Lately I have been on the fense about moving up to a 5D Mark II. I almost made the jump before I attended a workshop this week. After looking at my 5D’s files and thinking about the shoot I was glad I didn’t.
Would I have enjoyed the Mark II’s wider color gaumet captured in 14bits? Would the video have come in handy? Would the bigger LCD display been pleasing to look at? Would I have appreciated the 5D Mark II’s superior high ISO performance?
Yes! However I still am not compelled to make the jump.
I’m not ready to jump because I encountered a problem using the AF point furthest to the left of the viewfinder. This problem only occurred during situations where some lens flare was present. In this scenario I was able to use the center AF point. Why is this?
After much research I discovered the classic 5D has one cross-type AF point in the center.
Cross-type AF sensors measure contrast on two perpendicular axes vs a single axis. Cross-type AF sensors are more accurate and perform better than their non-cross counterparts.
The 5D Mark II carried over the single cross point design of the classic 5D. Why oh why do the lovely Canon 40D and 50D cameras have nine cross type AF points and both the classic 5D and 5D Mark II have one?
I have no idea and it sucks. A popular photographer once commented online that it takes a solar flare to focus a 5D Mark II. Whatever you do don’t backlight your subject with that flare or you will be SOL again. 
So I find myself waiting and making great pictures with the 5D classic. I’ve thought about buying a 1Ds Mark II to leverage it’s superior AF system but I think I’ll just wait and focus on making better pictures until the Canon 3D or whatever awaits us arrives. I hope Canon’s answer arrives soon.
You can read up on the 50D’s AF system at Canon USA’s 50D page.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I completely agree with you. I made the same choice.
In some sense I think 5D Mark II AF system could be even worse than the 5D one owing to a hardware problem apparently fixed through a firmware upgrade:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=29639948&changemode=1
I am worried about Canon decision to slow down communication speed between body and lenses in order to avoid a complete camera freezing (ERROR99).
Thanks for the comment. I didn’t know about the ERROR99. Thanks for pointing that out.
I shot a wedding with a friend recently and as long as I was using the center AF point I had no issues focusing the 5D. However as soon as I went to one of the AF points to either side of the center I could not focus. The 5D would just hunt. This was true using the Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 lens or EF 50mm f/1.4 lens.