Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood improvement for the 5D line but some significant issues
Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2017
I have several Canon cameras (6D, 5DM2, others... and now the 5DM4). My quick review as a professional photographer is that the 5DM4 worked mostly as expected but I can't give it 4 or 5 stars because I encountered several substantial problem during the trip where I snapped about 8000 photos. The four are as follows:
#1 Consistent blow-outs in Evaluative mode (center dot with circle around it). For example, if taking a picture of a bird in bright sunlight where the background is darker (such as the trees lining a river) consistently blew-out the highlights on the bird. This occurred EVEN WITH highlight tone priority turned on. I had to leave my exposure setting at -2/3 for all such situations and even got some blow-outs there, too. And no, 'spot' isn't a solution either, as spot often has very non-deterministic results.
#2 4K video shooting is unusable. Motion JPEG takes way too much storage. How many 128GB cards does Canon expect me to bring on a trip? With basic H.264 compression the bandwidth requirements for 4K video become very modest and would work with any card, as well as take FAR less storage. Why Canon only has motion JPEG, which is a huge bandwidth and storage hog, I just don't understand. I would gladly give up some battery life if that is what it would take to get usable 4K video.
#3 Downloading pictures via Wifi drains thee battery very quickly (and frankly it shouldn't). roughly 250 pictures downloaded and the battery goes from full to flat. This isn't a complaint about taking pictures, that wasn't a problem. It's a complaint about the power consumption when wifi is turned on and used to download pictures.
#4 Focus points disappear after focus lock, which is a HUGE problem for me when I'm trying to track moving objects. I had to turn on the grid (which I normally hate to have on). My 6D never had this issue. I want the focus points there all the time and in servo mode I want the camera to tell me which focus points it is using at all times, period. AT LEAST GIVE US THE OPTION CANON! COME ON! ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GUESS WHERE THE CAMERA IS FOCUSING?
#5 AF tracking needs a distance-limited mode for tracking smaller closer objects with a wide background field (i.e. birds with a forest in the background). Other than this problem, AF was great.
#6 Still requires Canon's proprietary software for Wifi access to pictures, making near real-time distribution with a black-box solution impossible. At least put the FTP offload option back in like the original wifi grip could do (though hopefully without the stalls). I don't understand why Canon seems to insist on these inflexible proprietary Wifi modes.
I can only give the 5DM4 three stars for the above reasons, and that makes me sad because all of my gear is Canon. Of course, the camera otherwise is a fine improvement over prior models. I particularly like the very fast live-view AF. But Canon made some basic mistakes with this camera. Some could be fixed with a software update, others possibly not. I'm hoping Canon can work up some software fixes for these issues. They could make a good camera great. I'm a little confused as to why Canon would make so many basic mistakes on their almost top-of-line camera.
-Matt
