Is the EOS-M *THE* Digital Super-8 Camera?

[Alpicat]

Thanks, that's good to hear. Hopefully this adapter will appear soon. Would be amazing to use the BMPCC speedbooster, which in this case would provide an equivalent crop factor of 1.93x.  Could be risky though as the EOS M has a mechanical shutter which might hit the back of that speedbooster but I suppose it's possible to shoot video without firing the shutter.

[tupp]

57 minutes ago, Alpicat said:

Could be risky though as the EOS M has a mechanical shutter which might hit the back of that speedbooster but I suppose it's possible to shoot video without firing the shutter.

That risk might be minimized by disabling the "Release shutter without lens" function in Custom Function menu (C.Fn-7?).

[mercer]

It is pretty amazing what can be done with this camera. I still have mine. I paid $175 for it during the original fire sale. No real reason to sell it, so I figure I may start messing with Magic Lantern on it.

I did try Raw on it a few years ago but I really couldn’t get rid of the pink dots without chroma smoothing and the IQ took a hit.

With the new leaps of SD cards and ML Raw, it sounds like some interesting things for the future.

But the crazy thing I’ve noticed is that even the simple 3x Bitrate bump does wonders for this camera. @Matt Kieley has some great samples. Sure it isn’t Raw but for small, fun little videos why put up with the added workflow?

[tupp]

2 hours ago, mercer said:

I did try Raw on it a few years ago but I really couldn’t get rid of the pink dots without chroma smoothing and the IQ took a hit.

I think that a few ways have been developed to remove the pink dots without compromising the IQ.  I think that the most recent method is to employ a "map mask" to cancel the dots, but perhaps one of the more ML knowledgeable users could chime in about this.

 

 

2 hours ago, mercer said:

But the crazy thing I’ve noticed is that even the simple 3x Bitrate bump does wonders for this camera. @Matt Kieley has some great samples. Sure it isn’t Raw but for small, fun little videos why put up with the added workflow?

A big advantage of this method is that one gets to use the entire area of the sensor.  So, the look becomes more about lens character than about bit depth and extreme grade-ability.

 

One other possibility is All-I.  It was originally introduced about 5 years ago (article date incorrect) with Tragic Lantern for the 600D/T3i and EOSM.  There was controversy with TL, and, eventually, it's mere mention was forbidden on the ML forum.  Consequently, TL died.

 

However, there was a more recent effort to get the All-I Tragic Lantern feature into the main build, but I am not sure if it made it.

 

By the way, here are some compiled TL EOSM builds that I uploaded to EOSHD awhile back:

tl31337eosm6-9-14.zip

 tl2.3eosm202_2-14-14.zip

tragiclantern-v31337.TRAGIC.2014Jul28.EOSM202.zip

tragiclantern-v31337.TRAGIC.2014Sep30.EOSM202.zip

tragiclantern-v31337.TRAGIC.2014Dec19.EOSM202.zip

 

 

[Matt Kieley]

3 hours ago, mercer said:

But the crazy thing I’ve noticed is that even the simple 3x Bitrate bump does wonders for this camera. @Matt Kieley has some great samples.

Thanks. With my Sandisk Extreme Pro 95mbps cards I was getting bitrates into the 90s sometimes.

These are my EOS M videos. Both have grain added but the original images were very clean. The first video is 3x bitrate and has some grading, but the lobster claw segment is the off the card color, with grain added. The second video was entirely 720p60, with the bitrate between 2.7-3x I believe. The detail/sharpness isn't bad considering it's just 720p, although you can tell the moire is a lot worse.

[tupp]

On 4/17/2018 at 11:55 AM, Matt Kieley said:

These are my EOS M videos. Both have grain added but the original images were very clean. The first video is 3x bitrate and has some grading, but the lobster claw segment is the off the card color, with grain added. The second video was entirely 720p60, with the bitrate between 2.7-3x I believe. The detail/sharpness isn't bad considering it's just 720p, although you can tell the moire is a lot worse.

Love your work.  Both videos are inspiring.

