When Canon first announced the upgrade to the EOS 5D, I was excited. I immediately put my order in with my favorite salesman at Calumet, Victor Fry. I was scheduled to receive one of the first units shipped.
I went to Canon’s product website (http://tinyurl.com/5noq8r) to review the product and check on early customer ratings and reviews. Canon has two unsolved problems, so thank god I was on assignment when the camera was ready to ship.
The new EOS 5D Mark II is a unique camera. It has a stunning 21.1-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with DIGIC 4 Image Processor, a vast ISO Range of 100-6400 (expandable to ISO L: 50, H1: 12800 and H2: 25600), plus EOS technologies like Auto Lighting Optimizer and Peripheral Illumination Correction. It can shoot up to 3.9 fps, has 9 AF points plus 6 AF assist points, a new 98% coverage viewfinder, a 3.0-inch Clear View LCD (920,000 dots/VGA) and a rugged build.
It also supports high definition live view video. It is this feature that is also producing one of the two problems the camera is experiencing.
I talked to Bob Malish, the Canon Pro Rep for Texas about the current problems. He explained that Canon was working to correct a vertical noise banding problem that only occurs in the small raw format, and a black dot problem on the video that occurs in extreme contrast situations. He said that Canon did have a work around for the noise issue (http://tinyurl.com/3w82qo), but not a complete correction.
“Right now there are no good answers to why these problems occur,” Malish explained.
After gathering this information, I have decided to hold off on my purchase. Although I probably will not use either of the features that are experiencing problems that often in my work, I don’t want to have to send the camera back to the shop. This is also because as of January 1, Canon is also changing all the rules for their professional services members (http://tinyurl.com/6smsyr). The are starting to charge for what has been a free service all these years. Different rates get your different preferential treatment. For $500 a year you get everything handed to you on a silver platter, and for $100 a year you get two day service on repairs. Oh well, I guess I will have to get the old checkbook out.
Nice article, I am in the same situation and would like to order but Canon seems to be more and more on the ignorant side of life.
Where did you get the information about the service level change of Canon CPS – didn´t receive anything until now…