Cinema 5D & Theeoscars.com - Video in DSLR's

leinsterman

Ok ... before anyone makes the obvious comment ... I know this is a photography forum ... but many of us are now getting our hands on the current generation of DSLR's from both Canon and Nikon offering incredible HD video functionality ...

There are a couple of nice sites out there showing what can be achieved with the 5d MkII video function for those that care about this sort of thing ... the quality of the work is pretty amazing in my opinion (notwithstanding the content itself) ... Check out this video (and site!) -

http://theeoscars.com/5dblog/2009/03/karijini-michael-fletcher/

... and there's a forum (sorry Boards.ie ... but I know you are not as Nazi about this stuff as certain other irish photo forum sites ... who shall remain nameless ... this is why we all love ya! ) -

http://www.cinema5d.com/index.php

I'm deifnitely thinking of getting an external mic for my 5DmkII. The internal one just picks up too much camera noise and the shooter movement, rendering it completely useless ... but I'm not sure I'd go as far as getting one of these -

http://www.redrockmicro.com/products.html

I'm also guessing there is an interesting debate to be had in this forum over the future of photography with this functionality appearing in greater numbers of DSLR's ... I'm not trying to suggest that the art of the still image is dead, quite the contrary, we now have more creative options should we choose to make it so ... video in P&S is of course nothing new ... but with HD video and Canon L lenses and/or Nikon equivalent we are all getting exposed to more creative options and amazing quality not previously open to us ... very soon every new DSLR may have video ... do we want a separate forum to express ourselves or is this the place to have the discussions? ... or do we even care?

Personally I don't think we need a separate forum ... but, that said, we may end up overlapping with another one ... videography is a perhaps a very different medium ... however given the negative reaction in certain quarters when flickr added video upload to their site there may be some debate about this ...

Ostrom

Impressive.... How is it on memory, does it need special write speed cards? How much shooting time do you get per gig?

leinsterman

efla wrote: »

Impressive.... How is it on memory, does it need special write speed cards? How much shooting time do you get per gig?

Most recent generation CF cards are fine ... I managed to get some cheap Kingston 16GB cards (cost 35USD each) for use with 5DmKII. They were perfect ... the camera's buffer indicator never came on at full HD 1080 resolution (indicating I can shoot until the card is full or the camera's time limit).

Had a look at some of my early videos and a 1080p HD video of 1 minute 6s is about 329MB ... personally I think 1080p might have been overkill for my purposes.

The camera is limited to 29min 29s videos (as in you can only shoot a single video of this length) ... this is not really a problem since in reality you will be editing pieces together after the fact ... looking at some of the best videos on the sites above they are made up of lots of smaller clips well edited together ...

The reason for the time limit is Canon did not want the camera classed as a full video camera in the trade description.

melekalikimaka

is there not some issue with AF?

Valentia

Hmm. Why can't I see the videos in Firefox? IE is ok.

Stephen

Does the 5D suffer from jelly-like wobble in video when you pan? D90's rolling shutter is quite bad for that

Valentia

Stephen wrote: »

Does the 5D suffer from jelly-like wobble in video when you pan? D90's rolling shutter is quite bad for that

It does, though not as dramatic as the D90.

Fionn

Danny i can see them on my firefox - maybe your missing a plugin or something?

very impressive IQ and very nicely lit scenes, the holy grail for me would be a camera that will run FMV and still have the capability of a high end single still our of the frames. thats not too much to ask for! is it? please oh at an affordable price too

leinsterman

Valentia wrote: »

It does, though not as dramatic as the D90.

I wonder if the problem is not due to the fact that they shoot at 30fps ... which in places like the USA where they have 60Hz mains is fine ... this can be problematic for devices running off 50Hz ... ??

There was some debate about this during the recent Canon 5D MkII session ... they are apparently working on a 25FPS fix ... though god knows when ...

The other thing missing is the ability to shoot in manual mode ... you can't set the aperture on the 5d MkII currently ... which limits creative options ... I'm sure this is firmware fixable ... but no idea if Canon will do it ...

Finally the focus issue ... to be honest you are better shooting video with manual focus and careful selection of lenses to control DOF etc ... I understand the MkII tries to select a wide aperture as much as possible ... so it can be a bit of an issue controling DOF ...

[EDIT] I should clarify all my points above, except the one about 60v50Hz are not based on my own very limited expertise but that of Canon Professional Network editor David Newton ... who was presenting the recent 5d MkII session ...

leinsterman

Valentia wrote: »

Hmm. Why can't I see the videos in Firefox? IE is ok.

Must be a plug in issue ... my firefox flash plugin is ok ... maybe try to upgrade it ???

Valentia

leinsterman wrote: »

Must be a plug in issue ... my firefox flash plugin is ok ... maybe try to upgrade it ???

Working fine in FF here at home. Tried reinstalling Flash Player at work but it seems to only want to install it to Opera. Never mind, I should be doing other things anyway