Canon USA announces HD-equipped EOS 1D Mk. IV

[Valeriu Campan]

Originally Posted by Warren Kawamoto

I'm waiting for some genius engineer to put the 1D "guts" and a H4n into a small video camera chassis. Super 35mm video with 4 channels of audio. Hmmmmm......

Have a look at this:
He removed the zoom and put a 5D2 between the camera body and the matte box

[Frank Vrionis]

anyone know if the HDMI signal is clean and full rez/colour space?

[Charles Papert]

How small does the chassis have to be? The 1D is so little to begin with, simply building a frame that mounts the camera, audio recorder and whatever other boxes/battery/baseplate required would allow for proper counterbalanced shoulder mounting yet would still be reasonably light and compact (think the JVC HD100/200 series).

I haven't been able to figure out what the Electric Films chap is doing from his website--how is the image from the 5D magically hopping into the XDCAM camera??

EDIT: Holy cow, I get it now--it's just a shell of a video camera! How bizarre. I guess that's one way to "impress the client".

It reminds me of the prop-house Betacams we use on set when there are supposed to be news photographers in a scene. These are extremely detailed Betacam mockups with fake lenses, mike etc. They do take a real battery to power a working AB Ultralight on top as well as tally lights on the front and back. Apparently they cost something like $8000!

[Valeriu Campan]

Charles,

Quite a contraption... I think that he feeds the HDMI from 5D out to the camera viewfinder.
I'd rather have in 'black box' a Nanoflash and Zoom h4n, if the HDMI output is really HD, at least before recording.
From your observations, how is the HDMI out on 1D4 behaving?

[Charles Papert]

The good news was that it didn't seem to change between not-recording and recording, i.e. the resolution doesn't drop down. But the bad news is that it's not full-frame like it is in playback. So you get an HD image of smaller dimensions--which of course makes it not really HD. At least that's what I remember from that blur of a night.

I'm working with Vincent and the 1D on a job next week and will have more thoughts on this. I've just bought a Blackmagic HDMI to HD-SDI converter so I'll be able to use my brand-new HD Steadicam monitor (just arrived today!) along with my Camwave, so we'll know a lot more when we get all this cooking.

I'm designing a rig that will have a lot of these things incorporated in a nice studio/shouldermount configuration--will post pix when it's done. Off to the machinists tomorrow!

[Trevor Meeks]

Wow, excited to see that, Charles!

[Charles Papert]

Here's a pic of my prep set-up--just a 5D on it at the moment but it's ready for the 1D. Blackmagic converter works beautifully, HD-SDI signal is much more stable than the HDMI (just finished a shoot with a Marshall HDMI monitor, all sorts of issues there--you tap the monitor and the luminance shifts!). That's it piggybacked on the rear of the Camwave transmitter. Bracketry is all cobbled together from my bits and pieces--not as slick as a custom mount but it is solid and will get the job done.

[Charles Papert]

Update regarding the Marshall HDMI setup: I've spoken to the good folks at Marshall about this issue and they are investigating. I'll post updates when I have them, so for those considering a Marshall HDMI monitor, stand by for more information on this issue.

[Jon Fairhurst]

In theory, the HDMI signal should be just at stable. The main problem for pro work is that the connector isn't captive. It's really designed for fixed installations. Assuming that you're not messing with the connector, it sounds like you have a bad solder joint in the monitor.

An HDMI to HD-SDI converter makes a lot of sense for pro applications - it's captive, it supports long cable runs, and you can run it to a DA to split the signal for a video village.

[Lynne Whelden]

Can someone tell me if the 1 D is the "ideal" camera at the present time? Or to put it another way, what are its drawbacks? Is it the file size limit? Audio recording? Form factor? To record, do you have to have other devices cabled up, making an awkward arrangement?

I use the term "ideal" almost tongue-in-cheek. But the fact that this camera operates under most lighting conditions is very attractive to me. Plus it is lightweight. And its DOF of course, along with lens selection. What's there not to like?

[Charles Papert]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

An HDMI to HD-SDI converter makes a lot of sense for pro applications - it's captive, it supports long cable runs, and you can run it to a DA to split the signal for a video village.

Yes, and on top of that, I have yet to see an HD-SDI monitor that doesn't offer loop-through, so you can loop out of your onboard monitor for a director's monitor. Actually, the Blackmagic converter has two HD-SDI outputs so you would have 3 possible outputs with that setup.

[Chris Hurd]

For Lynne, the 1D Mk. IV has the exact same HD video recording capabilities as the 7D (with the exception of superior low-light capability, of course). So you could review all of the pros and cons which have been previously discussed rather heavily around here regarding the 7D and the nearly similar (in terms of HD recording) 5D Mk. II and use them to formulate an accurate opinion of the 1D Mk. IV. Hope this helps,

[Jon Fairhurst]

I'm still waiting for somebody to do the strobe test on the 7D in 1080 and 720 modes so we can get an accurate measure of its rolling shutter. From the 1D4 video that I've seen, the rolling shutter effect is significantly less than the 5D2 and 7D. I'd really love to get the scan speed numbers from that puppy!

[Daniel Browning]

Originally Posted by Lynne Whelden

Can someone tell me if the 1 D is the "ideal" camera at the present time? Or to put it another way, what are its drawbacks?

The most important drawback, IMHO, is that it does not (presently) run Magic Lantern.

Originally Posted by Lynne Whelden

But the fact that this camera operates under most lighting conditions is very attractive to me.

I'm hopeful that the low light performance is improved as well, but I haven't seen any raw images from it yet, so I don't know yet. The 5D2 starts with a big size advantage (1.7X more light gathering area), which gives it a 2/3 stop advantage in low light. Hopefully the 1D4 technology is a full stop improvement, enough to take the low light crown from the 5D2.

Originally Posted by Lynne Whelden

Plus it is lightweight. And its DOF of course, along with lens selection. What's there not to like?

The DOF control is nice, more than the 7D but not as much as the 5D2. If you never shoot wide angle, the lens selection is good. But if you want wides and ultrawides, the options are worse than the 7D and 5D2. Canon makes lenses for spoons (1.6X) and they make lenses for forks (FF), but they don't make any for sporks (1.3X). For example, to get the same angle of view as the 10-22, Canon would have to make a 13-29mm.

[Charles Papert]

Update on the Marshall monitor issue I mentioned earlier: it seems that it was an isolated issue with the particular monitor in hand. Marshall was able and ready to fix it and did so within a business day.

I will be looking at their transflective 6.5" HD-SDI model as the onboard monitor for my 1D/5D setup. Interested to see whether it will be viewable enough under all daylight conditions to work without a hood. This would replace the need to use a loupe on the camera's viewfinder, resulting in a more streamlined handheld configuration and higher resolution to judge focus.