5D vs 5DMkII, high ISO choices?

<p>I have been using a 5D and recently bought a 5DMKII. I was using an ISO of 1600 with the 5D for dance photography on a stage lit with spotlights and floods. That works well for me. The MKII is supposed to produce images with less noise at high ISO settings than the 5D and I'm wondering how much higher I can set the ISO in my MkII than my 5D and still get equal or better image quality for otherwise comparable settings. 2000? 2400? 3200? Anyone got experience with this situation?</p>

<p>Depending on the scene, I think you will find you can go much higher that with the 5D at 1600--my guess is that the II will go to 5000 or so and be similar to the 5D at 1600. I shot one, where the scene was overall pretty bright at 5000 and the noise was nil, but darker images do show more noise. </p>

<p>Here's a side by side comparison http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos5dmarkii/page38.asp</p>

 

<p>Depends on how good your PP is and your taste. I found ISO 1600 (RAW with default NR in DPP) the limit for my old 5D for scenes with twilight or early evening skies. I didn't mind ISO3200 for more evenly lit scenes. Generally I'm good for an additional stop from my 5DII, although I wouldn't hesitate cranking it up for emergencies and manually applying NR in PP.</p>

<p>There's another comparison at</p>

<p>http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EOS-5D-Mark-II-DSLR-Digital-Camera-Review.aspx</p>

<p>I have shot extensively with both, and my feeling in general is that you can easily get an extra stop or two from the 5D2.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

<p>I shoot raw and process in ACR with both. I'm getting a stop or a smidge more from the 5DII as far as apparent noise quantity/coarseness goes. I don't use noise reduction very often, so I don't know what the potential is there. </p>

<p>Thanks you all for your comments. I have decided to try using an ISO of 3200 and see what my results are.</p>

<p>For outdoor photography I reckon that 1600 ISO on the 5D is roughly equivalent noise-wise to 3200 ISO on the 5D II. At high ISO on both the 5D and 5D II you have to watch out for banding in the darkest areas (such as the sky) which can be quite severe. Although noise reduction can get rid of the speckly noise you are left with coloured blotches which are difficult to remove.</p>

<p>OK, The event is over. I ended up using ISO 3200 for most of the shots and it generally worked out pretty well. There's not enough quality to do much in increasing brightness without introducing "scratchy" looks, but for the photos that were exposed well the results were good, not like they would have been if they'd been shot at ISO 100, but not bad. Of course if they'd been shot at ISO 100 it would have been all blurry garbage.<br>

I used mostly f 2.8 and underexposed a stop and shot 3 shot +/- 1 stop brackets in RAW, handheld.</p>