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Initial 5DMkII Sport Shooting Thoughts:
so I got to shoot half a match of men's NCAA soccer today.
originally, before release, I harped a lot on the 5dmkii's old AF,shutter,mirror. I guessed the AF would be the most annoying thing for sports, followed by mirror blackout, fps and then shutter lag. I have changed my mind about some things and certianyl that ordering.
I was in a rush and originally forgot to turn off the IS on 300 and I had not field set the micro-focus calibration or set the center point AF expansion.
I started looking things over and was like oh nooo, this isn't better than the 50D is it? it's not even as good. it has to be. it is. but is it really? but I did keep in mind I had been playing with the stuff mentioned above.
Anyway, most happily, all of a sudden part way through the shoot it was just shot after shot after shot with bang on perfect focus! Maybe it was the IS messign with it at first, or maybe the center expansion made the largest difference, etc. whatever the case once I got it set how it should be set, I was actually pretty impressed. Granted it was the sort of lighting that my 40D and even 20D had done the very best at, when ti came to sports shooting, so this is hardly the definitve test, there was no glaring sun or backlighting (which both seemed to make my 40D almost entirely blind at times). All the same, it really did seem to pass with flying colors. Definitely a step toward the 1 series from the xxD.
When I put on the TC results did go down. Maybe I didn't set the MF adjust ideally for that combo. Maybe the TC always puts on this much of a hit and a native lens like a 500 f/4 or whatnot would do better. Or maybe only a 1 series can deliver the 1/3 DOF at f/4 and critical shot after shot for sprots at these high apertures. Anyway, at least it was not worse than a 300 + TC on a 50D (and was better than my 20D and 40D did with that combo, as is the 50D).
But my first impression was that it seemed pretty sports capable, at least with fast lenses and comfortable lighting. Can't say more yet. There were somewhat less direct on charges than normal so that didn't get quite as solid of a test either.
The fps are just DOG slow. DOG SLOW. Nearly useless for action sequences since by the time the 2nd frame comes around the action if often too out of ideal spot. I mean it is better than nothing, and ok maybe I'm overstating a bit, but you do get noticeably less double key pics per sequence than at 5fps and lots less than at 6.3fps. That said, often the best pics of all are the one shot timed ones, so maybe it's not so bad. I'd need to shoot another full game to see how badly or not it impacts take.
The shutter lag IS pretty beastly too. It's not quite so bad that you can't learn to adjust to it and I think I should be able to reliably adjust. Sometimes it is just too slow to catch a moment since you can't always anticipate in time. So you will lose some shots, again I can't say how many yet.
When I picked up my 50D again my god did it feel fast, felt like it was 15fps and 10ms lag and like it was going to run out of my hands though so yeah the xxD series, at least the current models, do entirely smoke the 5DMkII in terms of body performance feel, aside from AF (where 5d seems as fast as the fastest xxD and faster than the older xxD and likely better than all aside from perhaps the outer focus points).
But anyway if you focus a bit more on key one shots and learn to adjust to the shutter lag, the AF does seem to do pretty damn well with my 300mm f/2.8 at least under those fairly ideal shooting conditions, which is a lot better than I had feared. I'm honestly not sure the 1DMkIIn I've tried a few times would've done that sequence of shooting I did there today any better at all in terms of AF with the fast lens.
I'm almost thinking that I might end up not having any gripes about the AF in the end at all.  But there are plenty of things I have not done with it yet.
I should add that I tend to almost never use the outer AF points, so I really can't say about those, quite a few people are saying they are awful and worse than the 40D/50D, but I have no clue.
All in all, despite the shutter/mirror/fps, I'm actually reasonably excited about it for sports.
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...also they did away with the mouse button on the touch pad...not sure how much getting use to it requires but it seems to me that it will restrict a lot of things you can do in photoshop and for careful brush editing...I also read the new Mac magazine and they said that in tests the battery died 22-25minutes faster than the previous models...they also stated that the the previous generation is "faster" which I don't really understand but hey its mac talking about macs so why would they lie