Canon EOS 5D Review

Timings & File Sizes

The EOS 5D's semi-professional positioning means it has to deliver a certain level of performance. Thankfully it does appear to live up to its billing, startup is instant, menus and image browsing are fast and you never feel as though you're waiting for the camera. Continuous shooting may only be three frames per second but the camera buffers well and thanks to fast media write speeds has the images written away quickly too. There has been some comment on our forums about shutter lag, I personally couldn't tell any difference between the EOS 5D and EOS 20D, if it's there it's so slight to be insignificant for most photographers.

Timing Notes: All times calculated as an average of three operations. Unless otherwise stated all timings were made on a 4368 x 2912 JPEG Fine (approx. 3,400 KB per image).

The media used for these tests were:

• 1 GB SanDisk Extreme III CF card
• 2 GB Lexar Pro 80x CF card
• 4 GB SanDisk Ultra II CF card

Action	Details	Time, secs (1 GB SanDisk)	Time, secs (2 GB Lexar)	Time, secs (4 GB SanDisk)
Power Off to On		0.0	0.0	0.0
Power Off to Shot		<0.2	<0.2	<0.2
Sleep to On		0.0	0.0	0.0
Power On to Off		0.0	0.0	0.0
Record Review *1	RAW	1.2	1.3	1.2
Record Review *1	JPEG	1.2	1.3	1.2
Play *2	RAW	0.7 / <0.2	0.8 / <0.2	0.8 / <0.2
Play *2	JPEG	1.1 / <0.2	1.2 / <0.2	1.2 / <0.2
Play Image to Image	RAW	<0.5	<0.5	<0.5
Play Image to Image	JPEG	<0.5	<0.5	<0.5

*1	Time taken from the shutter release being pressed to the review image being displayed on the LCD monitor.
*2	Just like other Canon digital SLRs the EOS 5D caches images which have been viewed recently to speed up browsing in play mode. The first timing is for the camera to load the image from the media card (if it has not already been cached), the second is if they have been viewed and cached by the camera.

Continuous Drive mode

To test continuous mode the camera had the following settings: Manual Focus, Manual Exposure (1/200 sec, F5.6), ISO 200. Measurements were taken from audio recordings of the tests. Media used were the same as above.

Next burst (9 indicated)

The EOS 5D uses "smart buffering" this means that it takes RAW data from the buffer, converts it to the output format (JPG or compressed CR2) and places that back in the buffer ready to be written. All of this happens in parallel, which means that space can be made in the buffer for another burst before all the images have been fully written. This exact point in time is indicated by a '9' on the buffer space display on the viewfinder LCD status bar.

The tests carried out below measured the following results for JPEG and RAW:

• Frame rate - Initial frame rate, this was always 3.0 fps (+/- 0.01 fps)
• Number of frames - Number of frames in a burst
• Buffer full rate - Frame rate if shutter release held down after burst (buffer full)
• Next burst - How soon after the camera indicates buffer space '9'
• Write complete - How long after the last shot before the CF compartment light goes out

Burst of JPEG Large/Fine images

Timing	1 GB SanDisk Extreme III CF	2 GB Lexar Pro 80x CF	4 GB SanDisk Ultra II CF
Frame rate	3.0 fps	3.0 fps	3.0 fps
Number of frames	87	83	80
Buffer full rate	1.3 sec then 2 shots	1.2 sec then 2 shots	1.3 sec then 2 shots
Next burst (9 indicated)	6.5 sec	7.0 sec	9.3 sec
Write complete	25.3 sec	24.4 sec	30.7 sec

Burst of RAW images

Timing	1 GB SanDisk Extreme III CF	2 GB Lexar Pro 80x CF	4 GB SanDisk Ultra II CF
Frame rate	3.0 fps	3.0 fps	3.0 fps
Number of frames	13	13	13
Buffer full rate	1.5 sec then 1 shot 1.5 sec then 2 shots	5 shots random 1.7 sec then 1 shot	4 shots random 1.6 sec then 1 shot
Next burst (9 indicated)	15.5 sec	20.9 sec	21.2 sec
Write complete	19.4 sec	25.2 sec	25.4 sec

We already know that the EOS 5D isn't aimed at the sports photography market, however its three frames per second shooting rate is still fairly respectable when you consider that each frame equates to about 19 MB of RAW data. What we can derive from the above results is that the EOS 5D has a fairly respectable buffer, shooting JPEG you can get around 30 seconds of continuous shooting using a fast card. Comparing the different media shows that while the SanDisk Extreme III card was faster than the rest it wasn't a huge margin of difference.

