is worth
every dollar spent.

Opinion: well built, solid hardware.

Images are slightly soft, even with a little sharpening (@ about 20x30 print its fine).

Compared to 1ds value, its well worthy of its position.

Opinion: Hi folks!

Excellent camera it is. just ran off a 36 inch by 24 inch print and the quality
was superb(that eight megapixels does work!!!). The photos out of the camera
do need minimal sharpening, but nothing the software included cant fix. The
white balance is very accurate more accurate then the 1d/1ds I find. The
speed is amazing for the quality and it's very hard to stop at 10, 20, 30 or 39
you just want to do all 40!!! shutter response is superb and the build is up to
canons pro slr spec. Noise is controlled very well, and is more monochromatic
(like film grain) which is very good. At iso 50 the images are silky smooth just
like the 1ds. iso 1600 is very good considering and marks a big step forward
for canons sensor technology. Auto focus is absolutly superb and does'nt miss
a beat. I used the camera at a wedding shoot and only 1 in 600 frames was
out of focus, but using photoshop i actually managed to save the image!!!
Canon have definetly worked hard for this, well done!! So everyone start
saving, it's well worth it!.