HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

[Air Boss]

Hey All,
Posted this on another thread but wanted to cast it out to the entire group. Just purchased Canon 5D Mk II w/24-105 IS, a 70-200 IS USM, and 2X II Extender, along with the ususal accessories. It's enroute from B&H Photo as I write this, due to arrive tomorrow. Call me crazy for switching from Nikon gear this close to Reno, but it just worked out that way.

Anyway, anyone out there have the Mk II or familiar enough with it and the lenses to offer some quick advice? I'll be hitting the manuals pretty hard from now until race week but any hands on help would be most welcome! Man, nothin' like Christmas in August...and September, of course!

Cheers All,

[AirDOGGe]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

Seems like a good topic to post in the "Digital Photography Forum" room rather than the "air racin'" room, though I admit the former probably doesn't get as many viewers.

Hope you find your answer, and big thumbs-up on choice of brands. I ALWAYS used Canons myself (AE-1, A-1, etc)...bought my 4th one a couple of months ago (just an A1000is digital, as I cannot afford an SLR at this time. ).


P.S...NEVER had good results using 2X extenders, but maybe they've improved the technology since I tried 'em.

[Air Boss]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

Ah, good point, AirDOGGe. Maybe I'll slide it over to that room as well. From the research I've done, the extenders appear to have come a long way. I've owned some in the past as well and wasn't impressed. We'll see...fingers crossed.

Cheers and thanks.

[kiwiracefan]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

Hey Judge,

The 5D mk II is a pretty excellent beast and the 70-200 is a brilliant piece of glass.... what version of the 70-200 did you buy? the f2.8 IS or the f4 IS?
The converter will give you AF on the f2.8, but on the f4 version of the 70-200 the 2 stop loss the converter has takes the max aperture down to around f8 effectively so the AF performance will be degraded somewhat.
the 24-105 L is a dynamite lens simple as that, the results are pretty spectacular.
The only thing that has come up with some of my customers and their 5D II's has been the need to customize the saturation, sharpness etc ,but that tends to be personal tastes.
Canon DPP is a nice piece of software, but i prefer Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture for RAW processing. ( just make sure your computer has lots of RAM and processor for the big files!)

[Air Boss]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

Thanks, Kiwi! The 70-200 is the f2.8L IS USM. Debated going with the 100-400 instead but couldn't pass up the f2.8 capabilites at low light and I'm really no worse off with the 2X as far as f-stops are concerned at max zoom. Very excited to get my hands on this stuff and play around.

Have a Tb of hard disk that's only at 20% capacity and a good processor and v-card. That said, I've been reluctant to run with full-blown Adobe product, only using Elements. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I'm too much of a purest but I'm not a big fan of images that are clearly "shopped"...it's not what I saw and not what I was able to capture. If it's not something I could reasonably do in a darkroom 20 years ago with basic knowledge (dodge, burn, slight contrasting, cropping (which I deplore!), I tend to shy away.

Maybe I'll be converted down the road! Thanks again!

[jarrodeu]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

I'm curious, why did you switch? Was it the 5D?

Jarrod

[t-dub]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

[QUOTE=Air Judge;72540] Maybe I'm too much of a purest but I'm not a big fan of images that are clearly "shopped"...it's not what I saw and not what I was able to capture. QUOTE] Amen Air Judge! I just use Adobe Elements also, mainly for cropping and sharpening when it's needed. I prefer not doing anything to the images though, because like you, i guess it's a purist thing............

[T. Adams]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

I use the 70-200 all the time. 2.8 is wonderful for portraits.


This is wide open at 2.8 and 200mm. 1DmkIIN

Being full frame, 24mm is fairly wide. This was taken with the 1DsmkII (also full frame), and I even cropped garbage out on the right. This is the 24-70 f/2.8 though, @24mm.

[Air Boss]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

Nice stuff, fellas! Always liked Patron! Even more now!

Hey Jarrodeu,
At this time, I felt like Canon offered the most bang for the buck for a pro-sumer. The 5D Mark II is an incredible piece. 21.5Mp, full frame, shoots up to 12 minutes of full HD 1080p video, 4fps, and on and on. Just got a bit tired of Nikon and decided to go back to Canon (had Canon A-1's for years when I shot for Boat Racing Magazine...back in the day.)

Christmas comes tomorrow via UPS!

[ignomini]

Re: HELP w/CANON 5D Mk II GEAR

Congrats on the new toy. Don't bother shooting any JPEGs. For whatever reason the the 5DII produces terrible JPEG files. And if you're shooting RAW, you won't have to worry about color settings until after the races.

PS. You cannot have too much processing power to deal with 5D RAW files.
PPS. The 70-200 and 2x extender combo will work fine. Quality is within a few percentage points of the 100-400.