OK, I now have to say that the AF in the 5D Mark II is definitely a step up from the 5D. Given that hardware-wise they have the exact same AF, the difference must be the Digic IV processor.
This weekend we took the kids to a birthday party at a jumping house. I had been to this identical location several months earlier with my old 5D and I was keen to see what the true difference would be.
While visiting my parents in upstate New York over the weekend, Eitan and Nathan had the chance to go sledding for the first time in their lives. This also provided me with a great chance to test the AF in the 5d Mark II.
For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past several weeks, there is a new camera coming out that replaces the current Canon 5D. Although the new camera introduces a number of improvements over the old one, a lot of people have been voicing strong concerns that the autofocus wasn’t improved at all over the one from the original 5D. In a recent interview a Canon exec stated that the reason is due to size. He stated that it is not possible to fit a newer AF in the 5D without expanding the size of the body. For some reason, though, Nikon engineers managed to figure out a solution to the same problem. In my opinion, and in the opinions of pretty much everyone else out there, his answer was complete BS. However, I disagree that the reason why the 5D Mark II does not have an improved is because Canon doesn’t want to reduce sales in their 1D line.
First though, I do think that for the majority of uses the AF on the 5D isn’t so bad. I took the picture below recently in poor lighting and with AI servo.
