About 2-3 years ago I went from shooting a 350D to a 5D and thought I was in heaven given the amazing step up in image quality and high ISO performance. Since then I picked up a 1DII and recently traded up to a 1D III.
Now that I'm shooting more with primes, I find shooting portraits at f 2.0 and wider that the 5D's AF points are almost useless. Given how centered they are, I often find it hard to nail the focus on my subjects eyes. Did Canon purposely cripple the camera? Now that I have the 1DIII, other than the occasional time when I need to shoot super wide, when will I need the camera? I plan to keep it as a back up or until I can justify a step up to the 1DsIII.
Just wondering if others have had a similar experience or how others have mastered using the 5D with fast primes. Even shooting in Servo mode it's a crap shoot.
Send your 5D to canon and get it calibrated. Unlike your 1DIII you can't do this your self.
I'm working with both bodies, but use my 5D for landscape and macro... lot's of small apertures (and depth of field), so AF just has to be good enough.
My guess is that your body is either front or back focusing...
good luck
bruce
After a few years of rough use, you may simply need to have your body/lenses adjusted for focus - this isn't an unusual situation.
Dan
hobbit wrote:
About 2-3 years ago I went from shooting a 350D to a 5D and thought I was in heaven given the amazing step up in image quality and high ISO performance. Since then I picked up a 1DII and recently traded up to a 1D III.
Now that I'm shooting more with primes, I find shooting portraits at f 2.0 and wider that the 5D's AF points are almost useless. Given how centered they are, I often find it hard to nail the focus on my subjects eyes. Did Canon purposely cripple the camera? Now that I have the 1DIII, other than the occasional time when I need to shoot super wide, when will I need the camera? I plan to keep it as a back up or until I can justify a step up to the 1DsIII.
Just wondering if others have had a similar experience or how others have mastered using the 5D with fast primes. Even shooting in Servo mode it's a crap shoot. ...Show more →
No, Canon did not cluster the points like that to purposely cripple the camera...in fact you will notice the spread to be similar on other FF bodies as well. What you are seeing when you look through the VF of the 5D in comparison to the 1DII/III is the additional real estate of the 5D's sensor plane, IOW its larger FOV. This was always something that bothered me a little, more so after getting my MKIII. The same applies to the 5D's outer AF point accuracy and locking speed--specifically in low light. I've found shooting in single point AF (assuming your subject is relatively static) is the most accurate way to shoot with fast primes on the 5D using its outer points, servo tends to hunt for focus and or jump focus. Doing this you will need to be pretty quick on the shutter to avoid missing the intended FP. You may want to run it through a controlled test to make sure your camera isn't bf/ff though. As for keeping your 5D around, that's up to you. I still haven't decided if I'll be keeping mine after I pick up a 1DIV...decisions, decisions....
hobbit wrote:
I plan to keep it as a back up or until I can justify a step up to the 1DsIII.
You should look at where the outer focus points lay in the viewfinder on a 1DsMK3 before you upgrade. You will find that while the shape is different and there are more they are no closer to the edges.
The 1DMK3 has the points closer to the edge because it has a same size AF sensor covering a smaller area.
hobbit wrote:
About 2-3 years ago I went from shooting a 350D to a 5D and thought I was in heaven given the amazing step up in image quality and high ISO performance. Since then I picked up a 1DII and recently traded up to a 1D III.
Now that I'm shooting more with primes, I find shooting portraits at f 2.0 and wider that the 5D's AF points are almost useless. Given how centered they are, I often find it hard to nail the focus on my subjects eyes. Did Canon purposely cripple the camera? Now that I have the 1DIII, other than the occasional time when I need to shoot super wide, when will I need the camera? I plan to keep it as a back up or until I can justify a step up to the 1DsIII.
Just wondering if others have had a similar experience or how others have mastered using the 5D with fast primes. Even shooting in Servo mode it's a crap shoot. ...Show more →
Shooting fast primes is always tricky, even with the best AF system. And the 5D has no micro-focus adjust, so even a minor calibration error is revealed at fast apertures and cannot be corrected.
Assuming no focus miscalibration, with longer lenses you will probably get okay results using center-point AF then recomposing. With wider lenses working close in, this will usually fail as the plane of focus changes when recomposing.
Your best bet may be to do what many of us do: use the 'S'-type focusing screen and focus manually.
Note that some 5D bodies are known to require some shimming/alignment to produce dead-accurate manual focusing with the 'S' screen. Canon can do this for you if you have a body in that condition.
Future Man wrote:
Is the AF system of the 5DII improved over the 5D in any way?
Yes, somewhat via faster internal processing and new algorithms (the hardware is identical). Biggest improvement in usability is in micro-focus adjust and the various Live View focusing options.
I have a love and hate relationship with 5d and I find its AF extremely sucky but one thing that I have found which has been working well for me so far is AF assist. If you are using off-center points either have a flash on the camera or ste2 and use the AF assist. That way outer focus points focus reasonably well even at f1.2 @ 85mm.
