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

[rommex]

Julian,

 

I've been testing with the latest test build, but am not seeing the same low-light quality you are getting in your tests.  Am I doing something wrong or setting something wrong?  I'm getting grossness at 1600 ISO.  Is there an option or something you are changing in ML?  Thanks for your help and all of great stuff going on here!  Keep up the awesome work!

 

Zach, why don't you post some DNG for us to have a look? All the output from 50D is generally amazing, so I hope this can be solved. Just share your roll )

[Oscar M.]

Julian,

 

I've been testing with the latest test build, but am not seeing the same low-light quality you are getting in your tests.  Am I doing something wrong or setting something wrong?  I'm getting grossness at 1600 ISO.  Is there an option or something you are changing in ML?  Thanks for your help and all of great stuff going on here!  Keep up the awesome work!

 

You also want to set High ISO noise reduction to "Strong" in the Canon menus. Possibly, if you want better highlight roll-off turn on Auto lighting Optimizer . . . 'cause your now shooting RAW.

[rommex]

You also want to set High ISO noise reduction to "Strong" in the Canon menus. Possibly, if you want better highlight roll-off turn on Auto lighting Optimizer . . . 'cause your now shooting RAW.

 

Oscar, but how these settings affect RAW? I always thought that these settings affect only post-RAW material...

[Julian]

Julian,

 

I've been testing with the latest test build, but am not seeing the same low-light quality you are getting in your tests.  Am I doing something wrong or setting something wrong?  I'm getting grossness at 1600 ISO.  Is there an option or something you are changing in ML?  Thanks for your help and all of great stuff going on here!  Keep up the awesome work!

 

Send some dng's to yourself with www.wetransfer.com and paste the link here. I'll have a look. Make sure you expose correctly, iso 1600 underexposed a lot is going to look bad.

 

 

You also want to set High ISO noise reduction to "Strong" in the Canon menus. Possibly, if you want better highlight roll-off turn on Auto lighting Optimizer . . . 'cause your now shooting RAW.

 

I don't think both settings will have any effect. We are shooting raw.. remember :) Definitely noise reduction is a JPG only thing. ALO I'm not sure how it works, give it a try - with and without!

[Oscar M.]

Send some dng's to yourself with www.wetransfer.com and paste the link here. I'll have a look. Make sure you expose correctly, iso 1600 underexposed a lot is going to look bad.

 

 

 

I don't think both settings will have any effect. We are shooting raw.. remember :) Definitely noise reduction is a JPG only thing. ALO I'm not sure how it works, give it a try - with and without!

 

Perhaps you're right but I thought ALO and Noise reduction affected Canon's ACR RAW . . . I'll do some tests.

[Julian]

I think ALO shoots underexposed (to save highlights) and pushes it back up in the camera. Not sure how that works in live view / raw video. Would be cool to see some tests :)

[Julian]

ISO 3200, underexposed. Not very pretty.

[url=http://www.eoshd.com/comments/gallery/image/536-3200underexposed/][/URL]

 

ISO 3200, better exposure (still a stop underexposed actually), looks much better.

[url=http://www.eoshd.com/comments/gallery/image/534-3200goodexposure/]

[/URL]

 

Same as above, processed with a bit of luma noise reduction and less sharpening.

[URL=http://www.eoshd.com/comments/gallery/image/535-3200processed/][/URL]

[zach_daniels]

I think I figured out my ISO problems.  I think my settings were just plain wrong.  Haha... Things seem to be looking much better.  I picked up a BMCC earlier last week right before reading about the 50D developments and picking one of those up.  Now i'm overwhelmed with all of this new stuff.  I have been trying to get the 50D footage to work with Davinci Resolve.  Is there a work around for it?  I'm new to Davinci as well, so I'm trying to learn it as well as the ML 50D RAW workflow....and the BMCC....all at the same time.  haha.  Once I convert the DNG's with Adobe DNG Converter, Resolve works...but it seems to be reading the size/defaulting to 256X154....I'm not sure why.  I'm pretty new to the RAW workflow in general, So any advice is appreciated!  Thanks!

 

[Julian]

The small size you get for the DNG's is the preview embedded in the DNG. CinemaDNG is something different. There is a converter, in experimental stage, Andrew just wrote about it on the frontpage!

[Julian]

Check out the findings on the ML forums.

I found out you get actually better speeds with Globa Draw turned on.

http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5586.msg45003#msg45003

 

We can really get the maximum out of the 50D now! 1592x896 (16:9) recording at 24 fps is completely stable without drops.

3:2 recording at 1592x1062 is possible without drops with 1000X cards - (My 90MB/S Sandisk is the bottle neck here)

 

Anamorphic resolutions like 1320x1062 and 1440x1062 are perfectly doable without frame drops! Love it :wub: 

[Julian]

 

ML isn't taking donations, but a developer requested a 50D. I bought a 50D + Battery Grip + batteries yesterday for a good price and I shipped it today. I'm hoping we can split the costs... If you want to donate to me, send me a PM and I'll give you the details.

