Nikon D90 vs. Canon 5D Mark II – notes with pictures

Summary

After renting a Canon 5D Mark II and trying it out for a day, I am still very content with my Nikon D90.  I was giving some thought to upgrading to a professional, full-frame censor camera like the Canon 5D Mark II, but I will wait a while.  Yes, the pictures from the Canon 5D Mark II are very good, but they are not that much better than the pictures taken with the Nikon D90, in my opinion.  I will, however, rent the Canon 5D Mark II again to take more pictures and to try out the 1080p video.

Introduction

( comparison pictures are located below )

I have been shooting with mid-level Nikon Digital SLR’s since the Nikon D70s.  I consider myself to be an advanced “hobby” photographer.  I am not a professional and I don’t do photography for a living.

I currently shoot with a Nikon D90.  It’s a great camera and I have not had any problems with it.  The images that are captured by the Nikon D90 look very good.  If there is a problem with an image, I am usually able to fix it with very little effort in Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop.  I decided to upgrade from the Nikon D80 and buy the Nikon D90 because it:

• was in my price range…around $1000 when I bought mine
• has a large 3” LCD screen on the back
• shoots 720p/24 HD video
• most importantly…works with all of my Nikon DX format lenses.  These lenses are made for cropped sensor cameras like the Nikon D90.

If you have been shooting with a mid-level camera like me, you have probably given some serious consideration to upgrading to a full-frame sensor camera.  If you read the more popular photography blogs, or listen to podcasts such as This Week in Photography, you have probably heard the rave reviews about the Canon 5D Mark II.  I heard all of these reviews and I have been obsessing with trying out the Canon 5D Mark II ever since.

Finally, in mid-November 2009, I decided to rent a Canon 5D Mark II from Precision Camera and Video located here in Austin, Texas.  This camera rental included the 24-105/4 L IS Lens, 16 GB Extreme III CompactFlash Card, battery charger, cables, manual and bag.  The camera rental cost me $162 for a day and I had to put a $3200 hold charge on my credit card, which made me a little nervous, but renting a camera before buying is definitely the way to go. I plan on renting the Canon 5D Mark II again and taking more photos and trying out the 1080p HD video for further comparison to the Nikon D90. I would also like to try out the full-frame Nikon cameras and some different lenses.

My initial thoughts, observations and some sample images from the Canon 5D Mark II are below.

I hope you find these observations helpful!

If you do, and if you decide to purchase the Nikon D90 or the Canon 5D Mark II, please do so by clicking on any of the links located on this page.  I get a very small commission from Amazon for any products sold from this website.  The pricing is the exact same and you might not have to pay sales tax or shipping.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Treye Rice

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First Observations of the Canon 5D Mark II – November 2009

These are my thoughts, observations and pictures after renting the Canon 5D Mark II in mid-November 2009.

My initial reaction after picking up the Canon 5D Mark II for the first time was, “wow, this camera is heavy.”   It was even heavier with a lens attached.

The woman that rented the Canon 5D Mark II camera to me reset all of the settings and showed me the basics.  She warned me about the lock button located on the back of the camera under the thumb dial.  If this switch isn’t in the up position (above “On”), you can’t adjust the shutter speed (or f-stop…I can’t remember which at this moment) while in the manual mode.

The dials that adjust the shutter speed and f-stop are also further apart on the Canon 5D Mark II than on the Nikon D90.  This causes you to change your grip more often and makes the Canon 5D Mark II harder to hold.  Finally, I had trouble spinning the front dial with my index finger.   I am confident that I could overcome these problems with more consistent use of the Canon 5D Mark II.

At this point, my initial reaction was that the Nikon D90 was much lighter, easier to hold and more intuitive to control than the Canon 5D Mark II.

The LCD on the back of the Canon 5D Mark II was large and about the same size as the LCD on the Nikon D90.

The Canon 5D Mark II program menus were easy to figure out but navigating through them did seem slower when compared to navigating the menus on the Nikon D90.

The viewfinder “view” was also harder to read than the Nikon D90.  It seemed like the f-stop and shutter speed display was much lower than the view of the actual scene.  The letters and numbers were not as sharp or bright as they were on my Nikon D90.  I take almost all of my pictures in the Manual mode so I am always adjusting the f-stop and shutter speed through the viewfinder.

White balancing on the Canon 5D Mark II took a couple of extra steps.  First, you have to take a picture of something white.  Then you have to navigate to the menu that allows for custom white balance. Then in this menu, you select the image that represents white in your scene. Click ok and then make sure your WB option on the camera is set to custom WB.

The Nikon D90 is much easier to set White Balance.  You use the WB button and the thumb dial to select the Custom white balance setting, hold down the WB button, and take a picture of something white and then its set…no fiddling with menus.

Auto-focus and image capture on the Canon 5D Mark II also seemed slower to me.  The focus was slow in lower light.

The Canon 5D Mark II can take 21mb sized RAW images…wow…those are huge files!  I am not sure that bigger is better in this case. Very rarely do I print an image larger than 24” x 36”.  If I did make large prints more often, these very high resolution files would make more sense.  But for this test, I decided to keep about 268 images from the Canon 5D Mark II for review…and they took up about 4.2GB of space on my computer!  I like to take lots of images at different exposures with my Nikon D90. If I followed this method using the Canon 5D Mark II, I would fill up all of my computer hard drives very quickly.

The 12mb RAW files that the Nikon D90 captures is more than enough to produce high quality, large prints.

I was impressed with the ability to bring details back from the darker shadows in pictures taken with the Canon 5D Mark II.  Usually, when I try to do this with a picture taken with the Nikon D90, I see more noise in the image.

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Pictures from First Experience with the Canon 5D Mark II – November 2009

I spent a day taking pictures with the Nikon D90 and the Canon 5D Mark II.  For each scene photographed, I would white balance each camera using my Lally Cap ( here’s a pic of the lally cap on camera ). Then I would take a picture using both cameras with Manual exposure settings.

These are the images straight from the camera, imported into and exported from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and uploaded to my Flickr account in a set called Nikon D90 vs. Canon 5D Mark II.  I usually shoot a little dark and then boost the exposure in Lightroom.

I have not made any adjustment or edits to these images.

I have also included many pictures of the Canon 5D Mark II and Nikon D90 side-by-side.  This is for comparison purposes only.

Scroll down to view my pictures or click here to view this entire Flickr set.

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Tagged as: camera reviews, canon, canon 5d mark II, d90, mark2, nikon, nikon d90, pictures taken with the canon 5d mark II, pictures taken with the nikon d90