It lives! 5 year old $350 Canon 50D becomes raw cinema monster

[rommex]

Hey all,

 

Can anyone clarify about the live HDMI feed from 50D during RAW recording?

 

On ML site it says there is support for HDMI recorders but not HDMI monitors.... How is that?

 

The practical side of this question is: how can I review /  playback during shooting. Clients do require that. Thanks for all the revolutionary research!!!

[Julian]

Don't sell your camera's yet and don't 'expect' anything... it is still very early development. Just be happy there is a super cheap camera that shoots in raw. If you feel like experimenting with it, buy it now! But don't even think of selling your GH2 today and switching over to a 50D to do any kind of work. The 50D has no audio. A raw workflow is much more time demanding, especially right now without CinemaDNG's. The 50D hack is in early stages, it works, but it's just an early port from the 5DII/III hack as far as I know.

 

Keep your GH2's. Do buy a 50D to use by it's side. It's a good investment right now :) Don't like it, sell it with a profit in a few months...

 

@shijan: Yes, there is some aliassing. But it's not too bad I think. I'm mostly surprised by the absence of color moire. With the 5D Mark II and raw I get a lot of weird color artefacts.(not just moire..). Seems better with my 50D.

 

@rommex: it's an early port, and a hack. Practical things might come, or they might not.

[rommex]

 

@rommex: it's an early port, and a hack. Practical things might come, or they might not.

 

Julian, I'm asking practical early porters about the current alpha status. Thanks )))

[Mirrorkisser]

can i put canon fd glass on that camera?thanks!

[rommex]

can i put canon fd glass on that camera?thanks!

 

sure not. the camera is not THAT old, hehe )

[Julian]

Trade your FD's for Nikkors :)

[Andy600]

You can put FD glass on an EF camera but it will increase the focal length x1.25 and you lose around 1 stop of light. It also has to pass through more glass in the adapter itself and most that I tested were not very good, making the image very soft. It's not worth it.

M42/Nikon = no problem :)

Q. Sell your GH2/3 and get a 50d?
A. Don't be silly now! ;) The GH's haven't suddenly gone bad. I wouldn't sell mine if I had one. They still rock and I still want a hacked GH2 for some things!

[Andrew Reid]

Don't sell your camera's yet and don't 'expect' anything... it is still very early development. Just be happy there is a super cheap camera that shoots in raw. If you feel like experimenting with it, buy it now! But don't even think of selling your GH2 today and switching over to a 50D to do any kind of work. The 50D has no audio. A raw workflow is much more time demanding, especially right now without CinemaDNG's. The 50D hack is in early stages, it works, but it's just an early port from the 5DII/III hack as far as I know.

 

Keep your GH2's. Do buy a 50D to use by it's side. It's a good investment right now :) Don't like it, sell it with a profit in a few months...

 

@shijan: Yes, there is some aliassing. But it's not too bad I think. I'm mostly surprised by the absence of color moire. With the 5D Mark II and raw I get a lot of weird color artefacts.(not just moire..). Seems better with my 50D.

 

@rommex: it's an early port, and a hack. Practical things might come, or they might not.

 

Good advice.

 

Don't make a dramatic selling decision until you know the ins and outs of it.

[Mirrorkisser]

Thanks for the replies. I suppose those Nikkors would also fit on my precious gh2 with an adapter? I am also still keeping my left eye on the bmcpc...

[Andy600]

Hey all,

 

Can anyone clarify about the live HDMI feed from 50D during RAW recording?

 

On ML site it says there is support for HDMI recorders but not HDMI monitors.... How is that?

 

The practical side of this question is: how can I review /  playback during shooting. Clients do require that. Thanks for all the revolutionary research!!!

Where did you read that?

The Mk3 can output a clean HDMI signal but it's NOT capable of recording the raw output. HDMI doesn't allow for it.

The HDMI output on most EOS bodies (all except the 5d3) kills Live View when you hit record (when recording normal H.264 video) and the output drops to SD (except on 7d and 1d where it stays 720p) on the HDMI monitor. It also has overlays but ML can kill them. I'm not sure what happens when recording raw video but my guess is that it keeps both screens on because it's not going through the H.264 encoder.

Needs testing to be sure.

Regarding playback. You can currently playback the last raw file but its B&W and about 5fps. You will need a laptop on-set to convert the raw files to DNG. There is a windows app in development called RAWanizer (by @Marten on the ML forum) using the raw2dng app (developed by ML chief developer A1ex) and available on the ML forum that converts raw files to DNG and TIFF AND renders 1/2 or full res H.264 or DNxHD proxies. The current build also allows for some customization and neatly converts, labels and sorts your DNGs into folders AND it's very FAST!... oh, it's also FREE ;)

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5557.0

I believe there is also a Mac app too but I don't use Macs.