 

Thanks to the generous donations of ML forum users (I know a few of you are posting here as well!) after one day the funding for the camera is almost complete! (€ 52,60 left). The camera is already shipped and on it's way to the developer!

 

I think it will be a good idea to supply him with a fast CF card as well, since he only has slow ones. I'm suggesting the 64GB Komputerbay 1000X, [url=http://www.ebay.com/itm/KOMPUTERBAY-64GB-COMPACT-FLASH-CARD-CF-1000X-150MB-s-Extreme-Speed-UDMA-7-64-GB-/140978267936?pt=Digital_Camera_Memory_Cards&hash=item20d2f5a720]cheapest I can find on ebay is about $120.[/url]

I'd like to finish the funding of the camera first and then keep the donations open for a little longer to fund the CF card. If you want to help, send me a PM and I'll send you the instructions and donations overview! Everything counts, even a few dollars/euros are welcome.

[Julian]

http://vimeo.com/67592774

 

Just another test video. Trying to wrap my head around the low light performance of this beast.

Shot with Sigma 30mm f/1.4 at 1/50 H1 (ISO 6400 equivalent) at 1592x864. Upsized in Premiere to 1080p (just scaled 121%).

Pushed the exposure in ACR two stops up, so equivalent = ISO 25.600.

Added a bit of luma and color noise correction to taste, kept sharpening low.
 

edited/unedited frame grab:

 

[URL=http://www.eoshd.com/comments/gallery/image/537-canon-50d-iso-6400-pushed-to-25600/][/URL]

[JBraddock]

Thanks to the generous donations of ML forum users (I know a few of you are posting here as well!) after one day the funding for the camera is almost complete! (€ 52,60 left). The camera is already shipped and on it's way to the developer!

 

I think it will be a good idea to supply him with a fast CF card as well, since he only has slow ones. I'm suggesting the 64GB Komputerbay 1000X, cheapest I can find on ebay is about $120.

I'd like to finish the funding of the camera first and then keep the donations open for a little longer to fund the CF card. If you want to help, send me a PM and I'll send you the instructions and donations overview! Everything counts, even a few dollars/euros are welcome.

Hi Julian, I don't have this camera neither do I use ML but I'd like to support the effort. Would you mind sending me the details so I can donate.

 

Thanks,

[Julian]

That's the spirit :) Thanks man! Sent you a PM.

[JBraddock]

:) I hope it helps. 

[Julian]

Sure does. Donations for the CF card just passed half of the goal. Thanks!

[Andrew Reid]

There's something I'm trying to get my head around as well with the low light stuff.

 

I think with raw if you take a bright area of your image and boost it in post, no matter the camera ISO, the exposure is rated low (ISO 200 for example) for bright areas. Dark areas will be more like the real ISO 6400.

 

I think you should try pushing some shadows to get true 25,600.

 

Try setting the ISO to native, 800 or something. Then do an exposure which is under by 4 stops and evenly lit across the frame.

 

In post push that 4 stops, and you should get real 25,600. I could be wrong on this though.

[Julian]

Andrew, as far as I understand dslr's dont have a 'native' iso, like a Blackmagic does for example. Dslr's are always best at low iso's. From there on (analog?) gain is applied if you higher the iso value.

 

Boosting a underexposed image will look bad for sure. For example, if you take a picture at iso 800 underexposed 3 stops, and brighten it up 3 stops, it will look worse than the same picture at iso 800 with correct exposure (unless you have a D800 or something, because it has crazy detail/DR in the shadows. The Canons sure don't, including the 5D3).

 

Someone has to figure out the 50D live view. Hope the developers can help with this. The iso behaviour is definitely not the same as in the pictures. The brightness seems kinda random sometimes. A few days ago I didn't see any difference on the screen between H1 and H2, now I do...

[Julian]

Went out for some shots earlier, didn't have the time to process everything and to make an edit, but I wanted to show some shots anyway. Going to try some new workflows with more of the footage later.

 

http://vimeo.com/67605772

 

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8, after sunset. High iso.

Ungraded, straight conversions from raw (bit of noise reduction and less sharpening)
Upsized in Premiere to 1080p. Added sharpen 20 in Premiere.

 

 

Here's a underexposed frame (well, I actually prefer it this way) boosted +2 stops. I think the camera was on H1 while shooting, but if I had taken a picture with that settings it would have come out brighter.

 

[url=http://www.eoshd.com/comments/gallery/image/538-boosted/][/URL]

[ergopossum]

These low light demos are looking rather phenomenal. The combination of raising exposure and noise removal filtering makes the C300 I'm looking at  for a project seem a lot less spectacular compared to cameras with raw shooting capability.

 

I purchased a 50D with the intention of trying the ML raw alpha on it, but I only own a 64 gb cf card. Looks like ML cannot be installed initially without a 32 gb or smaller card. Should have checked I guess, haha. D'oh!