 

I am definitely leaning towards just shooting my EOSM with a boosted bitrate, because I have a rapidly approaching shoot with no time to try to make cropped raw/SD-overclock work.  I also lack S16 or 1" lenses (although, if I had a couple I would consider cropped raw).

 

I will probably need to shoot 60fps with the EOSM, and it appears that 60fps works with boosted bitrate at 720p (with increased moire).  I wonder if 60fps is possible with raw.

 

Don't know if 60fps is possible with ALL-I frames.

 

Do I need to reset the camera before installing ML?  I run Linux, so clearing the installed picture styles becomes problematic, as the EOS software only works with Windows/Mac.

 

Thanks!

[Matt Kieley]

6 hours ago, tupp said:

Love your work.  Both videos are inspiring.

 

I am definitely leaning towards just shooting my EOSM with a boosted bitrate, because I have a rapidly approaching shoot with no time to try to make cropped raw/SD-overclock work.  I also lack S16 or 1" lenses (although, if I had a couple I would consider cropped raw).

 

I will probably need to shoot 60fps with the EOSM, and it appears that 60fps works with boosted bitrate at 720p (with increased moire).  I wonder if 60fps is possible with raw.

 

Don't know if 60fps is possible with ALL-I frames.

 

Do I need to reset the camera before installing ML?  I run Linux, so clearing the installed picture styles becomes problematic, as the EOS software only works with Windows/Mac.

 

Thanks!

Thanks! I don't know about 60p in Raw, I'm not sure I've hard of anyone doing it. It actually crashed a few times when shooting with the bitrate at 3x so I had to drop it to 2.5x (I also tried 2.7x but that crashed too). All you need to install ML is the right Canon firmware 2.0.2 or whatever, and a fully charged battery. This is a good video that walks through how to do it:

Incidentally, the maker of the video, Ryan Moorman, made some great videos with the EOS M and ML. His videos, as well as the videos of Victor Suwatch, and Johnny Santo Domingo were my initial inspiration to get the EOS M. These are my favorite EOS M videos:

 

[Alpicat]

@Matt Kieley thanks for posting your videos and the three others above, all really good. I never realised video on the EOS M could look this great without using crop mode, shows how useful the h264 bitrate hack is! When shooting raw without crop the amount of moire is extremely bad, and I'd assumed it was exactly the same with h264 video but that's definitely not the case, it's much more usable. 

I like this one from Ryan Moorman with the 4:3 aspect ratio:

 

[Matt Kieley]

7 hours ago, Alpicat said:

@Matt Kieley thanks for posting your videos and the three others above, all really good. I never realised video on the EOS M could look this great without using crop mode, shows how useful the h264 bitrate hack is! When shooting raw without crop the amount of moire is extremely bad, and I'd assumed it was exactly the same with h264 video but that's definitely not the case, it's much more usable. 

Victor Suwatch told me he only shoots in the 3x crop mode in H.264 (and doesn't recommend shooting Raw). But I used the full sensor in H.264 and liked the results. Even without Raw, ML is a godsend for the EOS M.

[webrunner5]

Man all of those are a bit too Gnarly for my liking. Like I have said before on here. That is how stuff looked years ago, and we dreamed to be able to shot it like it is now! Crazy.

[tupp]

21 hours ago, Matt Kieley said:

Thanks! I don't know about 60p in Raw, I'm not sure I've hard of anyone doing it. It actually crashed a few times when shooting with the bitrate at 3x so I had to drop it to 2.5x (I also tried 2.7x but that crashed too). All you need to install ML is the right Canon firmware 2.0.2 or whatever, and a fully charged battery. This is a good video that walks through how to do it:

Very informative and helpful!  Thanks!

 

 

21 hours ago, Matt Kieley said:

Incidentally, the maker of the video, Ryan Moorman, made some great videos with the EOS M and ML. His videos, as well as the videos of Victor Suwatch, and Johnny Santo Domingo were my initial inspiration to get the EOS M. These are my favorite EOS M videos:

Very nice!  Thank you for posting their videos!

