videographers/film guys with 5dmk2 ?

<p>just wondering if anyone out there in the film/tv world has had a chance to shoot anything with the 5dmk 2 and can comment on panning/tilting. any weird artifacts or strobing effects? have you tried using any 24/25p filters in post?</p>

<p>thanks<br>

matt</p>

<p>Check out this video from Vacuto, a Chicago based company. They have made a platform for the DSLR video use. It can be used on your shoulder or a tripod. They have a number of kits depending on how you use the camera and can change focus as you shot.</p>

<p>John</p>

<p>hi john,<br>

i've seen the mount, and i guess i need to clarify. i'm not asking about how the camera tilts/pans, i'm asking how the footage looks during pans. ie. are there weird artifacts or strobing...</p>

<p>thanks</p>

 

<p>It's not a great video camera in that it does lag or jitter a bit as one pans to fast, this is only noticeable if one pans to fast and abrtutly however. I've never shot with a regular video camera so I don't know to what extent that is expected. </p>

<p>I've not shot video with the 5dII, but it's in the film world at least (and I guess the 24 fps video world) panning speeds usually need to be held to a pretty low value otherwise you get a strobing introduced due to the interaction of the motion of the subject and the slow frame rate. I wouldn't be surprised if you constrained yourself to traditional panning speeds that the rolling shutter effect would not be noticeable.<br>

When the 24p cameras first came onto the scene, a lot people were using them like a regular 60i video camera, and the footage looked crappy because the operators weren't used to the low temporal resolution of a 24p image compared to a 60i one (40% of 60i).</p>

<p>I've not shot video with the 5dII, but it's in the film world at least (and I guess the 24 fps video world) panning speeds usually need to be held to a pretty low value otherwise you get a strobing introduced due to the interaction of the motion of the subject and the slow frame rate. I wouldn't be surprised if you constrained yourself to traditional panning speeds that the rolling shutter effect would not be noticeable.<br>

When the 24p cameras first came onto the scene, a lot people were using them like a regular 60i video camera, and the footage looked crappy because the operators weren't used to the low temporal resolution of a 24p image compared to a 60i one (40% of 60i).</p>

<p>Note the strobing effect in Tim's post, as he panned too fast through photo.net.</p>

<p>24p is 24/30 = 80% of full temporal resolution. 30 full frames = 60 interlaced 1/2 frames. On 60i if you pan too fast, you can get tearing (at interlaced point) in addition. Some systems do have circuits to trade spatial resolution to temporal resolution (not free).... Sorry too complicated. That is why 1080p is more expensive then 1080i :-) </p>

<p>I am a retired cinematographer and videographer and would like to offer this analogy.<br>

You can drive a nail with a wrench. However, If I were to build a house, I certainly would not be doing a lot of nail driving with my wrench. I would buy a hammer which is built expressly for the job.<br>

And, if I saw a TV ad stating that they were selling a multipurpose wrench which has a hammer built-in; I would think twice about getting it if I wanted to use it to drive a lot of nails.<br>

However, if it was a great wrench, and incidentally could drive nails, I wouldn't think badly of it.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>yes richard, a nice analogy. i'm hoping this wrench is capable of driving nails half decently. :)</p>

<p>again, if anyone has any raw shots...even a 3 second clip online, i'd be grateful!</p>

<p>thanks</p>

<p>Hey Richard, what if the wrench drove nails better than the hammer? Here's four options for a videographer or aspiring cinematographer...</p>

<ol>

<li>A conventional video camera, with a 2/3 inch sensor. Low light performance is marginal (even from the 3-CCD cameras costing much more than the Canon 5D II). Cinematic shallow depth of field is difficult to achieve. There are Rube Goldberg contraptions videographers use to get shallow depth of field on video. A mount for a Nikon or Canon lens, that then projects an image onto a small ground glass screen, and a closeup lens that attaces to a video camera lens so that it can focus on this ground glass. Tremendous light loss and optical quality loss, instead of just using a sensor built to match those lenses. Let's call this a hammer with a nice, straight hammer like shaft, and a 1 ounce (30g) head.</li>

<li>The 5D II. Low light performance is that of a huge sensor and a fast SLR lens, 16x better than the video camera. Depth of field is whatever you want. Go as shallow as you want, with an 85mm f1.2 you can pretty much match what Kibrick did with the f0.7 lenses on Barry Lyndon (his film format was half the 5D II frame). Or stop down as much as you want for deep DOF. since the resolution is low by photographic standards (1080p is 1/4 the resolution of a 21mp photograph) you can stop down to f45 without encountering prohibitive amounts of diffraction. But the user interface is that of a still camera, awkward for cine. Call this one a hammer with a wrench's handle, but a 16 ounce (450g) head.</li>

<li>The Red One. Bigger sensor (but not as big as the one on the 5D II), a cine camera's handling, adapters for Ari, Nikon, and Canon lenses. And a price tag, by the time you get the camera docked to a processor and storage unit, of over $40,000. Ok, it's the hammer with the right handle and the right head, but it costs half the price of a house. Dang it, it's NASA's hammer.</li>

<li>The camera with the 5D II's price tag, lens mount, and sensor, but a body built for video. Only problem is that it doesn't exist yet. </li>

</ol>

<p>Not saying that the 5D II will be the very best thing for cinematography ever, or even that one would want to shoot an entire feature film with it (although, conceivably, one could). But nothing in it's priice range (or even 10x its price range) puts a sensor that big together with a mount for using fast photographic lenses, and I can see more and more people using it for at least part of a cinemagraphic endevour. If your budget can only cover hammers 1 or 2 (or both), then you're sort of stuck. They both suck, it's just that they suck in two completely different ways.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Note the strobing effect in Tim's post, as he panned too fast through photo.net.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That was funny!</p>

<p>Thanks, Mark. I try. ;)</p>