The f-stop is a function of both focal length and aperture of the lens - Focal length divided by aperture diameter.

Since larger sensors require longer lenses to achieve the same angle of view, it is far hard to make such lenses with a low f-stop.

For a smaller sensor you are, in effect, condensing the light onto a small area, increasing the intensity. However, larger sensors tend to be more sensitive and produce less noise due to their larger photosites. Therefore the advantage of smaller chips is often lost.

DOF is dictated by actual aperture. Since the actual aperture in a f3.5 35mm lens is still far larger than a f1.4 1/3" lens (of the same angle of view), the 35mm will still produce far shallower DOF.

Your point about zoom ratio is pretty true though - there are any 35mm still lenses with the flexibility of video zooms.

Does anyone know for sure if it uses a VBR? I contacted Michael at Luminous Landscape and asked him about the 47 Mbps rate he showed for it. He said that was a mistake in the figures Canon had sent him along with the advance 5D he was loaned for testing. He said he corrected it on his website. I didn't see anything about the bit-rate on the Canon website other than the 38.6 Mbps rate they listed.

Has anyone been able to download the sample 5D video he has posted on Luminous Landscape? I tried twice, using 6 Mbps broadband and after 75 minutes, it still hadn't finished. I'm not sure it was even loading at all, as there was no progress indicator showing on my screen.

I'm more than aware how hard it is to focus a 35mm full frame lens, anyone who has been using a Letus or Brevis 35mm adapter knows its not easy. But you can do it on run and gun, especially if you stay wide. Have a look here Rice farmers of the Philippines on Vimeo

Photojournalists have gotten used to changing lenses frequently on the move, I have something like 15 different ones and kit out according to the job at hand.

That said I'd plan on the 5dmkII tripping up many people who don't really understand what they are getting into or just can't adjust their style from having an all in one video lens as before. I can still see plenty of occasions when a regular video camera is more usable than the 5DmkII, that's why I'm not planning on selling my Sony EX-1's just yet. In fact I am going to set them to 1080/30p and see if I can try and match the 5dmkII and Sony colours when it ships. That way they can be used interchangeably.

I think that's exactly the point Tom is making. What's the point in making a bigger sensor, with a two stops sensitivity advantage for a given f-stop....... if you can then only realistically make a suitable lens that's f3.5 instead of f1.8? Effectively, they both then require the same amount of scene illumination. In the still world, you may be able to just say, OK, 1/125s instead of 1/500s - that's not possible with video.

The bigger sensor may provide shallower dof, which may or may not be an advantage, but is likely to need bigger, heavier, more expensive lenses, with a likely much smaller zoom range.

A much smaller, un-motorized zoom range. Maybe not a big deal for some filmmakers who use a zoom as an adjustable prime, but a definite challenge for anyone wanting to change focal length during a shot.

And zoom photo lenses tend to breathe quite a bit... another challenge for anyone wanting to pull focus with one during a shot.

where a large sensor shines is with wide angle lenses with shallow depth of field. for example... here's a shot I took the other day on a 1ds3 with a 35mm f1.4.....


please note that a 35mm on a full frame 35mm still body gives an angle of view of 63 degrees. Canon has a 24mm f1.4 as well... fantastic lens..... and their 14mm has a angle of view of 114 degrees... and it's not a fisheye ( distortion )

http://www.witzke-studio.com/_W8E4057.jpg

many wildlife photogs I know prefer the smaller aps size sensors so they get more reach out of their longer lenses..... horses of courses

I agree it terms of zoom ratio but larger chips are far better in terms of low light sensitivity/noise and DOF control. My 2/3" camera wipes the floor with my 1/3" cameras even though my 2/3" lenses have a higher f stop.

If Canon could make a video camera with 35mm sensors which made the same step up again, it would be very interesting. I'm tempted to get the 5DMKII as a wide angle and low light tool. Even with a few lenses, it would cost less that a broadcast wide angle lens.

You're right; it's just such agonizing working conditions some of us want to enjoy—with the fillip of remaining independent of corporate financing and its attendants!

I've got an XH-A1, and I've pre-ordered the 5DmkII with the expectation that it may well replace the XH. One big factor in this is that with the 20x zoom I've found far more situations where I wished for much wider angle rather than longer zoom. In fact I can't think of a situation where I used the zoom that I couldn't have just moved in closer if the zoom was shorter (I don't shoot wildlife or sports where that would be difficult). I have however run into several situations where I couldn't move any further back (small rooms, etc) and the lens just wasn't wide enough - which shouldn't be a problem with the 5D.

