Canon EOS 5D Mark II
digital single-lens reflex camera from Canon

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II is a 21.0 effective megapixel full-frame CMOS digital single-lens reflex camera made by Canon, the first Canon EOS camera to have video recording capabilities. It succeeds the EOS 5D and was announced on 17 September 2008.
On 2 March 2012, Canon announced the camera's successor, the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. On 24 December 2012, Canon Japan moved the camera to their "Old Products" list, effectively discontinuing the camera.
Improvements over original EOS 5D
New features
Movie recording full HD at 1920 × 1080 and SDTV at 640 × 480 resolution.
Monaural microphone for audio during video recording, speaker for playback and microphone jack for external stereo microphone
Live preview with ExpSim LV "exposure simulation" live preview (full exposure preview control utilizing ExpSim LV, a first for video in a DSLR)
Live preview with contrast-detect autofocus
HDMI video output for live preview or playing clips and images on an external monitor via Type C MiniHDMI port
Dust reduction system to perform automatic sensor cleaning
Battery management software
The 5D Mark II is the first camera in the EOS line to provide video recording functions. Still photography during video recording is possible, but the camera suspends recording video until the final still frame is captured.
The lithium-ion battery for the 5D Mark II (LP-E6) has an 1800 mAh capacity. Each battery contains a microchip with a unique identifier for reporting charge status and battery health for display on the camera. The 5D Mark II's "Battery Info" screen can track battery health and shooting history for up to six LP-E6 batteries.
The camera has native ISO values of 100 multiplied by a power of 2; other ISO values are obtained by a digital exposure push (ISO values that are multiples of 125) or digital exposure pull (ISO values that are multiples of 160).
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This entry incorporates text from “Canon EOS 5D Mark II” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.