Andrew Reid

Blackmagic still offer us Resolve 10, 4K and global shutter.   But the Pocket Cinema Camera and 2.5K Blackmagic Cinema Camera are history now.   I had my first proper shoot with the 5D Mark Raw today and the image is astounding.   Fine detail at C300 level, but raw. 14bit smooth gradation and tones. Colour out of this world. Dynamic range and latitude like a raw still. It is unbelievable.   Rendering footage now. Workflow involved converting to ProRes 422. The good thing is the raw is just SO GOOD out of the camera it only needs very minimal touching in After Effects before converting to ProRes for editing. I feel very comfortable deleting the raw masters as the resulting ProRes is just so good!

With raw the codec really is whatever you want it to be.   Just as long as you allow the time to transcode.   A laptop on location, an occasional break in the action, that is all that is required. It is like changing film in the old days. Yes it is a slower pace. Pros are used to working fast. I prefer the slower pace creatively.

Zero gravity seems to work well as a camera stabiliser.   It is amazing to think that only 35 years ago Bowie imagined doing this, and now here is this guy actually singing about it whilst up there for real.   Though Chris is the better spaceman, Bowie is the better singer :)

  Depends on the project. If you are going to a lot of effort to make something look as good as possible and it is a short film, experimental art piece or music video then you can do raw cheaply. Just get two 128GB 1000x KomputerBay cards and dump to a laptop on set every few hours - be as economical with your takes as if you were shooting (and paying for) film by the reel.   Be careful what you define as serious. If by 'serious project' you mean shooting 20 hours of crap a day, well yes of course that gets expensive in terms of storage and media not to mention time spent managing the data and the extra time in post.   You can grade in raw economically and simply then simply convert to ProRes for editing and get rid of the masters. The cinematic end result is still there. No audience member will need to view your master raw files to get that.   Of course, we had this discussion many times with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, and it doesn't seem to have put people off from leaping at the Pocket Cinema Camera which is even cheaper than the 5D Mark III!   If you need broadcast ready codec or ProRes straight out of the cam, then of course raw is not for your project and you'd be better off with a C300 or F5.

  It's quite amusing looking at the different planets of filmmaking. Philip Bloom is saying raw is nice but "not for the 99.9% of us". How about the 1D C is that for the 99% of us running around with $15,000 to spare?

  Full frame mode reads the sensor in such a way as to do a lower resolution scan of the full 22MP chip. It is 14bit linear RGGB bayer raw.   It does not read every pixel and downscale it on the image processor.   It is a raw scan of the sensor, direct to the card.   Fine detail looks very clean, as good as GH2 was. But raw! Dynamic range is incredible and low light looks very promising too.

  My dog won't stand still for long enough in front of a green screen :)   Updated video with more shots coming later today.     When I get back to Berlin tomorrow will be doing many more tests. Currently in UK.

KomputerBay is your friend. These El Cheapo CF cards are amazing for the money. I've had no issues (albiet short term so far) with mine which I bought for the 1D C shoot a few weeks ago. 64GB 1000x one cost me just 80 euros.

  It isn't in there by accident. The raw sensor feed enables live view. Ever since the first live view cameras the sensor has had to do a raw video output continuously.   They all do this.   Amazingly, no manufacturer has thought to give us access to it.   One of the reasons why they haven't is that until only recently the cards just weren't fast enough.

  I think they'll like it. Canon DSLRs are about to get a big sales hike.

  That's a typo, fixed. Should be 1920x1280.   To be honest, I have no idea how the sensor scaling / debayering works in detail so probably best not to answer!!

Wait till you see how the original DNGs grade. Here's some! Put them in Photoshop and dial the magenta / green slider back to normal.   http://www.eoshd.com/uploads/5D3-raw-eoshd.zip   And here is one from my 3.5K clip which had a few dropped frames...   http://www.eoshd.com/uploads/5D3-raw-3-5k.zip

Here's a post that actually has effort put into it, took me all day. http://www.eoshd.com/content/10324/big-news-hands-on-with-continuous-raw-recording-on-canon-5d-mark-iii   Will close this thread now and that one will be the main one for these latest, quite frankly amazing, developments...

Huge thanks go to A1ex, g3gg0, 1% and the whole Magic Lantern team. I have no other words to describe it - this is huge news. Magic Lantern have done the seemingly impossible and given us a continuous raw recording mode on the Canon 5D Mark III. Once activated in the menus the 5D Mark III becomes essentially a full frame Blackmagic Cinema Camera and amazingly mine has not yet exploded. No more short bursts of raw, this is the real thing. Read the full article here

I've been testing this today.   Magic Lantern are geniuses and the image is STUNNING     Just for the record NFS bug the hell out of me. They put absolutely minimal effort into their posts in an effort to get traffic. Everything is cut and paste from an internet browsing session and none of it is actual hands on experience. In other words, always someone else's hard work they are selling ad space around.   Frustrating to be testing and shooting with something, and for the surprise to be spoilt with such a poor attention grabbing article.   Forget 1440x1080 you can do 1920x1280 to the card at 24fps for anamorphic, I'm getting data rates upwards of 90MB/s to the 1000x CF card.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bN-On2CusDM[/youtube] With the rise of J.J. Abrams, TV's aristocracy has morphed into cinema's with JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars Episode VII in the UK next year. J.J. Abrams comes from a family of TV industry figures, his father a TV producer and his mother an executive producer. His sister is a screenwriter. Now with a string of successful TV shows behind him, he's had a string of hits at the box office too. [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/10318/filmmaking-tips-from-j-j-abrams-plus-is-he-actually-any-good]Read the full article here[/url]

