Jon,

Would you please confirm whether this upgrade will be available to Mk II's in PAL land?

Brendan -- since there is only one single camera model sold worldwide, with no differences at all among units sold in Europe or North America or elsewhere, the firmware upgrade does indeed apply to all 5D2 cameras everywhere on the planet.

Chris is right. It will be available worldwide.

That said, there's still no word on 25p. The options for creating a 25p result are:
1) Slow the footage by 20%,
2) Wait for a 25p firmware update, (I predict before the holidays, but there's no guarantee.)
3) Use After Effects or some other software for the format conversion, (slow, limited quality) or
4) Just post your stuff on the web where the frame rate doesn't matter!

Hopefully, Canon will make this issue moot sooner, rather than later...

Please forgive my question, but which holiday? I hope you're not referring to Christmas...

Amen!

Of course, we have Mr H on our side.

June can't come soon enough!

Yes. Christmas. My prediction is that it will be available before the holiday selling season.

But note that 25p could come next week, and my prediction would still hold true. :)

[DISCLAIMER: My 25p prediction is based on nothing except for a gut feel - and a sense of the worst case. If it's not available by Christmas, it's probably not coming at all. I have no insider information whatsoever.]

Very curious, pathetically curious even.

So, now that the game has changed, they have decided to create an update that will solve some of their serious problems.

I think I shall still invest in the GH1 on principle. It just shows who the real boundary-pushers are and its certainly not Canon, they are simply squeezing every last drop of dated capability out of their consumers before moving on with slow and deliberate hesitation.

Great news indeed. Going to make things a lot more interesting, just glad I never got caught up in getting Nikon glass.... even though I was almost there. Thank you canon.

I don't know. In the corporate world, getting everybody to agree on what to do, setting the specification, writing the code, testing the code, fixing the bugs, releasing the firmware and (I assume) the documentation in seven months isn't fast, but it's not necessarily foot dragging. Rather than a decision to delay, it was more likely a delay before they came to a consensus decision.

I've evaluated the shutter speeds pretty closely, as has Mark Hahn, and it's clear that they didn't have everything implemented to just turn on manual control. The available shutter speeds are really coarse and don't even match the displayed values!

Canon earned back a lot of my respect with the announcement of this release. If they do 24/25p as well, it will be two big thumbs up!

Going back to my original "good conversation with Canon" thread, I've been maintaining Canon would do this. And Chris, while I'm grateful for what Tramm has done, I bet some friends last night that Canon would announce this by early June to counter the release of the all manual GH1.

I win a bottle of tequila and a fully manual 5DII.

How confident was I?
I ordered the 85mm 1.4, 35mm 1.4 and an H4N last week.

Do you mean the 85mm f/1.2?

So, what brand tequila is it? ;)

oops, yeah Jon, the big honkin' f/1.2
I've been wanting to replace my Nikon 85mm with the Canon since I got the 5DII but was waiting for the update.

After several years using Nikons on the Mini35 and Letus setups, it's going to be really nice to have AF on all my lenses. Now my kit is all Canon: 24-105 F/4, 35mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.2

And the tequila is Corzo.

Simple explantion:

First, in a Pal market (unless you're making something soley for web distribution), you've got to get the footage to 25p for DVD distribution / broadcast. While most of my work is for the web, the majority of my clients want a DVD version in addition to the web version, making the 5D a pain in the neck for day to day work.

Second, you also need it to be 25p to integrate it with footage from other cameras.

Third, recording 30p in an environment with 50hz lighting often leads to flicker (although this is less of a problem because at least you can see it in the viewfinder when it's occuring and do something about it).

I'm having a better morning, thanks to Chris, Jon and Josh .....

I'll be waiting for Canon & the icing on the Christmas cake with more optimism than usual ...

I've bought ten or so Nikkors and will probaly keep most of them.

Even after this update, second hand Nikkor AIS glass is a super affordable way to get a bunch of sharp, fast primes on your 5D, all with really smooth focussing action.

Even using Nikkors, this update will make life easier.