Flash Like most pro SLRs, the Mark II doesn't have a built-in flash unit. But it has a beefed-up hot-shoe for dedicated Canon EX-series Speedlites, and a PC terminal for studio flash. Maximum flash-sync shutter speed is 1/250 with shoe-mount flash units (up to 1/8000 with EX-series Speedlites in FP high-speed sync mode), and 1/125 with PC-connected studio flash systems. With EX-series Speedlites, flash exposure control is via a new E-TTL II system, which utilizes a new algorithm and is no longer dependent on the active AF point covering the subject. The system measures the ambient light, fires a pre-flash, takes readings at the central 17 metering zones, then uses that data, subject distance, subject location in frame and reflectance to produce very accurate flash exposures. Any number of accessory 550EX or 420EX Speedlites can be linked together wirelessly via the optional ST-E2 Speedlite Transmitter or fired by an on-camera 550EX flash unit. Digital Features You can set recording quality and white balance without scrolling through LCD monitor menus—a very nice feature. Just press the Image Size Selection Button and rotate the Quick Control Dial until the desired image size appears on the rear LCD panel: L for 8.2-megapixel JPEG, M1 for 6.4-megapixel JPEG, M2 for 4.3-megapixel JPEG, S for 2.0-megapixel JPEG, RAW for 8.2-megapixel RAW images; or RAW + L, RAW + M1, RAW + M2 or RAW +S to record RAW and JPEG images of the desired size simultaneously. You can set the JPEG compression rate from 1–10 (10 being least compression/best quality) via the Shooting tab on the LCD monitor menus. The Mark II has two memory-card slots, one for CompactFlash and one for tiny Secure Data (SD) cards. Images can be stored on either card, or on both simultaneously. The camera has a safety feature that prevents data loss should the card-slot cover accidentally be opened during writing (writing resumes when the cover is closed). File sizes range from about 8.3 MB for a RAW image to 1.0 MB for an S-size JPEG image (files sizes vary somewhat depending on subject, ISO setting and other variables); a 1 GB card can hold around 84 RAW images, 316 L images, on up to 780 S images. A number of white-balance presets can be accessed by pressing the White Balance Button and rotating the Quick Control Dial: daylight, shade, cloudy, tungsten, white fluorescent, flash, and auto (in which the camera adjusts to make the whitest thing in the scene white). There's also a K setting, which lets you select color temperatures from 2800–10,000 K in 100 K increments. The Shooting tab on the LCD monitor menus lets you create a custom white balance by photographing a white object in the light at the scene. If you shoot RAW images, you can also adjust white balance after the fact when you process the images using the supplied software. There's also white-balance bracketing, in which the camera makes three consecutive shots, one "normal" and two with blue/amber bias or green/magenta bias. You can also choose among five color-matrix settings (standard, portrait, high-saturation, and low-saturation sRGB, or Adobe RGB) plus custom; and you can set processing parameters (tone curve, sharpness and contrast) via the LCD monitor menus, or if shooting RAW images, afterward via the supplied software. The 230,000-pixel 2.0-inch color LCD monitor can be set to display just-shot images for 2, 4 or 8 seconds or indefinitely, and you can display any of the images on either memory card by pressing the Display button, then holding down the Select button and rotating the Quick Control Dial to scroll through the images. You can display just the image, or the image with shooting information including an RGB histogram that allows you to check white balance bias, color balance, color saturation, and color gradation compression as well as brightness distribution. You can also activate a highlight alert that causes overexposed areas to blink. Of course, the LCD monitor is also used for making camera settings, via five menus, selected by tabs across the top of the display. The menus include Shooting, Playback, Set-up 1, Set-up 2, and Custom/Personal Functions. You can set ISOs from 100–1600 by pressing the AF and Metering Mode buttons and rotating the Main Dial until the desired figure is displayed on the LCD panel. You can also set ISO 50 and 3200 via the Shooting tab on the LCD monitor menus. Software The Mark II comes with Canon's new Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software that provides high-speed processing of RAW images as well as versatile image-editing capabilities. Also included are upgraded EOS Viewer Utility/EOS Capture software, and PhotoStitch. The EOS Viewer Utility permits direct downloading of images from camera to computer via the supplied FireWire/IEEE1394 cable, editing of images, and conversion of RAW images—while this program's RAW image conversion is slower than DPP's, EOS Viewer is compatible with Mac OS 9 as well as OS X, while DPP requires OS X (both work with most recent versions of Windows). EOS Viewer also allows you to access the Mark II's 27 Personal Functions (the 21 Custom Functins can be set via the camera's LCD monitor menus). EOS Capture allows you to operate the camera remotely from your computer, including interval-timer shooting. PhotoStitch makes it easy to merge several JPEG (but not RAW) images into one panoramic image. Canon also offers the DVK-E2 Data Verification Kit, which can verify that images shot with the Mark II or EOS-1Ds have not been altered—handy for forensic photography. In Use We certainly enjoyed using the Mark II. The speed was amazing, and it's great to be able to make frequently used settings such as shooting mode, AF mode, drive mode, metering mode, ISO, image quality, white balance, AF points and more without having to scroll through LCD monitor menus. The controls seemed well located, and were easy to access and operate while shooting. There's a second set of primary controls (shutter button, Main Dial, AE lock, etc.) positioned for comfortable vertical-format shooting. The camera has a solid feel that makes it easy to hand-hold, even at slower shutter speeds. Besides super-high-speed sports-sequence shooting, the Mark II came in handy for bird-in-flight shots. It was nice to be able to shoot a quick burst, then pick the shot(s) with the best wing position, rather than just trusting to luck (which generally produces single frames with awkward wing positions). Super-high-speed advance can even help with portraits of people who aren't comfortable in front of the camera. Image quality was, as you'd expect from an 8.2-megapixel pro camera, terrific. We did most of our shooting at the L (8.2-megapixel JPEG) image size, at the default compression setting of 8, as a good balance between ultimate quality and number of shots—you get about 4X as many L images per card as RAW images, and viewed at 100% on-screen, it's hard to see a difference in image quality—the L images are excellent. (The SanDisk 1 GB Extreme CompactFlash card and 256 MB Extreme SD card provided with our test camera are ideal companions for the Mark II—the hardy cards can operate in temperatures from –25° to 85° C and feature a write time of 9 MB/second, easily able to handle the camera's 5.0 MB/second write rate.) The Mark II's noise-reduction technology seems to work very well—image quality at ISO 800 and even 1600 was surprisingly good. While other high-speed digital cameras and their 4-megapixel resolutions are great for action/photojournalism work, the Mark II's 8.2-megapixel images make it quite suitable for a wide range of other photo uses, too, including portraits, landscapes, wildlife and even studio work. The 3504x2336-pixel images work out to 11.7x7.8 inches at 300 dpi—full-page in a magazine like this one—while inkjet prints of 13x19 inches and larger are no problem at all. Camera: Canon EOS-1d Mark II Category: Pro AF digital SLR AF Performance ***** Metering Performance **** Feature Set ***** Ease of Use ***** Ergonomics ***** Value ***** Some Key Features Up to 40 consecutive full-resolution JPEG or 20 RAW exposures at 8.5 frames per second Simultaneous recording of RAW and JPEG files Up to 1200 shots per charge with supplied battery Shutter time lag as brief as 40ms (shorter than EOS-1Ds and EOS-1v) DIGIC II Imaging Processor for quicker performance 200,000-cycle shutter with speeds from 30 seconds to 1/8000 (flash sync at 1/250) Large 2.0-inch LCD monitor Virtually 100% viewfinder coverage Durable magnesium-alloy body with water- and dust-resistant sealing Compatibility with Canon EF lenses (1.3X crop factor) E-TTL II flash control with optional EX-series Speedlites, including wireless off-camera flash Digital Photo Professional software provides high-speed processing of RAW images Optional Data Verification Kit confirms image-data authenticity