 

 

17 hours ago, Alpicat said:

I never realised video on the EOS M could look this great without using crop mode, shows how useful the h264 bitrate hack is! When shooting raw without crop the amount of moire is extremely bad, and I'd assumed it was exactly the same with h264 video but that's definitely not the case, it's much more usable. 

Yes.  It is an amazing little bargain camera, and it is so versatile with the EF-M mount and ML.  Thanks for posting the Ryan Moorman 4:3 video.

 

@dfort on the ML forums has directed me on how to get a build with ALL-I working, and I have already installed it and enabled ALL-I and set the bitrate to 1.5x.  Testing soon, and if I don't get any glitches, I will try to gradually boost the bitrate until the video breaks.  Will posts the test results as soon as I am able.

[Nikkor]

Hey guys, I don't have the time and nerve to read through all the unconnected magic lantern threads, so I'm asking here because I know I won't be tossed around  :

Can I record fullsensor raw without pink dots? Is it possible to shoot in 1080p mode, or is it still 720p mode? And if so, how? Thx really

[Alpicat]

8 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

That is how stuff looked years ago, and we dreamed to be able to shot it like it is now! Crazy.

That's true  - particularly in the examples above where grain has been added in post, but sometimes that look can be nice! If you want a modern and sharp but still pleasant looking image - with the new SD card overclock module the EOS M can record 2520x1072 raw continuously (using a 3.33x crop from 35mm full frame / approx 16mm size). The module is still very experimental so just waiting a bit longer until hopefully it will be easier to use!

4 hours ago, tupp said:

@dfort on the ML forums has directed me on how to get a build with ALL-I working, and I have already installed it and enabled ALL-I and set the bitrate to 1.5x.  Testing soon, and if I don't get any glitches, I will try to gradually boost the bitrate until the video breaks.  Will posts the test results as soon as I am able.

That's incredible, thanks so much for doing this and look forward to hearing more about your results! 

@Nikkor  There are no pink dots when recording in lossless 10 or 12 bit raw, but they do still appear in all the other raw formats. In any case this isn't an issue any longer as modern mlv transcoding programs such as MLV App use a focus pixel map to automatically get rid of all the dots (without requiring chroma smoothing), so you won't even know they were ever there.

However, the EOS M still can't do 1080p when shooting full sensor raw, it stays at 720p and therefore there's a huge amount of moire. They were looking to find a way around that issue but that didn't seem to go anywhere. Here's the thread about that: https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=16608.0   If you're recording full sensor, it's best to shoot regular h264 with the bitrate hack which is 1080p. The moire is still there but it's a bit more controllable. I'm able to set the h264 bitrate at 3x and with a Sandisk 95mb/s it seems stable.

 

 

[webrunner5]

2 hours ago, Alpicat said:

That's true  - particularly in the examples above where grain has been added in post, but sometimes that look can be nice! If you want a modern and sharp but still pleasant looking image - with the new SD card overclock module the EOS M can record 2520x1072 raw continuously (using a 3.33x crop from 35mm full frame / approx 16mm size). The module is still very experimental so just waiting a bit longer until hopefully it will be easier to use!

Well there is no doubt it is pretty awesome for what little money you have to spend to get into the system. And I am sure X amount of people on here has had a body laying around for years.

Plus a cheap way to be able to get into ML Raw and learn how to use and edit it. Sounds like a Win, Win to me. Cheap thrills.

[Matt James Smith ?]

Is anyone else getting pink in blown highlights when shooting RAW on EOSM? I use MlRAWviewer to open and convert to DNG but hilight rolloff is awful and all blown areas get filled with bright, flat pink colour.

[tupp]

Here are a few seconds (30MB MOV file) shot on the EOSM with the more recent ALL-I hack enabled and with bitrate boosted 1.5x:

MVI_5681-short.mov

 

The frames are definitely all I-frames.  However, as you can see, moire was problematic with the back wall and with the lens that I was using -- the Pixco Mini 25mm F1.8 APS-C lens ($25 when I bought it last year).  Sorry for the shaking, but the Pixco has no stabilization.

