Canon 5D Mark II “Black Dots” Fixed

Written by Eric Reagan on December 8th, 2008 | 5 Comments


There has been an uproar among new Canon 5D Mark II users over the past couple of days.  Slashgear has a post featuring this issue as a potential killer for Canon, particularly after the autofocus debacle from the 1D Mark III.  Slashgear summarizes the issue:

Facing the toughest pixel-peepers, images taken with the new camera shown clusters of black dots/edges on the right side of blown highlight areas.

Industrious pixel-peepers have been burning the midnight oil with speculation as to what is creating this problem.  One DPR forum member may have found the source of the problem:

Just picked up my 5dII, and sure enough, I see black dots out of the box.

At iso 400 and iso 6400, with a 50/1.8 and 85/1.2L II. I took a few dozen shots, and they are easily duplicated.

I then turned the settings to “Disable” for highlight tone priority, lighting optimizer and noise reduction.

No black dots.

He’s got comparison pics to prove it too.  See the full forum post here.

For the latest news and reviews on the 5D Mark II, be sure to stay tuned to Photography Bay’s Canon 5D Mark II Reviews and Resources.



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5 Responses to “Canon 5D Mark II “Black Dots” Fixed”

  1. Qui va en parler le premier ici ? - Page 3 - EOS-Numerique
    December 8th, 2008 at 3:09 am

    [...] la solution : Canon 5D Mark II “Black Dots” Fixed » Photography Bay | Digital Camera Reviews, News and… [...]

  2. Nick-at-Nite
    December 9th, 2008 at 2:16 am

    Nope…earlier reports that turning off those features fixed the problem have been updated. While turning off those features reduces the occurrence, it’s still very visible.

    Hopefully 5D Mark II owner’s with samples of this are reporting this to Canon’s tech support (as have I) so this can be prioritized.

  3. Debeselis
    December 9th, 2008 at 6:23 am

    The same guy after bunch of post told that this fix didn’t help to eliminate black dots. They are still there:)

  4. Andrew Yip
    December 9th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

    Unfortunately I can still reproduce the black dots, even with those settings turned off:
    http://www.andrewyip.com/blog/2008/12/09/black-dots-in-5d-mark-ii-images

  5. mike
    January 12th, 2009 at 2:13 am

    Not after 1.0.7 firmware update. Check out Andrew Yip’s blog for before and after shots: http://www.andrewyip.com/blog/2009/01/07/firmware-update-fixes-5d-mark-ii-black-dots-problem

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