[rommex]

Where did you read that?

.....

Needs testing to be sure.

 

Andy600, it is written here: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Unified

 

Nobody was asking about recording RAW through HDMI, I was asking early porters if there is on opportunity to record the playback through HDMI.

 

You wrote quite obvious guesses and thoughts, but I'm expecting a generous answer from someone who has the 50D hacked in their hands.

 

Thanks!

[odie]

after all this can you imagine the anticipation for the 5d mark 4?

[Julian]

You wrote quite obvious guesses and thoughts, but I'm expecting a generous answer from someone who has the 50D hacked in their hands.

 

Maybe change the attitude? Pick up one yourself instead of 'expecting' answers.

Anyway, I don't have hdmi cables/gear so can't check.

 

Now back on topic: Rendering iso test...

[Andy600]

Andy600, it is written here: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Unified

 

Nobody was asking about recording RAW through HDMI, I was asking early porters if there is on opportunity to record the playback through HDMI.

 

You wrote quite obvious guesses and thoughts, but I'm expecting a generous answer from someone who has the 50D hacked in their hands.

 

Thanks!

@rommex - I have the 50d in my hands and compile my own ML ;)

You cannot record raw playback through HDMI :) ....YET! See my previous answer to understand why.

[rommex]

@rommex - I have the 50d in my hands and compile my own ML ;)

You cannot record raw playback through HDMI :) ....YET! See my previous answer to understand why.

 

I was asking about recording encoded video feed from HDMI -- simultaneous to RAW being recorded to CF card, certainly not raw itself through HDMI... Anyway, forget it )))) -- Заблудились в трех соснах -- Transl: We are lost in a forest made up of 3 trees (joke with no offense to anybody's ego)))

[Andy600]

I was asking about recording encoded video feed from HDMI -- simultaneous to RAW being recorded to CF card, certainly not raw itself through HDMI... Anyway, forget it )))) -- Заблудились в трех соснах )))))))

I'm perfectly happy to 'forget it' :)

p.s. insulting someone in another language is quite low. BTW my wife is Russian ;)

[MKjaer]

Very interesting turn of events.

Although quite strange that 50D should produce this kind of results at high iso - when especially high iso performance has been one of the main criticitism of the 50D. At the time of the launch most reviewers claimed it was a step backward from other cameras of that generation. Maybe others with a 50d can confirm the performance.

ML should start selling rebranded canon cameras - in my mind they deserve the profit much more than canon :-)

[Julian]

@MKjaer: I know... I never liked the 50D because of the poor iso performance/banding. I am really surprised it is this good. There is banding at H2, definitely not perfect. But it's so much better than I would expect.

 

Here is my test, you can download the original file in Vimeo:

 

http://vimeo.com/66995002

[Nelson Reyes]

 

DXOMark rates Canon 50D close to GH2 in term of low light performance and in general. 5D Mark II is one stop and a half better in high ISO including dynamic range. The difference between 15MPx and 18Px is not that big. For example 20D and 30D were 8MPx cameras.  There is no serious evidence so far that 50D will be as good as 5D Mark II in low light. 

 

But one of the two sample footage we have shows less moire and aliasing than 5D Mark II. We have to see some good comparison  before drawing final conclusions. 

 

So far 5D Mark III is outstanding: 1080p clean with great detail, low light performance, very little moire and aliasing. Mark II is second with less resolution, still OK when up scaled to 1080p but some really pronounced moire and aliasing. 

 

We have to see if the image from 50D will be better than Mark II at least in daylight. It would be interesting to see how 50D and 5D Mark II perform against 5D Mark III in RAW video.

 

Until we see some real good footage from 50D am holding my purchase. So far none except 5D Mark III gets me excited about RAW. If am going to spend hours and hours on the computer to process RAW footage better have a good reason to do it. Time sometimes has more value than money. Would rather spend 1000$ on BMPCC.

 

You right, I dont have any DSLR camera and I want to buy it, becuase its RAW video, but wchich one is better?. I Have to wait at least two couple of week to have enought information and tak a desition. Until there i will keep my old and reliable gh2. 

[TC]

10 bit raw would be great.  Computationally it is very easy to go from 14 bits to 10 bits - you just throw away the bits you don't need.  3k raw would comfortably fit within the UDMA 7 spec with a 10 bit colour depth.  The data rate is 152MB/s:

 

http://web.forret.com/tools/video_fps.asp?width=3000&height=1688&fps=24&space=raw&depth=10

 

The latest cards from Toshiba claim a 150MB/s peak write speed.  That is probably burst rate, not a sustained write speed.  But sooner or later cards that can handle this will be on the market.  

 

Also, with 10 bits of colour depth, 1920x1080 is only 62MB/s, opening up the possibility to use a lot more cards than just the high-end Lexar models.