Beautiful isn’t it? And now it’s mine!
Photo: Steve Keys – CC.

I knew the first photo I would take with the 5D2 would be of our beloved pet Chibi. I didn’t know that he would be so cooperative, and give me such a cute expression the very first time I pressed the shutter release!

Being a full frame sensor, as opposed to a 1.6x crop that I had on the 350D, I expected to lose some of the reach of my telephoto lenses. What surprised me was how much the 2.6x more pixels would make up for that, and exceed the detail previously captured. This photo of a blood red moon was taken on a night when smoke from the recent horrific bushfires cast a pall over the whole city. The detail visible in this 400mm photo significantly exceeds that which I was previously able to capture. Click here to see the full sized version, a 100% crop of the original photo.

The above photo is of the “public vote” winner of the Bead Society of Victoria’s “Bead Challenge”, which was displayed late last year at the Bead Expo. I photographed this piece, along with several others for Naomi to use in the BSV’s magazine, Connect. This was the first product photo shoot I did with the 5D2, and I just loved being able to guarantee that I had perfect focus by being able to zoom to 100% on the large screen using Live View. This is going to help a lot in future with product-type photography.

The image below is a 100% crop of the above image, showing the incredible detail captured by the 21Mp sensor.

Finally, one of the main headline features of the 5D2, is the ability to record full HD video. I’m not sure how I’ll make the most of this feature, but I’m looking forward to experimenting with it. Below is a video I took of our adorable cat Chibi, engaging in his nightly ritual of snuggling in bed with Naomi, something he has done, for about an hour each night, since he was a kitten, eight years ago.

This video was shot in very low light, and the camera performed marvelously, but would be better when mounted on a tripod for stability. The embedded video below is hosted on Facebook, as I couldn’t get any other hosting service to display the high resolution video. Please let me know if you have any problems seeing it.