Canon 5Dmkii in 2024 IS worth buying – Heres why
hey dudes do you remember this camera the 5d
mark ii it launched back in november 2008. it created such a disruption in the film industry
that even hollywood productions had to succumb to its charms and for many emerging filmmakers
people like me at the time it helped redefine the film industry by levelling the playing
field and thus earning the moniker game changer now 14 years on these cameras are
an absolute steal so the big question is this if you're starting out should you consider
buying one of these well the best way for me to answer that question is to talk to you about my
journey using the 5d mark ii so let's get into it it's crazy reflecting back on the 14 year journey
i've had with this camera as before 2008 i was shooting film i had my trusty canon ae1 for stills
my 35mm ariebl2 for commercials and film work and my bowlex for animation work but before 2008
producers budgets had already started to shrink our music video budgets dropped from 50k down
to 5k and that wasn't because of our work it was because of an industry trend and thus the
inevitable death of shooting on film was looming and with a huge debt owing on my film camera i
got lucky when i picked up one of these getting the first one in my state and as they were hard
to come by i was able to snap up a lot of work and very easy rentals so i had a little bit of
luck for the smartest career move i've ever made then full frame just exploded and within a
couple of jobs i'd paid for all of the lenses and the camera bodies so i bought another one
and before i knew it i was shooting campaigns all over the world i banked almost five hundred
thousand dollars got an agent bought a ton of other equipment and won a lot of cinematography
awards all from a canon 5d mark ii but most of all i'd finally learned the more expensive cameras
don't make better cinematographers better cinematography comes from learning to serve the
story understanding light and composition so i stuck with the 5d mark ii over the mark iii and
4 and still use them to animate to this very day every single video on my channel has some 5d mark
ii footage on it so if that doesn't answer your question of whether a 5d mark ii is still a good
camera today for stills or for video work then i hope these examples will recently i hit the beach
in france following my friend who's a pro surfer the beach isn't a great place for your own
gear it's a better environment for rentals but as a favor on a no budget production i took
my least expensive most disposable cameras these guys the shoot style was observational fly on the
wall all hand held manual focus pulling at f 1.2 and my day at the beach reminded me this is such
an easy camera to operate and in some senses i wish that canon had stuck with this design and
button layout the menus while advanced for 2008 now seem basic but that could be perfect for a
novice videographer or someone who just wants to take photos what i'm trying to say is the
canon 5d mark ii isn't intimidating at all to use and for those who say in 2022 you need a
better camera than that to be successful online this is my response here's an advert idp'd for get
up back in 2011 on a 5d mark ii it has 16 million views it was shot in one day all natural available
light the footage has never been graded it's just as i shot it and here's another idp for the
some of us and the world wildlife foundation it has over 7 million views could i
have shot these in a red or an area yeah of course would that have
made them better productions yeah it would have but those cameras wouldn't
have made the stories or concepts better and at the end of the day serving the story that you
want to tell is the most important thing of all so if you only have a couple hundred dollars in a
5d mark ii looks appealing i say go for it and i haven't even touched on how good these cameras are
for photography still to this day i own a 4 000 us dollar r5 two eos rs and i still pick up the
canon 5d mark ii every day to take photos these things are just bulletproof so what if they've
only got a 20 megapixel sensor the photos look fantastic and while i might not get the hit rate
on moving subjects compared with my r5 i do find the exposure meter in the 5d mark ii more accurate
than the r5 so newer is not always better it just depends on how you use the camera but if you would
like to see a more in-depth review on the 5d mark ii's photo capabilities drop a comment down below
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and with that guys i'll see you in the next one
