50d vs 5d Mk2 for ML RAW

[John Palmer]

Now that that prices are really low and, Ive been considering buying one to play around with and use the Magic lantern firmware (just recently sold gh4 because I got a really good offer on it from a friend. Was just wondering if any of you guys have used either of them and may know about their cons/benefits. Obviously the 50d with be cheaper but I really like having the full frame look, especially since it'd be used for more experimental projects. But if the video quality isn't a huge difference and there aren't any strange issues, I was just hoping one of you guys might have some insight into this.

ML has been around for a while so I imagine most of their stuff works pretty smoothly and bug free. Obviously I would buy a mk3 if the price dropped but at this moment it doesn't seem worth it

thanks!

[Mattias Burling]

Ive used the eos-m, 5dii and 5diii. It gets better the more you spend basically.

Imo the 5diii is worth it. They arent to bad on the used market and you get an awesome raw shooter with no moire.

[TomasSunyer]

Having the Canon 50d I can give you my two cents:

Pros:

The image quality is amazing, I really love it. The colors are beautiful and the maximum recording size (1584 x 1058) escalates really beautifully to 1080p.

The grain feels really organic and doesn't bother at all when it appears. Also, since the camera was introduced when hig megapixels weren't a priority, the 15 megapixles allow for some good low light (But is no A7S )

They are going really cheap now, so if you just want to experiment with magic lantern before actually spending a lot of money this could be your ideal camera.

Cons:

Overheating. The camera can be really a nightmare regarding this. And it will overheat not only when recording but also when the live view is active, so you need to be aware that if you don't intend to shoot at the moment you need to turn it of, that if you are under the direct sunlight you will record 2 or 3 minuts tops before it overheats and that if you intend to use it on a project you will be stopping a lot.

Being an old sensor the dinamic range isn't astonishing.

It's a MOS camera, so if you want sound you will need an external recorder and sinc sound in post (good old times)

 

With all that said, every time I leave home with it I really enjoy using it and come with awesome images.

[BrorSvensson]

52 minutes ago, TomasSunyer said:

Having the Canon 50d I can give you my two cents:

Pros:

The image quality is amazing, I really love it. The colors are beautiful and the maximum recording size (1584 x 1058) escalates really beautifully to 1080p.

The grain feels really organic and doesn't bother at all when it appears. Also, since the camera was introduced when hig megapixels weren't a priority, the 15 megapixles allow for some good low light (But is no A7S )

They are going really cheap now, so if you just want to experiment with magic lantern before actually spending a lot of money this could be your ideal camera.

Cons:

Overheating. The camera can be really a nightmare regarding this. And it will overheat not only when recording but also when the live view is active, so you need to be aware that if you don't intend to shoot at the moment you need to turn it of, that if you are under the direct sunlight you will record 2 or 3 minuts tops before it overheats and that if you intend to use it on a project you will be stopping a lot.

Being an old sensor the dinamic range isn't astonishing.

It's a MOS camera, so if you want sound you will need an external recorder and sinc sound in post (good old times)

 

With all that said, every time I leave home with it I really enjoy using it and come with awesome images.

Hey Tomas would you mind uploading some Dngs?

[wolf33d]

5DII no contest

[cantsin]

The 50d is limited to 30p (while you can also record other frame rates, this is not sensor native but only achieved by dropping frames of the 30p signal), has no sound, can be unstable and occasionally lock up under ML. I even had wiped-out recordings. Dynamic range is no longer up to modern standards. Here's a quick video I made with the 50D - if you look close, the footage nicely illustrates the possibilities and limitations of the camera:

For me, this is still a more pleasant picture than I get, for example, with the Sony A7s with its dead-looking 8bit video colors. But since I've been using a Blackmagic Pocket (since 2013, actually, when the camera came out), I've never looked back. In this video, I only used the 50D because I also took stills and because I thought it would be adeque to use a hacked camera to document circuit-bent sound gadgets.

The Pocket would have handled highlights much more gracefully, would have produced better resolution, same colors, would have more been pleasant to handle (thanks to native 24p, in-camera sound recording with a decent mike/preamp, more economic use of card space and cheaper media thanks to losslessly compressed raw & SDXC, and robust operation vs. the fiddliness and instability of ML snapshot releases running on top of Canon's firmware.)

[TomasSunyer]

10 hours ago, BrorSvensson said:

Hey Tomas would you mind uploading some Dngs?

Here are some examples, there is a little bit of everithing so you can see dinamic range grain structure, etc.

As cantsin said, the camera has been surpassed by newer cameras such as the BMPCC or the BMCC, but still I like it a lot. There is something with it's looks that makes it special. Still, the camera should only be used for experimentation as it isn't relaiable enough for any serious work.

M11-0715_C0000_00130.dng

M11-0722_C0000_00207.dng

M26-1557_C0000_00237.dng

M26-1604_C0000_00018.dng

M26-1618_C0000_00010.dng

M28-1011_C0000_00008.dng

[BrorSvensson]

2 minutes ago, TomasSunyer said:

Here are some examples, there is a little bit of everithing so you can see dinamic range grain structure, etc.

As cantsin said, the camera has been surpassed by newer cameras such as the BMPCC or the BMCC, but still I like it a lot. There is something with it's looks that makes it special. Still, the camera should only be used for experimentation as it isn't relaiable enough for any serious work.

M11-0715_C0000_00130.dng

M11-0722_C0000_00207.dng

M26-1557_C0000_00237.dng

M26-1604_C0000_00018.dng

M26-1618_C0000_00010.dng

M28-1011_C0000_00008.dng

Thanks!

[August McCue]

On 3/26/2016 at 0:21 AM, Mattias Burling said:

Ive used the eos-m, 5dii and 5diii. It gets better the more you spend basically.

Imo the 5diii is worth it. They arent to bad on the used market and you get an awesome raw shooter with no moire.

I'v seen that Andrew, on his quality charts, groups the mark ii and mark iii together. Besides the grain the mark ii creates in camera that he talks about and the iso performance is there much of a gap between the too if any?

[Mattias Burling]

3 hours ago, August McCue said:

I'v seen that Andrew, on his quality charts, groups the mark ii and mark iii together. Besides the grain the mark ii creates in camera that he talks about and the iso performance is there much of a gap between the too if any?

The big difference is that the 5Diii has no aliasing or moire. The 5Dii has alot.

Also I think (someone correct me if wrong) the 5dii doesnt shoot continuous Raw in 1080p.

[jase]

1 hour ago, Mattias Burling said:

Also I think (someone correct me if wrong) the 5dii doesnt shoot continuous Raw in 1080p.

Thats right. This table sums it up.

[hmcindie]

Plus you can do 60p raw with the 5dIII on a lower slightly cropped resolution.

[Mattias Burling]

4 minutes ago, hmcindie said:

Plus you can do 60p raw with the 5dIII on a lower slightly cropped resolution.

Yup, and it looks really good imo.