This is exactly my situation - I rarely use the zoom other than for composition. In the very few instances where I have used a slow pull in a shot I'm pretty sure I can figure out a way to deal with it with the 5D - or just shoot the scene differently. Ultimately I think the suitability of the 5D for video has a lot to do with your intended subject. It won't be good for one-off, run & gun type shooting - but for staged, dramatic work I think it's going to be great because you can easily work around the weaknesses of the camera and really emphasize it's strengths.

The 5D apparently does drive the autofocus in video, but it uses a slower contrast detection mode since the mirror is locked up while shooting. I believe Vincent Laforet mentioned in one of his blog posts that it worked but was slow to react... hard to know what this means since he's primarily a still photographer and DSLRs in general have much faster autofocus than most video cameras. I'm also pretty sure one of Canon's promo videos shows the face-detection mode working while shooting video, which could actually make it more useful than that on many video cameras - it would be less likely to do things like shift between the foreground subject and background. It'll be interesting to see if you can do things with this like select which face to focus on in a scene... might allow for automatic rack focusing between two people.

I'd like to see a lot of the contrast detection techniques used in P&S cameras make their way into camcorders and the LiveView/MovieMode of DSLRs. Focusing is the hardest on these higher resolution cameras, and right now, the best solution is to buy an external HD monitor.

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

Should give you an idea.

Dan

Raw video from the Reverie short is up now:

Canon Digital Learning Center - EOS 5D Mark II: Full-Resolution Video Clips

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.

Any news whether it'll do 25p?

It is 30p only in all regions at time of writing.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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 ?

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.

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.

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!

want to see Vincent Laforet's movie
 

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

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

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.

Parfocal - does it matter
 

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.

I'm not talking about changing aperture, I'm talking about changing zoom - the traditional way to focus with a video camera is to zoom all the way in on your subject, focus, then zoom back out to compose your shot. This only works though if the lens holds focus while zooming and my understanding is that if it's not parfocal this technique will not work.

yes it would be nice if some one could post a decent all purpose zoom the can hold focus,
could be from any manufacturer.

Do a Google search for "Canon parfocal zoom" and you'll find some good info on this topic.

For those of us that use VLC for video playback... you'll need to do the following to
get VLC to playback the 5D MkII footage... (gleaned from a different site)

H.264 codecs are pretty CPU intensive and VLC can't use multi-cores to decode it yet.

1. Open Tools/ Preferences
2. Click Show settings = All
3. Go to "Input/Codecs
4. Go to "Other codecs/ FFmpeg" subcategory
5. Set "Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding" to ALL
6. Restart VLC

What Type of Video CoDec is Actually Used on the 5d Mark II?
 

I thought I knew the answer to this, as Canon described it as an H.264/MPEG-4 format, using a 38.6 Mbps rate. However, another announcement by Canon, in describing its new Digic-4 processor, gives some confusing information. They say that the video format with Digic-4 cameras will be a non B-frame (keyframe) type of H.264. They also say that about 6 MB of storage is needed for each second of HD video in the SX1 camera, which would give it a 48 Mbps rate. Elsewhere, in the SX1 owner's manual, it says that a 42.4 Mbps rate is used. Doesn't all MPEG-4 encoding use a B-frame or keyframe system? Does the SX1 ultrazoom/fixed-lens camera (About $600.-$700. predicted price), have a different video encoding system than the 5D Mark II? And does the SX1 use an even higher bit-rate?

Maybe, someone can straighten this out for me. Actually, having an HD video-capable camera as low-cost as the SX1 and with its great lens power and such a high bit-rate, with non B-frame encoding, would interest me. Here's the link to this Canon annoucement:

Canon Tips Off Enhanced Capabilities of Its New Image Processor -- Tech-On!

Apparently, it uses only I and P frames. B frames look forward and backward, and are more complicated to create.

In compression, the decoder is specified. You can encode anything you want, as long as it can be decoded by a standard decoder. So decoders are required to understand B frames. Encoders aren't required to produce them.

Just a random tidbit, when I posted on the 12th that it would have it, it wasn't speculation, I knew someone who used it. This a comment based on the thread Chris closed (rightly so) where I criptically made it sound like speculation, I just couldn't reveal my sourse is all.

I freely admit that I haven't yet seen much from this camera, but it seems to me that comparing to an HD video camera is in the same sphere as comparing a DSLR stills camera to snapping a shot on a mobile phone. Or am I being a bit harsh?!
Steve

well it's more like if that mobile phone had 8 mega pix and mini interchangeable lenses. That's why this 5d is raising so many eyebrows. The only thing really missing is 24p

speaking of which does anybody know how that's going, any word from canon?

What does it need 24P for? Surely no-one is seriously thinking of using this for cinema release?!