Canon 5D M IV - any good news

[Jon Fairhurst]

One way to think of this is Pro Camera HDR vs. Display HDR vs. Consumer Camera HDR.

In Pro Camera HDR, you capture as much dynamic range with as many bits as you can afford. You can then mask, grade, and process the video to get what you want. It can be graded for standard dynamic range or Display HDR.

Display HDR uses at least 10-bits and a transfer function like SMPTE ST-2084 or HLG and shows it on a display with a very bright screen. This is real dynamic range all the way to the eye.

Consumer Camera HDR captures a large range and automatically grades it to fit in a standard dynamic range signal. The 5D4 has Consumer Camera HDR.

Tom, are you sure that the 5D4 just rolls off the signal with its HDR feature? My guess is that it takes the two images and blends them to maintain local contrast. For instance, it would use the high exposure image to show cave walls and the low exposure image to show the bright world outside of the cave. If one were to combine the two images and just roll it off, you would either get a low contrast image with detail or a high contrast image without detail. By tone mapping light and dark areas differently, one can get contrast and detail at the same time.

In other words, Consumer Camera HDR is like shooting Pro Camera HDR and having a colorist inside of your camera who grades it for a standard dynamic range output. The colorist can use power windows and other tricks in order to preserve local detail. Of course, this automatic, digital colorist might not always make the right choices and might not take the time to align the images well enough to keep things really sharp. And this colorist discards all of the source and intermediate content. Then again, this colorist works at super-human speed and is paid with a few cents worth of electrons. :)

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

Tom, are you sure that the 5D4 just rolls off the signal with its HDR feature? My guess is that it takes the two images and blends them to maintain local contrast. For instance, it would use the high exposure image to show cave walls and the low exposure image to show the bright world outside of the cave. If one were to combine the two images and just roll it off, you would either get a low contrast image with detail or a high contrast image without detail. By tone mapping light and dark areas differently, one can get contrast and detail at the same time.

Hi Jon,

What I meant is highlight detail is being containerized within a standard BT-1886/2.2 gamma, 709 knee and sRGB gamut, which means the displayed DR is 6-7 stops and standard color volume. How they do that, through tone mapping light and dark areas into a blended image; you may well be correct. Is that your understanding of it?

[Jon Fairhurst]

Hi Tom,

Yes, that's the key to HDR photography, which only has so much dynamic range when printed or shown on a normal display. If you work with light and dark extremes globally, it's the same as adjusting the S-curve in the camera. A flat curve preserves detail at the extremes, but looks dull due to low contrast.

If you work with the different regions separately, one can keep both the crispness of high contrast and maintain the local detail. Our eyes/brain do this local tone mapping automatically in the high dynamic range of the real world, But our eyes don't add contrast to a low contrast image. And if the detail is already lost on paper, we can't get it back.

The classic example of how our brain does local tone mapping is the chessboard illusion. The dark square in the light has the same luminance as the white square in the shadow. But we perceive different brightness. This allows us to do power masks and grade different regions differently. And it allows HDR automatic processing to keep both contrast and detail.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...1&d=1474568641

[Tom Roper]

In the current market it's misleading though to call this particular video feature of the 5DmkIV *HDR* if the consumer's expectation would be that he will get the same kind of HDR playing from his camera or memory card that he would get from playing UHD Blu-ray with HDR10 or streamed from Netflix or Amazon prime.

It points out a fundamental problem with laying claim to HDR because photography had it first with HDR that blended multiple exposures into one image, and now movies, video and displays are claiming the same term to a completely different format.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Yeah, it's all "high dynamic range", but with very different scenarios and solutions. The branding could be better., but HDR is all we got.

BTW, I got the iPhone 7 (not Plus). Low light shooting is very nice as it has an f/1.8 lens and image stabilization. The stabilization and fast lens help keep the two photos for HDR aligned, so the HDR images are much clearer than from earlier iPhones. No HDR video though. Just photos. And low light isn't quite as good as my old 5D2 (let alone a 5D4) with an f/1.4 lens, but it's pretty amazing for something that slides into a thin pocket.

