Canon 5D Mark2 vs Mark4? Recommend Mark IV?

[Morne]

Hi all

Has anybody used both of these and care to comment? Would you recommend the Mark IV?
I'm interested in general stills, video, as well as shooting some 360 HDR skies

I currently have an old entry level Nikon which is fine for the average consumer, but I need something more semi-pro to pro for work
Maybe instead of Canon, a Nikon D810?

[joconnell]

The sony's kick ass for video. For hdr's it's more about the lens and a nodal ninja, anything that can shoot at 1/8000 of a second is very handy (you'll still need to get an ND filter to underexpose the sun enough to capture it's full data.)

[Companioncube]

another vote for sony here. I switched from a canon mk3 to sony A7rII. The noise is less than a canon mk3 and from what i've seen in reviews still less noise than a mk4, but about the same as a nikon D810.
I also get 42.4 megapixels (7952 x 5304) which is really great for textures, with HDR shooting i get about 12k x 6K using a 8mm lens (i cover the internal side of the lens with a piece of ND filter) and a 360 Precision Atome head.

it's not a perfect camera, i use an adapter for my canon lenses and the camera does bug out on occasion. Also when i burst shoot it can take a while to review the images because writing several 7952 x 5304 RAW images to SD is slow, but not unusable.

[chriserskine]

I'm using a d810, which is a great camera.

I also have an d800e, but those have issues with colour, and lots of other little things that were fixed with the D810.

Sony make the best sensors (nikon use these in half their cameras), but their colour just isn't as good as nikon or canon. (though nikon can be hit or miss too sometimes). so if your keen on sony and the a7r II has an amazing sensor, I'd also get a colour chart to use. (i found that was a must have for d800)

as for canon 5d mark 4 looks like it will be a lot better for making hdr's than mark 2. much better dr in the sensor.

check the camera's bracketing spec's for hdr.

most high end nikons its 1 - 9 shots, 1 stop spacing.

though d810 (maybe some other newers ones too) have 1 - 9 @ 1 fstop. but also 1 - 5 @ 3 stop spacing.

with the canon, you should get magic latern at some point. which is pretty nice to have too.

you can also get something like the promote control, and get custom bracketing to do whatever you like.

[lukx]

I have 5d Mark III.
Be careful with MKIV regarding video. It's got old memory card slot and bad compression so files are huge. Watch youtube reviews about cams you want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZY0BDMVIoQ

[Morne]

Hmmm the Sony a7rII sure looks interesting!

[joconnell]

Phillip bloom is using it as his b-camera for a tonne of shoots, definitely have a look at his stuff to get a sense of the camera.

On camera colour, if you're doing vfx stuff then really none of the cameras have good colour - all of them are designed to make a pretty picture instead of giving you any accurate colour values. There's a tonne of colour science and tone mapping that goes on in the camera software to give it the signature look of the manufacturer (hence the comment above about sony's colour not being as good as nikon or canon) so as mentioned it's a great idea to get a macbeth chart as a reference.

[JezUK]

Hmmm the Sony a7rII sure looks interesting!

I'm soooooo glad you said that

Mirrorless cameras are the future - forget those huge cameras with mirrors in them.

I sold my full frame gear years ago because of this - I now have a 4/3rds camera and it's so liberating.

Sony are streets ahead in the mirrorless technology, and being a near lifelong Nikon owner (for over 30 years) I'm pretty sure I won't buy another Nikon again.

[Morne]

I will have to get use to the cost of these things. It's sure no Nikon D3100

[JezUK]

I will have to get use to the cost of these things. It's sure no Nikon D3100

Another reason I sold my gear - it was all getting a bit ridiculous !

[lightpixel]

don´t forget the possibilities with Eos 5d3 and Magic Latern Hack you get: 14 Bit FullHD RAW video filming... it´s amazing!!

[Nicinus]

Most of the quality comes from the lenses so there is that. If you have Canon glass the MkIV makes sense as it is improved compared to previous models.

[chadstevens]

Hi Morne,

I wanted to upgrade to a better camera about 7 months ago, I originally had a Nikon d3200, for me it was between 3 cameras, the Nikon D810, the Sony ARII and the Canon 5ds r.

I went for the Canon 5ds r mainly due to image quality (50 MP, no low pass filter), I must say I am still extremely happy with the camera and I'm glad I chose it still. I use it often for High quality HDRI sphericals, photogrammetry and texture shoots all of which a high resolution sensor really comes in handy.

If I had to choose today, I would still go for the Canon 5ds r as it suits my every need, I've heard the Sony runs out of battery power very quickly so you'll need to buy a few and charge them regularly, the Sony also only has 1 card slot, this is important if you want to do HDRI's as they require many images at different exposures each of the images will be 42 MP with the Sony, thus taking up a huge amount of space, therefore multiple car slots comes in handy in this regard as well as covering your backup needs. The 4k video is known to cause the Sony to overheat (at least thats what I've heard and read)

The Nikon did not have the resolution I wanted considering the Canon was offering more. Canon lenses tend to be cheaper as well which is always an advantage in the long run.

So in conclusion I 'personally' would recommend the Canon 5ds r over the other three, but if you are comparing the Canon mk IV, the Sony ARII and the Nikon D810 I would probably go for the Canon Mk IV, Its focusing system is supposed to be excellent and the image quality is not bad either, although like Luke said, the video compression is terrible.

Hope this helps Morne, by the way, how is the weather in the Western Cape? I miss home

Cheers.

[Neilg]

Sony are streets ahead in the mirrorless technology, and being a near lifelong Nikon owner (for over 30 years) I'm pretty sure I won't buy another Nikon again.

I recently picked up a sony a6000 for personal use and it's genuinely better than the old 5d we have in the office. incredible little camera.

[joconnell]

Going to get an a6300, seems to answer all of my wants - real shame about the wobbly shutter for video but that's secondary. Might even see if it's worth the extra over the 6000.