I've read an article somewhere that Canon specifies the weather proofing to be rated at 1cm of rain in 3 minutes. That's a whole lot of rain in 3 minutes. Anyway, I recently tried it out myself and am totally confident in the 5D MkII's weather proofing now.
I was on holiday in Penang Island recently. That's a tropical island and when it rains, it really pours down by the bucket loads. I was there for a week and it rained every single night. I took my 5D MkII out anyway and continued using it in the pouring rain without a care. It survived a week of tropical rainstorms.
Here's some pictures I took of my camera getting soaked. Sorry for the bad quality, these pics were taken after a walk in the rain. I sat down to have dinner at the food court and took these pics with my iPhone.
I've since taken the 5D MkII out on a few more rainy adventures and have had no problems at all. In fact, I went out for a sunrise shoot by the sea this morning. It was pouring down and I kept clicking away. Hehehe. So........... all you 5D MkII owners, stop hiding when the weather gets bad. Take your camera out and have fun!
Added on 17th January 2010- I just attended a Canon event a few days back and the Canon representative was talking about the weather resistance of the EOS 1D MkIV. He said it was rated to withstand 1cm of rain in 3 minutes. That is a JIS(Japan Industrial Standards) approved test. The 5D MkII is also rated to withstand 1cm of rain in 3 minutes. So now we know for sure that the 5D MkII is built to the same weather resistance standard as the EOS 1 series. Anyone heard or read about whether the new 7D is also rated to withstand 1cm of rain in 3 minutes?
4 comments:
my thought is that RAIN, being element coming from top-down, is probably the easier element to avoid.
try mud or fine sand coming at you when wind is strong.
but hey, my 350D survive orange juice shower, vegetable oil (paintball) splatter on the interface and drizzling weather (shooting paintball) so I'm not surprised your 5D Mk II (furthermore with the sealed top due to lack of onbody flash) would be even more hardy.
that's like entry level of ~3 years back vs nearly pro range of last year.
My main concern is only about rain. I'm not the type of person to run for cover at the 1st sign of rain. So if it can survive the type of heavy rain I experienced in Penang, I'm a happy camper.
Hello, may I know how do you keep the front element of your lens free from water droplets when you shoot in heavy rain? They are bound to get in there sometime...
I don't have a problem with droplets on the front element. The hood does a pretty good job of keeping the water off. I did have problems with a fine mist spraying in from the sea during the sunrise shoot by the sea as the winds were really strong. It's not a big problem for me anyway, the B+W filters I use are fantastic. They're very easy to clean with just a quick wipe.
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