5D Mark II vs. 6D

C

cinematt

New member
I know that this has been discussed to death, but I think my situation is a little unique. I live in Korea where it's possible to purchase a 5D Mark II brand new for around $1200 (old electronics lose their value quickly here compared to other places), and the cheapest I can get a 6D for is around $1700. I am planning on shooting photos and videos as well. I know about the low light advantages of the 6D, but are the other features that much better to spend an extra $500 on?

I'm leaning towards the 5D2 personally because I can save money, but I am by no means strapped for cash at the moment (I don't have enough money to buy a 5d3 unfortunately!). I just want to get some second opinions on this.

Please don't comment on the fact that it might not be a legitimate sale (it is), and think about the money factor alone.
 
if they were the same price, I would go for the 5d2 for video, but the 6d for stills
with that price difference, it's 5d2 all the way (unless you can save for the much better 5d3)
the 6d has even worse aliasing/moire than the 5d2, and can't shoot RAW video (except at low res); the advantage it has is somewhat better low light performance
 
Ha ha...Samuel's reply shows clearly that there in no objective answer to your question...because my opinion is totally different! I wouldnt even look at the 5D2 with the 6D around! Everything depends on what you re planning
to use it for! RAW video is awesome...but would you use it on a wedding? Almost impossible! From the other hand, the low light performance of the 6D is just phenomenal...it can really save you at events...!
So...what are you filming?

Welcome to the forum:)
 
I don't film events, but I could definitely see myself in low light scenarios where I would benefit from the 6D. Also the 60p is a plus since I shoot action sports as well. Is the moire actually that much worse than the 5D2?
 
cinematt said:
I don't film events, but I could definitely see myself in low light scenarios where I would benefit from the 6D. Also the 60p is a plus since I shoot action sports as well. Is the moire actually that much worse than the 5D2?
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I believe moire is just slightly worse on the 6D, so if a scene is giving moire on the 6D, it will also do it on the 5D2. For what I do, I can accept a bit of moire here and there, viewer's attention goes to other things! But if I were shooting commercials for example, probably I wouldnt use either of those cameras.
http://www.mosaicengineering.com/ those filters helps a lot, but they increase the cost of course...same price for 6D and 5D2.
 
I was in a similar position and I got the 5D MKII. However, I'm not sure that was the better choice. Other than the low light being significantly better on the 6D, it also allows you to record continuously for 30 minutes as opposed to 12 minutes on the MKII. The 6D also uses cheaper SD cards, compared to the CF cards the MKII uses. If you want to shoot raw, the post workflow will cost so much that the difference between the MKII, 6D, MKIII, or even a Red will be insignificant on many projects.

The plus side to the 5D MKII is that most producers have heard of the 5D and sometimes are looking specifically for people with 5Ds. I don't know what kind of work you do, but it's something to think about.
 
the only reason I would go for a canon dslr today is due to magic lantern. Now if there is no other option and I'm faced with a decision to choose between a 6D and a 5Dmk2, I'd pick up the 5D2 due to magic lantern raw capability.

The 5D2 has a mature magic lantern support, in fact , even if its between a 7D and a 6D, i'd still pick up the 7D for the same reason.

Its the fact that the canon cameras with CF card storage databus has a faster datarate to support raw than the sd card storage cameras.

With magic lantern on my cameras the time limit is a not issue on both h264 and raw.

With h264 mov recording, ML has a movie autorestart that automatically restarts recording once the 4gig limit is reached. The gap is 1 second. I use this feature all the time when I do long interviews and with 2 cameras and I shoot all by myself so I can't watch the cameras.

With raw, there is no 4gig limit as it creates spanning files at 4gig each. No gap when the raw frames are extracted.
 
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If you plan on shooting RAW, definitely go with the 5D Mark II. The fact that it can take CF cards means it can shoot pretty high resolutions (not full 1080p though). As mentioned previously, the VAF filter helps dramatically and eliminates aliasing. The RAW combined with aliasing free images equals a pretty capable video camera.
 
Thanks for all of the advice! I forgot to mention that I currently have a 7D, so maybe it's not even worth the upgrade in the first place. I didn't do a lot of research about RAW video until I made this thread, and I just found out that the 7D can do continuous RAW video recording (I thought it could only shoot for a few seconds).

My main reason for wanting to upgrade is the fact that I go on hikes every weekend to take photos of nature, wildlife, and culture while I'm in Korea (I'll be here for 6 more months). I want to get the most out of the rest of my stay here, and figured I would make the upgrade while I still have a decent amount of time left here.

I want to jump ship into the full frame world eventually, but maybe it's not worth rushing an upgrade and waiting until I have the money to buy a 5D3?
 
cinematt said:
Thanks for all of the advice! I forgot to mention that I currently have a 7D, so maybe it's not even worth the upgrade in the first place. I didn't do a lot of research about RAW video until I made this thread, and I just found out that the 7D can do continuous RAW video recording (I thought it could only shoot for a few seconds).
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I'm one of the moderators at the 5d2 AND the 7D magic lantern threads over at ML forums. AND you are just in luck.

