Full HD on Canon EOS 5D Mk. II -- officially announced

[Toenis Liivamaegi]

Vincent himself asked for general public to leave a comment to his BLOG here Original “raw” clips from “Reverie” Now Available for Download Vincent Laforet’s Blog so Canon could see the reasoning why should the other framerates implemented and if there are people out there who would want such a feature, tell about the European users.

There are raw video downloads too now.

Cheers
T

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Dan Chung

The Live view AF speed should be similar to the EOS50D, have a look at the end of this video YouTube - Canon EOS 50D First Impression Video by DigitalRev

Thanks for the link - assuming this is the same for the 5D I'm even more excited about it now (jump to ~6:30 in the video if you want to see the live view AF demo). I only use the autofocus on my XHA1 very occasionally, and even then I only use it with the push-auto so that it refocuses when I feel it's necessary, not when something moves in the scene. That looks like how it will work with AF in Live mode - i.e. you have to push & hold the AF button when you want it to focus, otherwise it should hold whatever the last focus is. I'm guessing this will prove to be the best way to focus with this camera (rather than going full manual) - my understanding is that a lot of SLR zoom lenses don't hold focus while zooming, which would make the typical routine of zoom in, focus, zoom out to compose a shot unusable.

Unfortunately it looks like if you're used to using autofocus continuously there isn't a mode where it does that without having to hold down the AF button.

Face detection mode looks to be continuous, no button press required, and appears to track the faces pretty well, so I definitely think it could be more useful than standard AF on most video cameras. Unfortunately based on that video it looks like face detection selects which face to focus on automatically, it's too bad it can't track multiple faces and highlight the one that's in focus so you could move the focus from face to face.

[Simon Wyndham]

my understanding is that a lot of SLR zoom lenses don't hold focus while zooming, which would make the typical routine of zoom in, focus, zoom out to compose a shot unusable

They certainly hold focus. You can perform the zoom in to focus and then zoom out method with stills zooms. I use this technique all the time with my DSLR.

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Tyler Franco

Pretty great looking stuff. Looks every bit as good as my Sony EX1 without having to lug around the big letus attachment on the front.

Definitely - I was looking forward to these to get a feel for the real impact of the rolling shutter. The second shot with the actor at the sink shows it the most - handheld with high-speed shake. You can see a little bit of compression/stretch going on (which generally bothers me a lot more than skew in pans) but it's very minimal, no worse than what I've seen in EX1 & even RED footage. I figure if I have to look hard for it the average viewer will never even notice or care.

In the blog comments someone mentioned running the footage (from the original film) through Bijou and getting better results than with the EX1, but I still see enough movement there that I think it may throw off tracking in a lot of situations.

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Simon Wyndham

They certainly hold focus. You can perform the zoom in to focus and then zoom out method with stills zooms. I use this technique all the time with my DSLR.

Good to know, the autofocus on my nikon is so good I haven't tried this technique in years with an SLR. Ken Rockwell's review of the 5D's 24-105mm kit lens mentioned that focus shifts while zooming so I assumed this was an issue with other modern lenses; maybe it depends more on the specific lens.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Here's a sample that shows the rolling shutter at its worst: 5d mark2 sample HD video on Vimeo

I've also seen some full frame captures that show somewhat smeary noise reduction/compression artifacts. There are crisper camera options for 1080p.

That said, if you target the web and DVDs, have a story that doesn't require fast motion, don't plan on any extreme color correction, and your audio doesn't rely on the camera's 1/8-inch input, this is a heck of a tool - especially for night shooting with shallow DOF and a variety of lens looks.

Come to think of it, the half-scale Laforet video meets every one of the requirements in the above paragraph. The guy knows his stuff!

[Evan Donn]

It's good to finally see a clip which really shows us worst-case rolling shutter artifacts. It's definitely there, although much better than the d90. I'd put it on par with the HV20 or EX1 though, compared to these test clips:

Rolling Shutter HV20 test 24p wobbling on Vimeo
Sony PMW-EX1 Skew and Wobble Test on Vimeo

Despite the similar rolling shutter limitations I've seen some amazing work produced with both the HV20 & EX1... and I'm sure we're going to see a lot of amazing work produced with the 5D once it gets out in the wild.

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

Come to think of it, the half-scale Laforet video meets every one of the requirements in the above paragraph. The guy knows his stuff!

That's the key with this - it's easy to look at a test designed to highlight a flaw of the sensor and dismiss the camera outright, as many seem to be doing (not necessarily here but on some of the other forums). If you know what the capabilities & limitations (and they all have significant limitations at this point) of your equipment are you can do some amazing work despite those limitations. Laforet did this - in fact, he managed to do it without really having a chance to get to know the camera well, and he managed to produce a film that feels very dynamic without pushing the limitations of the rolling shutter.

[Mark Donnell]

I've been scanning through this entire topic, but am unsure of several things. First, is it generally agreed that the 5D Mk II shoots the best quality video among the current still camera contenders ? Second, is the video easy to ingest into one or more of the common professional NLEs ?

[Tyler Franco]

I think without a doubt the 5D Mark II shoots the best quality video of any still camera to date. I think that is nearly undeniable at this point even with the camera not yet released.

As for editing. I run Final Cut Studio on a Mac so that is the only thing I can comment on. I can drop the raw, right out of camera, full resolution video files into a FCP timeline, let FCP change the sequence settings to match the clip and play the video in real time.

[Evan Donn]

The one drawback with FCP at least is that h.264 is not supported for RT effects, so although you can drop it straight in and start editing without any conversion you will need to render any effects in order to see them.

[Tyler Franco]

Evan is correct, and on that note, make sure you change your sequence settings to render into a quality codec like ProRes. You definitely don't want to render into H.264!

[Tito Haggardt]

i can not view the 50DmarkII movie on Vincent Laforet's blog is there another address it is viewable at?
thanks
tito

[Kevin Shaw]

Edius can reportedly work with the footage from this camera as being discussed on the Edius forums (Edius works with Canon 5DMII! - Forum Index)

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by Simon Wyndham

They certainly hold focus. You can perform the zoom in to focus and then zoom out method with stills zooms. I use this technique all the time with my DSLR.

I looked into this some more and it looks like it varies from lens to lens - there's a list here of canon lenses that hold focus:

Parfocal Lenses

looks like an older list and the kit lens isn't on it, but based on Ken Rockwell's review and a lack of any other info I'm currently assuming the kit zoom is not parfocal.

[Anmol Mishra]

Even if its not parfocal, you can still set the aperture and then focus for film purposes. The 3rd party zoom lenses from Sigma, Tamron, Tokina should still be fine..
It really does not matter if you focus first and then set aperture or if you set aperture first and then focus.

Originally Posted by Evan Donn

I looked into this some more and it looks like it varies from lens to lens - there's a list here of canon lenses that hold focus:

Parfocal Lenses

looks like an older list and the kit lens isn't on it, but based on Ken Rockwell's review and a lack of any other info I'm currently assuming the kit zoom is not parfocal.