5D mkII for corporate shoot

[Stuart Brontman]

Hello All,

I've got a corporate shoot coming up in a few weeks involving video and photography. I planned on using my trusty XH A1's for the video portion (it's all being shot outdoors) and using my just purchased 5D mkII for high-rez stills... The more I read in this forum, the more tempting it becomes to try the 5D mkII as an HD tool... I'm not looking to replace my A1 yet, but I also don't have any fantasies about using the 5D as my sole HD camera... I still need a dedicated video camera until the dSLR hybrids reach the next level of development in a couple fo years...

Here are a few questions I've got for the 5D mkII experts here...

1) Can I get decent focus using my 7" Marshall monitor with the 5D's 480p monitor output?

2) Can I get decent sharpness and non-shallow DOF shots from this camera and avoid bad artifacts? The shots will involve industrial workers in the field doing their various tasks while using various equipment.

3) How is the workflow and viability of HD files when using Cineform to encode for editing? I do quite a bit of motion graphics work, so I need fairly robust files. I've read the native H.264 files don't stand up too well with extensive editing.

4) Audio is not an issue for me for this shoot...

5) Does Magic Lantern work yet with the latest Canon firmware? I can't find reliable information on this (maybe I did not look hard enough...).

Thanks for any help. There's SO MUCH on this forum, it's kind of hard to know where to start if I choose to try the 5D mkII in the field...

[Marcus Marchesseault]

I am probably not considered the ultimate expert on all these things, but here are my answers anyway.

1. SD monitoring for HD footage is obviously not ideal.

2. Yes. Turn down the sharpness setting in your camera to avoid moire patterns. Unless you are shooting brick walls with lots of grid lines in every shot, you should be fine. Most people don't notice or even know what a moire pattern is anyway.

3. Encoding to Cineform or another intermediate format is recommended.

4. Even if audio was a concern, there is a solution by turning down the camera audio all the way and using a Juicedlink adapter to pump a really strong signal into the camera.

5. I don't believe so, but check the ML site by following the link at the top of this forum.

[Chris Barcellos]

1. Yes. Actually, camera is outputting HD until camera starts recording, so for prefocus it is decent. I set my Marshall to get largest full picture still. I think the pixel to pixel setting what works for me.


2. Moire and aliasing are biggest issues that rise up occasionally. You will need to be aware of the issues and shoot around ti..


3. I use Cineform exclusively, and of course the whole purpose of Cineform is to get the footage into an immenently editible form. FirstLight is super with the footage too.

4. Audio good audio can be pumped into the camera-- using a good field mixer like the ENG44 and an XLR adapter, or using Juiced link as a preamp .

5. A new version is out in alpha format, but I have been working with it regulary, and it appears on track. It is available for alpha testers at the development site. Send me PM if you want a link to it.

[Stuart Brontman]

Thanks for the suggestions. My camera is showing up today, and as you can imagine I'm quite excited. I'll be concentrating on checking it out first for stills and then move onto video in the next couple of days. I'm most intrigued about wide angle HD possibilities on some of my corporate shoots - especially in factories where I'm always wishing for more wide shots... I've got a Sigma 15-30mm (which is amazingly sharp - I guess I got one of the better ones), an older Canon 20-35 2.8L, and a Nikon MF 20mm.

Just imagine where this is all going in the coming years... Exciting times are ahead if we can afford to pay for these marvelous tools.

[Burk Webb]

I've just been doing a lot of this exact type of work with my 7D and the clients LOVE the footage. Being able to shoot video and stills with the same camera is a surprisingly big deal. The most important thing I found is that the stills and the video have a very similar look so going back and forth looks really slick.

All the previous advice is really good, here are a couple from me:

1) The rode Videomic with the deadcat windscreen works pretty good and is very convenient.
2) Racking focus on the 5D is a bit trickier then with the 7D because of the "recording downconvert" issue but playing back the shot for review is so quick and convenient that you should be fine. I find myself checking shots a lot with the 7D and it really gives one confidence.
3) Wide shots with deep dof can bring up aliasing problems, especially industrial stuff because of all the strait lines. If you see it here is what I've had luck with. A lockdown shot seems to be the quickest solution, especially if you see a lot of aliasing on edges. If it's on patterns like brick roll your focus so that you just dial it out, of course this can be tricky because you can only get so soft before it looks like your blowing the shot. In this case I've had luck with changing composition to a shallow dof angled shot with the near part in focus.
4) Get a polarizer and .3,.6 and .9 ND filters or some type of "vari-nd" filter. A .6 grad comes in real handy as well. This will let you keep your shutter at 50/60/120 and you have the option of getting your iris wide open for monster shallow 5D style depth of field.

So that's a bit of my .02 - good luck.