Blown highlights and 5D

Don't want to start a dpreview-like thread but I have just bought a 5D and found that the camera tends to lose detail in the highlights much more often than the 1DII or 20D that I used for several years. Is this a common experience? I was shocked after hearing so much about 5D's amazing image quality and dinamic range.

Javier

Hmm a couple of things, which metering mode? I assume you are shooting RAW? Are you exposing to the right or the left?

Exposure is as with the other Canons but I feel I have to underexpose more than I do with the others in order to keep the highlights alive so the scene is darker in general. My feeling is that the window of success is much narrower with the 5D even shooting in RAW and using processors that are able to recover detail to some extent. I am just surprised after being told that the 5D handles whites spectacularly. I have done tests using 1DII and 5D in the exact same conditions.

Javier

Javier, in your tests did you use the same exposure for each of the cameras? If not, it is probably just metering inaccuracies rather than anything to do with dynamic range.

It does sound odd, a friend of mine is a wedding photog, and is always banging on about the DR on the 5D how good it is and how the metering is very good (though he did say it was better on the D2X and D200).

Hmm i'm puzzled. I believe you get this alot on the 400D's and such. To be honest if i shoot matrix on the D50 i tend to shoot -0.3 to -0.7 EV depending on the situation.

Maybe your metering modes are different? Spot? Or center weighted? Actually does the 5D even have spot?

Sounds odd to me too. I've never had any problems with my 5D - it's by far the best camera I've ever owned. I wouldn't say the dynamic range is any better than my old 20D but the images it produces are far better. I'd manual exposure and you'll get far more consistent results than any metering system. Tristan