That's weird. I took my old 20D there (with grip) back in 2004/2005, and shot about 4500 photos in one of the wetter years they had. Granted, I used common sense and protected the camera when there was full on rain.. but if you look at a good number of my photos you can see there was plenty of it around. Maybe it is unfair to compare to an old 20D. =\
There was a thread a while back about 50Ds doing the same. I am statistics person, but those numbers aren't so great to work with. That is pretty unfortunate, for sure.
I have a 50D and living on the Bruce Peninsula most of the time in my cottage. 2 days ago the temp here was -31 C. Of course I was not out at the time shooting but did take a photo of the thermometer from the inside of the door. Any time I am out in questionable weather I use a large zip lock bag big enough for the camera. Don't ever recall being out shooting in the rain however going from cold outside to a warm indoors is the time condensation can occur. When outside and finish I make sure the inside of the bag is open and put the camera in and zip it. Once indoors it stays inside the bag for at least 1/2 hour. Never had an issue with any of my Canons over the past several years of shooting dslr. May have read about this zip locks bag trick on here at one time and it works well. Bring on the warm weather...
Appearantly the 5D2's are put together by half awake manufacturers... sometimes they forget to put a vital part in place as well... Nothing to do with bad luck or anything... Canon is just screwing this one up... sadly, because in potential the 5D2 is a fine camera
Daan B wrote:
Appearantly the 5D2's are put together by half awake manufacturers... sometimes they forget to put a vital part in place as well... Nothing to do with bad luck or anything... Canon is just screwing this one up... sadly, because in potential the 5D2 is a fine camera
Daan, it will be hard not to share your experience in every 5D2 thread from now on, will it not...
I was really expecting fun in the sun at Antarctica! What's wrong with Canon making shoddy cameras? The US economy hiccups a bit and quality goes down the toilet.
Next thing you know it your camera won't work in the vacuum of space! Nikon can do that! Why can't Canon?
jerrykur wrote:
If you read the "What worked what didn't" article on LL some of the cameras had grips on them. Apparently the grips collect water in the rain. I just looked at mine and if that happened it looks like water would follow the grip battery shaft into the battery compartment. Also it looks like this is worse if you do not store the original battery cover properly in the slot on the grip.
The grips on these bodies definitely compromise any weather sealing the body has--they're not sealed against the bottom of the body, and they leave a big hole in the bottom of the camera...
As rusty as my stats skills are, I'd have to say that 6 out of 26 failures is "statistically significant" and indicates a real problem. As MR said, he doesn't have follow up information, but this bears watching.
while you may think 6 failures (23%) is a small number, lfrom a statistical perspective and this doesn't look good. The population's "sample size" is 26, selected randomly from several countries, and areas within a country (i.e. several states). We have a valid, random sample of 5d2's in the market.
We don't have to get into confidence levels - and can't because we don't know the population size - but 6 failures out of 26 randomly selected samples is bad news. Pollsters can predict what the voting public (120 million) is going to do by talking to 4k people or less. We're talking cameras in the tens of thousands (probably under 20k at this point). Canon's numbers are bad....
Canon never said the 5d2 was water proof, only that they decreased the "fit" tolerances to help prevent ingress.. In reality, they may have gotten a little less sloppy, but that's it. It's a non-weather sealed camera.
My take on this is that Canon has done what many of us have been seeing and that's rapidly eroding quality and corner cutting. Canon is acting like an American car company IMO. The models/names are new, but in order to meet lower price points they've shaved what they can here and there before release; that's exemplified in many new models, including the 1D/s mark III's, the 5d2, the 40d/50d, etc. I'm not saying they are "bad cameras" per se (except my first 1D3 that couldn't focus consistently on a stationary building ), I'm saying that Canon has been in profit taking mode for 5 years now and they're pushing sub par goods out the door to maintain profits.
The digital DSLR market is mature,the economy is bad (and that didn't just start 6 months ago) and Canon will do whatever it can to protect its bottom line. If that means selling a budget 21MP camera with inferior workmanship, so be it....
Disclosure - I don't have a 5d2. I may buy one soon, but on my "desire scale" this camera ranks about a 3 or 4 out of 10, but that's not what this post is about....
I am not up on all this, but isn't the D700 a professional grade built body, whereas the 5D II is an "enhanced" 40D type body ? If so, one shouldn't be surprised if the Nikon fares much better in foul weather ? (and probably focuses much better too, but that's a subject for another thread. )
I think this just reinforces the need for multiple backups when going on a trip like this (long, remote, VERY expensive). I would imagine that most of the people had 3+ bodies and could give less than a crap about them (one fails toss it in the bag and grab another).
6/26 is pretty bad. However, most people seem to think that electronic gadgets can't tolerate even few drops of rain. When I'm working people often express surprise when they see me let my cameras get slightly wet. I suspect most 5D2 users won't be testing weather sealing in the way that these cameras were tested, so I don't think it will turn into a crisis. Certainly I will bear it in mind when using my 5D2's. 6/26 is really bad.
Some Canon fanboy will find a way for Canon's crap QC and recent failures to be acceptable. Before I get flamed, look at my profile and think of the crap I've went through in my relatively short time with Canon dSLR systems.
...can't wait to get home hehehehe
fuzzi math