 

I am going to start trying to boost the bitrate, but I also want to try recent, stock ML builds and just boosting bitrate to 2.5 to see if that makes any difference.  I especially want to try 60 fps.

[Alpicat]

On 25/04/2018 at 10:01 PM, Matt James Smith ? said:

Is anyone else getting pink in blown highlights when shooting RAW on EOSM?

The EOS M doesn't handle blown highlights very well in raw and you do sometimes get a flat pink (or pure white) colour in the blown out areas, and it's easy to get with harsh clipping sometimes with colourful moire appearing at the edges of the blown out areas. MlRAWviewer might make the problem worse - worth trying another program like MLV App to see if its still an issue? The way to get rid of the pink and hopefully bring back some information is clicking 'highlight recovery' in Resolve, but I'm not sure this necessarily works in every single case. If you want to go slightly further with highlight recovery, look at Juan Melara's tutorial on grading cdngs (for Blackmagic cameras but works for magic lantern raw):

 

On 01/05/2018 at 6:59 AM, tupp said:

Here are a few seconds (30MB MOV file) shot on the EOSM with the more recent ALL-I hack enabled and with bitrate boosted 1.5x:

Great work though it's a shame about the moire. I guess this must be 720p mode because when shooting 1080p mp4's (with or without bitrate hack) I'm pretty certain you wouldn't get so much moire?

Today I've tried the SD card overclock hack. It works and will post footage here soon.

[Alpicat]

Here is my first test filming 2520x1080, 12 bit lossless on the EOS M with the sd card hack, this shot is 2 minutes long using the stock zoom lens and a sandisk extreme pro card. Processed via MLV App and Resolve:

Currently you need to perform an overclocking test and then a benchmark test for your SD card after each time the camera is turned off, so it's a bit cumbersome.

Here's a still - a cdng processed through photoshop, different colour temperature than in the video:

[tupp]

On 5/6/2018 at 1:37 PM, Alpicat said:

I guess this must be 720p mode because when shooting 1080p mp4's (with or without bitrate hack) I'm pretty certain you wouldn't get so much moire?

It was full HD.  I think that the sharpness of the lens, combined with the subject distance and the fineness of the wood texture made for a "perfect storm."  However, I have made some more tests, which I will try to post soon, and there was also moire problems with some coarse fabric.

 

 

On 5/6/2018 at 2:27 PM, Alpicat said:

Here is my first test filming 2520x1080, 12 bit lossless on the EOS M with the sd card hack

This is an amazing capability for such an inexpensive camera!  Thanks for sharing!

 

I've got to get some S16 lenses, or try the BMPCC speed booster (if/when the Photodiox M4/3 to EF-M adapter appears).

 

By the way, I tested it, and one can't shoot video with a manual lens while the "Release shutter without lens" is disabled -- so one might have to be careful not to press the shutter button when using the BMPCC speed booster on the EOSM.

 

 

On 5/6/2018 at 2:27 PM, Alpicat said:

Currently you need to perform an overclocking test and then a benchmark test for your SD card after each time the camera is turned off, so it's a bit cumbersome.

Oh, that's a bummer.  Hope someone finds a way around that.

 

The thing is, I would be happy with just 1920x1080 and less overclocking.

[Alpicat]

I've uploaded another video with the SD card hack:

 

@tupp It takes about 3 or 4 minutes to do the two tests before the sd overclock is ready to use, and then the camera runs as normal. You should be able to shoot 1920x1080 in 5x zoom mode without overclocking in 10 bit lossless - you won't get much record time but it's feasible. I can already get nearly continuous shooting in 1800x1030 12 bit lossless movie crop mode.

I did notice it isn't possible to shoot video without the "release shutter without lens" enabled, don't know if it would be possible to get around that with Magic Lantern.

Also, unsure if I mentioned that Viltrox are planning to do a 0.71x focal reducer for EF-M mount - they told me it should be out in the summer. I don't have a bmpcc speedbooster any longer so this should be a cheaper alternative, with the advantage of electronic contacts for EF lenses.