And this is something not available LAST WEEK. MLV Raw recording +Sound on the 7D is now clean and you can continuously record raw at 1728 x 972.

The current status of 7D ML has now caught up with the big boys(5D2/5d3). In fact, due to its dual digics and fast datarate, which is faster than the 5D2, the 7D has some tricks up its sleeve.

For instance, in crop mode, which is a very clean, 1:1 recording from the center part of the sensor, it can record a slightly higher res vertically compared to the 5d2.

2048x930 2.20:1 continuous raw recording with sound. This is useful if doing landscapes as you can "extend" the range of your zooms. If you have a wide lens like a tokina 11-16mm its around 52-76 ish lens in a full frame camera.

I shared that feature here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?319391-7D-2048-x-930-resolution-chart-How-good-it-really-is
 
The 7D actually performs in RAW better than the 5D2, because of it's dual chips. I have the 6D now, and it's amazing in low light. I use Magic Lantern and it's fantastic and certainly mature on the 6D. With a flat picture style it's pretty darn good, but for photography, the focusing SUCKS. I challenge anyone to show me the difference between moire on the 6D vs 5D2 in anything but shooting a static brick wall, and even then, come on. This is DSLR. I do wish the 6D could shoot RAW better (it does shoot RAW on fast SD cards, but not full 1080p), but would I use it? With the storage and workflow requirements I think not. There are better cameras if you really need that and many movies have been shot without RAW on DSLRs.
 
* I should have also said that nowadays you really need a specific reason to buy a Canon DSLR, they're falling so far behind... (except for the 5D3)

* For that kind of shooting that you describe, I'm not sure RAW will be an ideal option. A CF card that can store 24 minutes of RAW video (Transcend 128GB 1000x) costs $300. Think if that's enough storage for you.

* Consider a NEX with speedbooster. This is how the video from my nearly-free NEX-5N compares with the video of your 7D (which is identical to that of my old T2i). With the SB, you can use your current glass, with FF FoV and DoF; and you can also get the Sigma 19mm f/2.8 and 30mm f/2.8 to have a nearly-pocketable solution (very nice lenses, again nearly-free). A 5D2 will give you sharper stills, though.
 
Samuel H said:
* I should have also said that nowadays you really need a specific reason to buy a Canon DSLR, they're falling so far behind... (except for the 5D3)

* For that kind of shooting that you describe, I'm not sure RAW will be an ideal option. A CF card that can store 24 minutes of RAW video (Transcend 128GB 1000x) costs $300. Think if that's enough storage for you.

* Consider a NEX with speedbooster. This is how the video from my nearly-free NEX-5N compares with the video of your 7D (which is identical to that of my old T2i). With the SB, you can use your current glass, with FF FoV and DoF; and you can also get the Sigma 19mm f/2.8 and 30mm f/2.8 to have a nearly-pocketable solution (very nice lenses, again nearly-free). A 5D2 will give you sharper stills, though.
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Wow thanks for sharing that. The video from the Nex-5N is quite impressive. It's something that I will consider in the future when stills aren't so important to me (for the next 6 months I will be mainly focusing on stills). I think for now I will just invest in some nicer glass for my 7D and wait for Canon's response from all of these exciting cameras coming out in the next year.
 
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I have just stress tested a Komputerbay 128gig 1050X with new firmware and for use with a 7D and its a cheap solution compared to other brands.

On the 7D it can perform most, like 99% of the resolutions that the fast 64gig 1000x can do. At 1728 x972 that's 29 minutes and 49 seconds of raw footage with sound.

It does not perform well on my 5D mkII though and is consistently 2 resolutions lower than what the 64gig can record continuously.
 
Ted Ramasola said:
I have just stress tested a Komputerbay 128gig 1050X with new firmware and for use with a 7D and its a cheap solution compared to other brands.

On the 7D it can perform most, like 99% of the resolutions that the fast 64gig 1000x can do. At 1728 x972 that's 29 minutes and 49 seconds of raw footage with sound.

It does not perform well on my 5D mkII though and is consistently 2 resolutions lower than what the 64gig can record continuously.
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I was reading the magic lantern forums and people were saying that some KB cards are better than others, and some people haven't been able to achieve the write speeds off the 1000x to shoot RAW video properly. Does the 1050x fix this problem? The reason I am concerned is that it's very hard to return products in Korea (I don't speak much Korean), and that's where I would be buying it from.
 
my only question about KB cards is: have they improved reliability? lots of nightmare stories a few months back...
 
Me too, but I don't shoot many stills. For those, there's a big difference between the 7D and the 5D2. Whether that is enough to pay the switching cost, only he can decide.
 
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