This is a very helpful thread for me. I'm debating whether to upgrade from my current 40D to a 5D2 or 5D. The camera will by a hobbyist portrait camera and kid-chasing camera. I'm happy with my 40D for everything except that it is not FF. My home studio is a smallish gameroom, so I like the idea of FF so that I can keep my focal length >50mm while shooting portraits.
Would y'all say the AF of the 5D/5D2 is better or worse than the AF of a 40D?
Nope. I traded up from a 40D to a 5D MkII. The 40D AF is definitely better in low light. Everything else is better on the 5D MkII, but not the AF, as far as I am concerned. Not that it bothers me, because I shoot stationary targets with MF primes anyhow...
Glenn_Law wrote:
This is a very helpful thread for me. I'm debating whether to upgrade from my current 40D to a 5D2 or 5D. The camera will by a hobbyist portrait camera and kid-chasing camera. I'm happy with my 40D for everything except that it is not FF. My home studio is a smallish gameroom, so I like the idea of FF so that I can keep my focal length >50mm while shooting portraits.
Would y'all say the AF of the 5D/5D2 is better or worse than the AF of a 40D?
Thanks,
Glenn
I had a 40D with chasing kids and did the upgrade to a 5D. You definitely suffer in the AF category but when you look at your pics on the PC you forget all about it.
Glenn_Law wrote:
This is a very helpful thread for me. I'm debating whether to upgrade from my current 40D to a 5D2 or 5D. The camera will by a hobbyist portrait camera and kid-chasing camera. I'm happy with my 40D for everything except that it is not FF. My home studio is a smallish gameroom, so I like the idea of FF so that I can keep my focal length >50mm while shooting portraits.
Would y'all say the AF of the 5D/5D2 is better or worse than the AF of a 40D?
Thanks,
Glenn
Glenn,
Look at the 7D if your goal is chasing around kids. I have both a 7D and 5DII, and the 7D wins hands down when chasing my kids around. The autofocus on the 7D is much much better, especially with AI Servo and moving subjects. The 5D serves other purposes well (landscape, portrait, that kind of thing) and can do kids too with the center point if need be. But I bought the 7D specifically for my kids-on-the-go pictures. Might fit your needs better. In fact, for the price of a new 5DII, you could just about buy a 7D and used 5D for your studio. Just a thought.
Curt
hobbit wrote:
Now that I'm shooting more with primes, I find shooting portraits at f 2.0 and wider that the 5D's AF points are almost useless. Given how centered they are, I often find it hard to nail the focus on my subjects eyes. Did Canon purposely cripple the camera? Now that I have the 1DIII, other than the occasional time when I need to shoot super wide, when will I need the camera? I plan to keep it as a back up or until I can justify a step up to the 1DsIII.
Just wondering if others have had a similar experience or how others have mastered using the 5D with fast primes. Even shooting in Servo mode it's a crap shoot. ...Show more →
I have/had exactly the same experience as you when shooting the 5D/5D2 with fast primes wide open. Focus was all over the place. My guess is that the 5D/5D2's AF operates with rather loose margins for placing focus -within the DOF- (in comparison to a 1D series body). Also, the AF sensors cover a much larger area, which makes it difficult to pin point the AF on relatively small objects/subjects, like an eye. It was one of my main reasons to add a 1Ds3: more reliable/accurate AF with fast apertures and better outer AF point performance (for using manually selected AF points on eyes in portrait mode).
Thanks so much for all the responses. I don't think the camera is front/back focusing. The issue is that with narrow depth of field you really have to ensure that the AF point is on the eye. My style of portrait shooting (close up of my son) doesn't allow me to focus and recompose as he will have moved. I just find that the AF system on the 1DIII is soooo much more usable/functional.
It's an interesting point regarding the layout of the 1DsIII. I think that even though it's full frame and the AF points may not cover as much real estate as the 1DIII, I'm guessing it would still be much more functional with my style of shooting compared to the 5D/5D2 series.
The 5D doesn't have MA. In the heady years when the 5D was new I got a lot of OOFS with my 35L (wide open or nearly so) and blamed it on the 5D focus. Later, when I got a MA body with the new LCD, (5D II, 50D, 7D etc not the blurry Mk IIIs) I adjusted the MA in the venue and realized my 35L had not focusing properly for 10,000's of images.
If you have a lot of lenses your could make an argument that a new 5D Mk II would be cheaper since you can calibrate your own lenses to a MA body (by examination on the LCD) under actual conditions at the venue. And yes the AF sensor placement, especially on FF, is really compromised (ex: face on a standing figure).
michael49 wrote:
That's what I wonder too. With the 5D it was perfectly acceptable in 2005, but not when the 5DII was released.
My 2 cents is the 5 series has always been sort of a parts bin camera. That is Canon is trying to provide a camera in a target price range with a FF sensor. To accomplish the price goal they will use existing components when they can. As a result, they used a tweaked version of the AF from the older model because they choose to spend most of their budget on getting a variant of the 21 MP sensor and video support. Given the spectacular sales of the 5DMK2 in a crappy economy is hard to say Canon made the wrong trade-offs.
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