Canon 5D Mark II Performance

Very good speeds for a 21-megapixel prosumer digital SLR.

Fast startup and shut-down times, fast enough that they're difficult to measure. Enabling sensor cleaning on shut-down adds about 2.5 second delay. Buffer clearing times are quite good, but depend on the image quality, size and speed of the memory card. (Card speed affects clearing times dramatically: A normally very fast Kingston 266x card produced a worst-case buffer clearing time of 33 seconds, vs 13.5 seconds for a SanDisk Ducati Extreme card.)

Mode switching times are good, though Record to play is a bit sluggish.

Full autofocus shutter response was pretty good at 0.206 second using our standard single-point AF test, though not as fast as the 50D. Letting the camera choose the focus point in multi-area AF mode actually decreased lag slightly to 0.175 second on average, more closely approaching the E50's performance. "Prefocusing" the camera by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure results in a lag time of only 0.082 second. Manual focus was slower, at 0.118 second, and lag with continuous focus was 0.265 second in single-point mode, and 0.158 second in multi-point auto-area AF mode. For most cameras we test, single-area AF mode is almost always faster than any multi-area options, but with the Canon 5D Mark II, multi-area AF was faster instead.

Lag time in Live View mode can vary all over the map. Full AF in Live View mode is not supported directly, since pressing the shutter button does not initiate autofocus; the AF-On button must be used. Once focused, the shutter lag is 0.119 second, a little slower than when using the optical viewfinder, but not dramatically so. We did find the 5D Mark II's Live View AF a little awkward, as it required pressing the AF-On button first, rather than just pressing the shutter button, as when using the optical viewfinder.

Shot-to-shot cycle times in single-shot mode were quite fast for such large files, at about 0.4 second for any quality. Buffer length was 34 shots for large/fine JPEGs, but dropped to 14 for RAW and 10 for RAW+JPEG.

Continuous mode speeds are a bit sluggish compared to competing models, at about 3.89 frames per second. Measured buffer depths were 75 for large/fine JPEGs, 11 frames for RAW mode and 8 frames for RAW+JPEG. (Note that in our cycle time testing we shoot a target consisting of a fine-grained digital noise pattern, designed to be very hard to compress. This gives us worst-case buffer capacity numbers: You're likely to see greater buffer capacity when shooting more normal subjects.)

Connected to a computer or printer with USB 2.0, download speeds are very fast. (The speed above was measured with a SanDisk 4GB Ducati Extreme CF card, slower cards will likely produce slower download speeds.)

Bottom line, the Canon 5D Mark II is quite fast in just about every aspect of its operation, though a little slower in some aspects than competing 20+ megapixel full-frame models.

Battery
Good battery life for a lithium-ion SLR design, but Live View burns a lot more power than normal shooting with the optical VF.

The Canon 5D Mark II uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery for power, and ships with a charger. Although battery life is good, we recommend you pick up a spare battery and keep it freshly charged and on-hand for extended outings, and especially if you plan on using Live View mode a lot. Also, keep in mind the 5D Mark II doesn't have a built-in flash, so these numbers are not comparable with models that do, as using the flash for 50% of shots (as per the CIPA standard) would result in a lower rating.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

Storage
The Canon 5D Mark II accepts CompactFlash memory cards, and does not ship with a card.

We strongly recommend buying a large capacity CompactFlash memory card at least a 4GB card, preferably a 8 or 16GB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings, or when shooting RAW or movie files. (Check the shopping link above, cards are really cheap these days, so no reason to skimp.)