Canon 5D mk2 - live view & mirror lockup shooting

[james hilton]

<p>Dear all, I currently am still getting by with my 5D mk1, but having used a 24-70mm it has been killed by dust and the sensor is very dirty and scratched, plus I use it for timelapse so the shutter is on the way out too. (Other than that its still working great!)<br>

Now my question is, with the 5D mk2, can you have the camera in live view mode, in full manual etc, and take a picture WITHOUT the shutter mirror going down then up again to focus/AE etc, e.g the shutter & mirror stay still all the time? As this would be great for my timelapse work as currently I'm getting through Canon DSLRs after about 60,000 shots.</p>

<p>Many thanks,<br /> James</p>

[goad photography]

<p>I do not have that answer. I thought I had tried about everything this last week. I rented the 5D Mark II from LensRental.com. I would suggest you try a rental and make sure it will do what you need before dropping the 3K on the unit. <br>

Best of Luck<br />RG</p>

[joseph_wisniewski]

<p>The 5D II is supposed to be just like the 50D in respect to mirror and liveview. I had the distinct pleasure of using a 50D on my macro bench for a week, and in silent mode 2 it will not cycle the mirror at all.</p>

<p>I thought Canon shutters were supposed to be good for 150k shots at the 5D level...</p>

[berg_na]

<p>There're some amazing timelapse videos shot with the 5DII on Vimeo. You may want to ask <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/4038064">the owner of this page</a> about whether you can shoot without the mirror activating.</p>

[james hilton]

<p>Hi, many thanks for the replies.I think I may head into a dealer and have a play.</p>

<p>Yes Joseph, Canon state that the shutter should be good for 150k, but in reality I, along with a lot of other people who do time-lapse work find that you are often lucky to get half that. The issue seems to be continuious shooting. E.g. a lot of my work is 1fps or 1 frame every 2 seconds using an intervolometer. Doing that kills them espcially if the shutter is longer than 0.5s and the camera is moving, e.g in a car etc. Seems you can usually only get about 20 hours of 1fps use out of them max (from experiecne), hence my interest in the 5Dmk2.</p>

[joseph_wisniewski]

<p>James, OK, that makes sense now. Probably a case of overheating and weakening the solenoids so that they fail early. I have no advice on that. If it were mine, I'd probably try mechanially blocking up the mirror to remove load from whatever drives it. I've done that to Nikons for macro bench and microscope use.</p>

[james hilton]

<p>Joseph, I think you are right, it must be overheating or something like that coming into play with continued and frequent use of the shutter every few seconds over a long period. as there are lots of people out there reporting 200k+ shots with their 5D cameras under normal use without problems.</p>

[philfx]

<p>you'd think the features the camera is capable of falls under the "normal use" catagory and canon should cover any failures...no?</p>