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Author Topic: 5DII and MLU  (Read 2580 times)

jcarlin

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5DII and MLU
« on: December 10, 2008, 07:06:16 pm »

Let me start by saying that it should not have taken nearly a decade for Canon to get around to doing this, especially when it appears that they did it by accident.  

I know that Michael has ripped on Canon for not including mirror lock up button in their DSLRs.  I have to agree with him, Canon has stubbornly, some might even argue stupidly, failed to implement a half way decent mirror lock up functionality in any of their DSLR*.  Well I think with the 5DII Canon has finally implemented this, and guess what, they even gave mirror lock up it's own button.  Now you might be wondering what in the world I'm talking about since when you look at any of the sites that cover the various buttons and features of this camera they don't mention it.  What this is that the Live View implementation on this camera doesn't flip the mirror down prior to the shot.  So you can frame, focus, flip the mirror up, and then shoot just as if MLU had it's own button.

*I had an old Elan II that had a very decent mirror lock up function where you could turn on mirror lockup up on whenever the camera was in 2 second self timer mode.  I always felt like this was a very reasonable way to do this and why I separate the DSLRs from the SLRs.
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Nick Rains

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5DII and MLU
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2008, 09:28:05 pm »

Quote from: jcarlin
Let me start by saying that it should not have taken nearly a decade for Canon to get around to doing this, especially when it appears that they did it by accident.  

I know that Michael has ripped on Canon for not including mirror lock up button in their DSLRs.  I have to agree with him, Canon has stubbornly, some might even argue stupidly, failed to implement a half way decent mirror lock up functionality in any of their DSLR*.  Well I think with the 5DII Canon has finally implemented this, and guess what, they even gave mirror lock up it's own button.  Now you might be wondering what in the world I'm talking about since when you look at any of the sites that cover the various buttons and features of this camera they don't mention it.  What this is that the Live View implementation on this camera doesn't flip the mirror down prior to the shot.  So you can frame, focus, flip the mirror up, and then shoot just as if MLU had it's own button.

*I had an old Elan II that had a very decent mirror lock up function where you could turn on mirror lockup up on whenever the camera was in 2 second self timer mode.  I always felt like this was a very reasonable way to do this and why I separate the DSLRs from the SLRs.
You can also set a custom User Setting which enables the MLU with (or without) the 2 sec self timer. Just turn the dial to that setting and you have MLU right away. It's no better than LV, just an alternate method, so now we have two one-button MLU methods rather than none!
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Nick Rains
Australian Photographer Leica

DarkPenguin

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5DII and MLU
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2008, 10:58:20 pm »

The 40D, 50D and possibly the 450D have all done this.
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erick.boileau

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5DII and MLU
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2008, 04:08:45 am »

with 5D  too , you  can custom user settings to have MLU on C  menu
« Last Edit: December 12, 2008, 05:14:08 pm by erick.boileau »
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madmanchan

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5DII and MLU
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2008, 04:37:09 am »

Yes, you effectively get MLU with Live View, which works well in concert with zooming to 10x to focus accurately (tighter tolerance than the AF in most cases). Of course battery life decreases significantly with Live View, so be careful.

I also used to program the "C" custom mode on the original 5D to enable mirror up mode + 2 second timer delay. Now on the 5D II, there are a total 3 custom modes, so only 1 of them needs to be occupied by mirror up + 2 second self-timer (that's my "landscape" mode).
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Eric Chan

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5DII and MLU
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2008, 09:19:28 am »

And what is really annoying, is that the 1DSIII dosn't have these Custom settings for setting memory.  (Unless I'm going blind)

You Can Register camera settings and recall them, and you can register Custom settings and recall them, but they are different menu's to do the recall.
Of course MLU is a custom function !!!!.    Pain in the neck.

I regularly switch back and forth between my starting point for Landscape shooting (MLU-Down With Set, F11, 2 Second Timer, 5 Shot Bracket, +/-1 1.3 EV,  Manual mode)   and normally shooting, and it is a pain in the neck.  One feature I miss from the 5D.


Mark.
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Wayne Fox

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5DII and MLU
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2008, 01:54:15 pm »

Quote from: jcarlin
What this is that the Live View implementation on this camera doesn't flip the mirror down prior to the shot.  So you can frame, focus, flip the mirror up, and then shoot just as if MLU had it's own button.

I haven't seen the 5D2 yet (mine arrives on Monday), but not only does the 50d and 40d not return the mirror down when capturing from live view, they also do not contain the traditional dual curtain 35mm shutter ... there is no return of the first curtain before the exposure starts (in fact there is no first curtain). There is only one "curtain", which closes after the capture is complete. I do not believe that shutter actually functions as a shutter ... I think it is there simply to protect the sensor.  Without a first curtain I do not know how exposure across the chip could be controlled with a moving second curtain as the exposure cutoff.  It appears both start and end of capture are electronically controlled, ie when and how long the data is read from the sensor.

The 1DsIII appears to have a traditional dual curtain shutter, and I believe it does close the first curtain when exposing from live view before it captures the image. This means capturing from live view is not technically the same as MLU ... but the closing of the shutter is much less likely to cause camera movement than the slap of the mirror.
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