[Vishal Jadhav]

i saw the performance of both the 5D MIV and the IDX M II

there is a advantage getting the 1DX M II for the 4k 60 fps and the HD slow motion of 120 fps , these higher frame rates in the 1D X M II make it a choice.
The codec is still the same i hope it improves.

Additional to the above the noise handling capability is better.
since i am looking to film with this most of the times i am going with it i think

[Vishal Jadhav]

As interesting as it may sound, i didnt buy the 1DX MII but actually bought the 5D MIV and today was the first day of testing and i am not at all disappointed , had a GH4 to do 4 k before but the video from Canon is one you will always like for the colours, i always shoot nature and wildlife and colour rendering of the 5D MIV is far far better than the GH4 and i have been using the GH4 for 2 years so i pretty much know the outputs it can give.
I am happy with the results first day with the 5D MIV, going for a extensive video and photo shoot for 6 days will update on return .

[Jon Fairhurst]

Very nice!

I can imagine that the 4K crop factor is a good thing for wildlife and not such a good thing for wide, establishing shots.

I'd love to know your opinion about HDR (is it useful or a gimmick?) and if the full-frame HD is overly soft like the 5D3. Frankly, I'm not optimistic about these points.

I've read different opinions on DPAF, but I'm not too worried about it. If I'm in a situation where I/we can pull focus, great. If not, DPAF should be better than nothing. And if it doesn't work for me, I can go back to my manual focus ways.

[Benjamin Maas]

FWIW... I've been using the 5D MK4 quite a bit.

A few observations-

4K looks amazing but for my work, it's almost useless. I do long-form concerts and such. Shooting 4K becomes prohibitive because of the codec. The average concert would be over half a TB of data which is really unwieldy.

1080 looks quite good too. Not overly soft like all the other Canon DSLRs. I've been shooting with C100s and the 5D and they cut in interchangeably. I did put Cinema Style on it which helps a bit. It's not perfect, but it's a means to an end. One of these days, I'll try one of the C Log emulators.

To this point, the HDR has not really been useful for me. It's been a while since I played with it. I remember not really digging what the picture looked like, but I can't remember exactly what I didn't like.

Loving the DPAF with the touch screen. Works beautifully. Adjusting speed takes a bit of work, though...

Oh, and for stills, it's awesome. Has an amazing dynamic range- working with the raw files has yielded amazing results. Had shots where the background is blown out and the foreground is dark. All the info is there and I made some great shots as a result.

--Ben

[Jon Fairhurst]

Great review, Benjamin.

As I recall, the 5D4 doesn't output 4K over HDMI. I wonder how a 4K setup downscaled to HD over HDMI would look? That would deliver all the cropped pixels to the video processor. The DIGIC chip can likely do high quality downsampling. That could feed an Atmos (or similar) monitor/recorder for long form work. Yes, it's more cumbersome, but a big monitor could add value. That said, does the touchscreen still work when HDMI is connected?

[Vishal Jadhav]

Jon,

Finally shot the week with 5D IV and i have to say the DPAF on this DSLR is what i can buy it for simply too good. If you own canon glass there is nothing better to use when it comes to the Focusing using the touch screen, haven't tried the altering of the timing to this but it works amazing in field .
The only down side of this is the way it eats the Memory , however most of the times in wildlife it works as never shots are too long but you need to keep a track of how much is left, Canon has a estimated remaining timing displayed on top of screen info so it helps.
i did not do any HD video nor have i tried the slow motion yet so would respond to that point once i give that a try.
I have never used external recorder so the internal recording is ok with me, however with the data size the external recorder may make sense but then CAnon breaks it and only delivers HD over HDMI so its not something that i need .
I wonder Whats are the Magic Lantern Folks doing about this now, A CLOg and HDMI 4k out with some ML titbits may make this the most desirable DSLR on the market. However this is a Canon lover talking so do take it with a bit of salt.
p.s. i have nothing against any other brand, i use Pansonic, sony and nikon however i am still bowled over with the colour reproduction of the Canon in camera