Canon EOS 5D Mark II Full Frame DSLR Camera (Body Only) (Old Model)

I am an enthusiast photographer. I understand the relationship between aperture, shutter and ISO; I understand the basics of composition, rules of thirds and all that; watches youtube constantly and try to learn more; and I process my RAW in Lightroom because I am not a professional and just a bit lazy to learn layers and Photoshop.I am budget conscious, not rich or anything. Therefore it is a bit hard for me to justify buying over 3000 dollars of equipment for mainly weekend and vacation shooting. I've used it for almost 2 weeks and I would say overall I don't regret buying it. I will list some pros and cons from my perspective.Pros:A lot of detail is available from the RAW files. A bit of brushing and those blown out while sky comes back to life easily. Just tweaking with LR, I can get those HDR looking photos where everywhere is exposed without doing bracketing. Its not perfect HDR of course, but pretty good and amazing in my opinion. And of course, the details in the images are very crisp, a big upgrade from my old camera.The rate of 3.9 is pretty good in my opinion. I use a 600x card and shoot RAW only; the camera shows 13 shots continuously at that rate before clogging, which is pretty good.The weight of the camera makes shooting at slower shutter speed easier. When I was hand holding my old camera(I rather not say model), I usually have bluish image at 1/15, but this one seems to do it pretty well. Some people probably can hand hold 1/15 easily with any camera, but this is just something I noticed. I think the extra weight gave me this extra stability or maybe there is something going on inside.Knowing that this is a Full Frame camera with the ability to capture pretty much the best quality images is satisfying. I travel whenever my finance allow, and some of the destinations I probably will never go again or just simply change from time to time. Therefore the biggest justification for myself buying this camera is to be able to capture images without later regrets. Before, I had images with the sky fully blown out or the face of my subject poorly lit and by recovering from LR, I just loose a lot of detail and make everything look unpleasant. Professionals probably can shoot better I know, but I am not pro and the comfort of not paying so much for my mistakes and no regrets is the main reason I am happy with my decision.now onto the Cons:Like everyone said, the focus is the downside of 5DII. Maybe I am overshadowed by all the other reviews; but from what I feel, I just think its a bit slow, more noticeable during darker situations. I have not used a lot of cameras so maybe I am just nit-picking. When I mount the 50mm 1.4 on the 5DII, the focus is a bit slow, and also the minimal focus distance for the 50mm 1.4 is quiet long at 0.45m. I was inside a museum, and sometimes I'm just too close to the subject, or sometimes its just too dark, so the focusing seems to be confused once in awhile. I don't have anything technical to back this up, just my feeling. The lack of focus point don't bother me at all since I only use the central one and rarely shoot birds or sports. Its not a problem when I'm outside, I hardly notice it, but when I do, it bothers me.The weight adds stability while shooting, but is definitely not good for walking. Having this magnesium alloy brick hanging on my neck without support is not pleasant.Shutter is a bit loud and lower pitch. I think each and everyone have a different preference for shutter sound. I actually like the sound of short higher pitch, for example the Rebels.Vignette and Light fall off. Coming from a cropped, the vignetting and light falls off at the corners is much more noticeable. I know different lens behaves differently, but this is definitely more noticeable.Build-in Mic is nearly useless during recording. It is very noisy. Even if you want to record something simple, the quality of sound coming out of the mic makes me mute it all together.The large megapixel makes my Lightroom 4.1 a lot slower. I have an Acer Laptop, i5-2410, 8GB Ram, Nvidia Geforce GT540M laptop. No SSD, just regular 640GB, 5400RPM Hard drive. The laptop is not something blazing fast, but I had no problem with 10 Megapixel RAW files. Now the full 21 Megapixel RAW files from 5DII are making my LR a lot slower. I already rooted my comp to clean out the bloatwares and tried to render 1:1 when importing and all the other tweaks I can find on the internet but it is still quiet slow. It is noticeably slow while editing (applying different presets and brushing) and slow when exporting. Its not anything bad for the camera, but something every buyer should consider, as I am now planning to dropping more money to buy a better desktop.Recommendations:I think for those non-professionals, this is probably the best pick for the money. The new 5DIII is obviously better, but the price is a big factor for me. For people who have the money, buy it; but I don't, so I rather save that extra dollars and spend it on a vacation. The focus is good enough in my opinion, probably because I don't shoot sports or things that are moving like crazy. All the other nitpicks such as power switch position, dop preview position, slow rate are completely irrelevant in my opinion. 5DII is a solid camera, and I think its best buy for the money since the ability to produce good image is the most important factor.For those who wants to buy a full frame, I would say make sure you know why you want to buy it. The desire of getting better gear is always with us, and I recommend for anyone buying anything really, make sure you justify your purchase. Please don't buy a good camera like this and simply put it away in your closet after the first few month. It pains budget conscious people like me who have invested so much time to find the best pick. If you have the extra cash, knows that photography requires lots of hard work, and want to advance in photography, I would say its worth it.