File Flush Timing

Timings shown below are the time taken for the camera to process and "flush" the image out to the storage card. Timing was taken from the instant the shutter release was pressed to the time the storage card activity indicator beside the storage compartment went out. The activity indicator light comes almost as soon as you press the shutter release, this either means that the EOS 5D begins writing immediately or that Canon is masking the delay to write. Writing continues 'in the background' and doesn't affect any camera function. Media used were the same as above.

Image type	Time, secs (1 GB SanDisk)	Time, secs (2 GB Lexar)	Time, secs (4 GB SanDisk)	Approx. size
4368 x 2912 RAW + JPEG *1	3.0	3.1	4.0	15,060 KB
4368 x 2912 RAW	2.4	2.5	3.1	11,660 KB
4368 x 2912 JPEG Fine	1.2	1.3	1.5	3,400 KB
4368 x 2912 JPEG Standard	1.0	1.0	1.1	1,570 KB
3168 x 2112 JPEG Fine	1.0	1.0	1.1	1,920 KB
2496 x 1664 JPEG Fine	1.0	1.0	1.1	1,290 KB

*1	File size reported here is the size of the RAW and JPEG files added together.

There does appear to be a slight decrease in performance when using the 4 GB SanDisk Ultra II card, this is likely to be due to difference performance characteristics and the fact that this card requires the FAT32 file system. Other than this there's really not a huge amount of difference between the two fast SanDisk and Lexar cards. You should never really expect any single image write process to take more than three seconds, which is very good.

As you can see from the graphs below the EOS 5D gets fairly close to each cards maximum performance (in RAW mode). These write speeds are very respectable, as good as the EOS-1Ds Mark II and almost as good as the Nikon D2X.

Card performance: JPEG Fine continuous burst write

Card	Canon EOS 5D write speed (JPEG Fine)
1 GB SanDisk Extreme III	6,841 KB/sec
2 GB Lexar Pro 80x	6,511 KB/sec
4 GB SanDisk Ultra II	4,721 KB/sec

Card performance: RAW continuous burst write

Card	Canon EOS 5D write speed (12.8 MP RAW files)
1 GB SanDisk Extreme III	8,300 KB/sec
2 GB Lexar Pro 80x	7,011 KB/sec
4 GB SanDisk Ultra II	5,131 KB/sec

Cardbus 32-bit Adapter benchmark

Card	Cardbus 32-bit Adapter, write speed (12.8 MP RAW files)
1 GB SanDisk Extreme III	9,368 KB/sec
2 GB Lexar Pro 80x	8,550 KB/sec
4 GB SanDisk Ultra II	5,003 KB/sec

USB transfer speed

To test the EOS 5D's USB transfer speed we used twelve standard images (six RAW, six JPEG) totaling 109 MB and transferred them from a SanDisk Extreme III 1 GB CF card via four different methods. While faster than USB 1.1 the 5D's USB transfer wasn't as quick as our USB 2.0 card reader, it's a shame Canon didn't implement a simple 'mass storage device' option on the camera as this would probably have produced faster transfer rates. Considering the size of files created by the EOS 5D you would do well to invest in a fast Firewire reader or CardBus adapter.

Method	Time taken	Transfer rate
EOS 5D USB 2.0 *	43.0 sec	2.5 MB/sec
USB 2.0 Card reader	32.1 sec	3.4 MB/sec
Lexar Pro Firewire Card reader	15.7 sec	6.9 MB/sec
CardBus 32 PCMCIA adapter	9.8 sec	11.1 MB/sec

* Via CameraWindow (ZoomBrowser EX), normal WIA connection does not provide for transfer of RAW files.

Battery life

The EOS 5D uses the compact Canon Lithium-Ion BP-511A battery pack. This provides 1390 mAh at 7.4 V (10.3 Wh), in addition Canon do like to emphasize that their new DIGIC II processor uses much less power than older processors. In use we often found ourselves shooting for two days without needing to charge the battery. Canon's specified battery life is approximately 600 shots at 20°C and 280 shots at 0°C.