Dogmatic

Easily the most anticipated camera in the galaxy, Canon’s 5D Mark II is official, and officially excellent. The full-frame, 21-megapixel DSLR is the first to shoot full HD video, and with Digic 4, Canon is promising low-light performance on par with that of Nikon’s D3 and D700 thanks to improved light gathering and noise reduction, with ISO range 100-6400, extendable up to 12,800 and 25,600. Add to that its high speeds and first-in-class video capabilities, and you can tell this camera was worth the agonising wait.

About video: It’s 1920×1080 resolution at 30fps—so 1080p/30 by most definitions—for up to 12 minutes of continuous recording, and it’ll go 24 minutes shooting SD. Yep, you’ve got a mini HDMI out port to plug it directly into your HDTV. Output is MPEG-4 with CD-grade audio (16-bit PCM at 44KHz), and unlike the D90, Canon records sound in stereo. Since the SLR mirror flips up to record video (really, the live view feed), you aren’t able to lock the focus, but live view has three different focus modes: face detection, quick and colour contrast.

Hard and fast camera specs and features
• 14-bit conversion
• 3.9FPS unlimited burst rate with JPEG using UDMA CF card, or 14 RAW (standard CF card is 78 JPEG, 13 RAW
• Four-channel readout that’s 2.2x faster than the 5D
• Lens peripheral illumination correction, like 50D, but better supposedly
• 15-point auto-focus
• Creative auto mode, also like 50D
• Auto-lighting optimiser
• Three levels of noise reduction that kicks in above 800
• RAW, sRAW1 (10MP), sRAW2 (5MP)
• Three-inch, 920,00 dot-screen
• New and improved battery (incompatible with old one) that delivers 850 shots or 1.5 hours of video
• 150,000 cycle shutter
• Magnesium alloy body
• NO built-in flash BTW

Yeah, this is what you’ve been aching for, especially if it delivers the performance it promises. It’ll be $US2700 for the body or $US3500 with the 24-105mm kit lens, out in November.

(via)