Time to forget about Nikon as an overly hyped "has been" who have just sat on their laurels too long banking on their reputation as Canon has moved forward. Seems that they were strong competitors and Nikon just stopped "playing" while Canon pushed ahead. Anyway... your loyalty should be to your art and your photos... not some brand name. Right?Look at this... the Ultrasonic Motor (USM) (in Canon lenses)... a theory on paper till Canon took it and implemented it in a practice in their cameras... "dead silent"(Public candid shots -- no one can hear you are focusing on them). This camera even has a silent shutter mode! Just think... no more constitutionally clueless people thinking they have exclusivity to their own image in a public setting trying to infringe on your 1st Amendment asking, "Did you just take my picture?!!" LOLBiomimetics... reverse engineered nature--God's design... Canon does this... the L series II lenses are based on reverse engineered Moth eyes to counter flaring!This camera is a piece of the same... incredible. I got one... have used it for 6 months and I am totally FLOORED. Focus is dead on... features are incredible and I am striving to learn and use every single one! A few I will mention... custom white balance reference (get the Mennen white cap or cheaper model her... as low as $2). Digic 4 processor can do some darkroom work on-the-fly... lightening (burnishing) dark area to bring out details. Lens distortion compensation... the camera knows what Canon lens you have attached and if you are using a wide angle, etc. it can automatically compensate for vignetting (darkening in the corners) and barrel/pincushion distortion! The camera can do various types of "bracketing"... here is something that blows me away: Say you want to take a long depth of field shot and keep the foreground and background all in focus. Say... your kids on the playground with other kids... you want to get all the kids in focus from just a few feet away to infinity. Impossible you say? What you do is set focus bracketing to take a shot every so many meters... I use Hyperfocal Distance calculations to do this based on the 6.4um CMOS CCD pixel size... may take 10 shots or so and "stack" them to get a paradoxical photo where the entire photo is in focus. The impossible can be done with this camera! Great bokeh (soft out of focus backgrounds) when you want them too.I put the 24mm L-series f/1.4 USM II lens on this camera as a "leave on" walkabout lens. It is prime focus... edge to edge sharper than anything I have ever seen. I also put a Hoya DMC 77mm UV filter on that to protect the "eyeball" lens on the front. Comes with a tulip hood and great post production processing software that is amazing in itself.Now... you might read about Auto Focus (AF) problems... naught! (unless you get a bad copy... then send it back). But the AF is dependent on your settings and light conditions, the lens attached, and also the target you are focusing on. High contrast lines that are brightly lit focus faster and how fast depends on the lens you are using. When you get the camera test this to get this question behind you. Put a lousey lens on this camera and you may have slow focus. At f/1.4 the camera will AF on things I can't see with my own eyes (ISO to 6400...and beyond).I think it is always best to buy the body... then the lens that fits your particular need. Full frame... 35mm CMOS format and the camera will do 1080p video too at 30 fps (with fast CF Flash Memory). Incredible... simply incredible. I don't do Nikon anymore... they have a lot of catching up to do... oh yeah... one more thing:Canon has open sourced its scripting language so that there is a Canon Hacker Development Kit (search CHDK on Google). There is talent world wide working on very very cool scripts (custom programs that run inside your camera) to customize your camera to your specific application! One I saw recently was a script that looks for pixel changes and reacts. You can set your camera on a tripod on a flower bud about to open and instead of taking a shot ever hour... take shots only when the camer recongizes pixels changes of X amount. I have goose bumps...