I'm surprised Screens Pro cannot see where the frustration is coming from, he just has to open his eyes.   I think Canon's failings fall under many categories.   First there's their very slow product cycle on the good stuff like 7D and 5D, which is totally out of step with the current pace of development. We waited 3 and a half years for the 5D Mark III, still waiting for the 7D update. When the 5D III did finally hit, it didn't meet most people's expectations, even for stills. The Sony sensors in the D800 and RX1 thrash it for dynamic range and resolution. In 2008 Canon had a massive lead vs Sony in CMOS technology. They've not kept up.   Then there's stuff they have simply turned off in firmware. We had to wait a year for 1080p HDMI from the 5D Mark III, despite this being a feature 2009's 7D. They simply flicked a switch in firmware and gave it us. Why wasn't it there in the first instance? God knows what else the hardware can do but they don't allow us to access. 30fps raw burst is a prime example. Magic Lantern simply access a process that is already happening in the camera every time you shoot.   If you look at the raw video feed from the sensor in the 5D2 and 5D3 it is very similar, both have a bit of moire and aliasing in the raw but then the 5D Mark II somehow makes that worse in firmware and the 5D Mark III cures it altogether. Then when it came to the 6D, Canon decided to "un-cure" it, frustrating many 6D owners and forcing them into a more expensive upgrade path. Again, this segmentation is all artificial and very bad for business.   Then there's the conservative approach to innovation. They can innovate with the sensor in a $15,000 camera, but then put the same sensor in a $6000 and $25000 body. As a result, one is needlessly crippled and the other doesn't perform like a $25000 camera, needs external box for 4K, loud fan, etc. When it came to their mirrorless, that was a token gesture towards an important and growing market, and they fucked it up. 2 lenses at launch. Rebel insides in a smaller casing. Chuck it out on the market quick. They have no EVF on any of their stills cameras in 2013. Their live-view AF is the slowest on the market. They are going to be hurt big time by being so conservative. So they have shrunk the Rebel even further, but SL1 again has no new features and the video quality is still dreadful by modern standards (i.e. unchanged since 2009).   Imagine how killer the 1D C could have been if it wasn't just a 1D X with 4K enabled. If the had redesigned it, the profit margin would not have been as large, but they wouldn't then give us the terrible prospect of such a beautiful image trapped in a camera ill suited to deliver it.   Video quality on their APS-C line has stood still since 2009, that's 4 years now. In that time, Panasonic have improved upon the GH1 twice. The GH2 a big leap in image quality, the GH3 a big leap in terms of codec, features and the body. Nikon have gone from being nowhere with the D90 to a camera like the D800, and the superb for the price D5200. They are leaving Canon in the dust for APS-C image quality, be it stills or video.   Canon have reused the same sensor in 8 cameras.   They have used the same Super 35mm CMOS in 3 cameras.   They have released the same flagship DSLR twice, one with a $6000 premium.   That is all very healthy for margins but not good for the customers who expect image quality improvements from their APS-C DSLRs, proper 4K raw recording capabilities from their $25,000 C500 and proper video ergonomics from their $12,000 4K DSLR.   The whole thing is a joke and needs to be changed.   I am sure people in the US arm of Canon are pushing Japan to be more innovative. I am sure the inspiration for Cinema EOS came from the US market and DSLR video. The only way Canon can be saved is by a dramatic intervention from the US.   There's a few more problems too...   - They refuse to support Magic Lantern, even threatening them with legal action if they touch the 1D X, despite the fact Magic Lantern increases sales of Canon bodies - C300 is $15k but still 8bit 4-2-0, leaving very little room under $15k for better specs - 700D a totally reheated 650D with new badge and mode dial - SL1 same crappy image quality in video mode - 4 year wait (maybe 5) for 7D Mark II!! - Little expertise on increasingly important software side - vs Resolve 10!   Canon has to realise that they cannot just do business as usual and carry on leading.   To stay top you have to push as hard as those underneath you.

70D has same sensor as the SL1. Video mode is same old same old on that... Moire, aliasing, generally very 2009.   Hard to get excited about the 7D Mark II now I have a full frame camera in my jacket pocket and a Super 35mm digital cinema camera that shoots 4K raw with a global shutter for $4000.

So they are - corrected!

Full frame chart.     Most recent full frame sensors from Canon, Nikon and Sony cameras...   Bear in mind also that 1D X is more than double the price of the other two.     Conclusion - Canon have lost the image quality race and need to make a big leap.

What I also find strange is the slight deterioration in the latest 18MP sensors.   They are taking out photosites and putting phase detect AF sensels in there, but the AF in live view still takes around 5 seconds to lock on. Why?

  It's a different design to the Iscorama 36.   You cannot remove the anamorphic from the Rollei 50mm either.   Optically a bit of a downgrade from the 36 but still nice.

  Source - http://thenewcamera.com/canon-sensor-image-quality-trapped-in-time/   Via - Image Sensors World http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/dslr-sensor-progress.html

How can you look soft and over sharp at the same time?   Budget was $50k I heard.   Including funding his own distribution.   It's a stunning achievement. Not even released on BluRay or in rest of the world yet. Word of mouth is still growing for the movie. By the time the year is out he's likely to have taken over $1m easily.   I think he'll handle Europe / UK in same way he handled the US. Film festival, promotion online, word of mouth, then theatrical run based on some healthy buzz.

Looks every bit as detailed as the GH2, but with better codec out of the box and of course 1080/60p, better screen, etc.   I wouldn't be surprised if it beat the GH3 on image quality in video mode too. Need to test that.   If the camera is so detailed with sharpness at 0 or -2 there's no need to sharpen in post any more, something I had to get used to with my FS100 and 5D Mark III footage.