11 year old 5d MK3 superior to newest releases

[rosco]

3 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

@rosco If Darren Aranovsky can enjoy some nerdom with a digital bolex, despite being a super busy super star director, I think less profiled image lover can enjoy their low budget cam obsessions, right. I have done a good deal of hard physical and artistic work in the field of low budet video and film making. I don´t need to trade camera nerdom for fill light or bounce variations. I can rest from the hard work and enjoy some camera nerdom. 5D3 will do. Some nice Rosco gels would do that too:)

Read what I wrote, it’s all subjective, shoot with whatever you want, do whatever you want.  Budget is always a concern in low budget filmmaking.  I don’t follow Darren as a director but I respect his work and if he likes his digital bolex then good for him. I have one digital bolex in the studio with two 5diii for photography only.

“5D3 will do. Some nice Rosco gels would do that too:)”

  You do you, go shoot with your 5diii.  Have fun, Rosco gels will make it look better:)

[TrueIndigo]

I liked the feel in the hand of some of those old Canon's too, Panny, which I bought purely for Magic Lantern RAW. The 5DII was thoroughly solid like cast metal. But strangely, I did prefer the industrial feel of the lowly 50D (so different from the hollow plastic of it's successor the 60D, that I also owned), which had a stiff metal plate structure beneath the grip fabric that I liked more than almost any other camera.

[mercer]

Honestly, I don't even know what we're talking about anymore.

I am just a hobbyist who has been using a 5D Mark III with 1080p ML Raw for the past 5-6 years as I attempt to make a few short films in my spare time. I'm hardly chasing cameras. I picked up a Sigma FP a few months ago, on a whim, and I like it. It has a nice image, I can't say for sure that it's a better image than the 5D though. I assumed the 14bit color from the 5D may be evening out the playing field, but what do I know... as I said... I'm not a professional like you guys are.

I've always been a writer first, so story is the most important thing to me, but I'm not delusional enough to think I am going to sell a screenplay or make a film that will have any impact on anything. I enjoy doing it, though and I suppose there are worse things I could spend my money on.

Next year I may buy a camcorder, making movies was a lot more fun back when camcorders were the only option for zero budget filmmakers.

I will end with this, though. Since we're all being so brutally honest... none of these cameras look that good. If you're shooting with a P4K and a Sigma zoom, or a 5D3 with ML Raw... they all look amateurish. So when you guys attack other people for their choices... remember your choices probably look questionable as well.

Then again, I've never seen any of your work, so maybe you guy's are artistic geniuses, but how could anyone know... only a few people share any of their work on this forum and when they do, the posts about the next best camera gets way more attention...

Good luck to you. 

[hyalinejim]

5 hours ago, mercer said:

only a few people share any of their work

At the risk of going off topic, I also remember when on video forums people would post videos that they had made!

It's the same everywhere else. On FB groups people post pics of their setup rather than something that they shot with it.

By the way I think it's worth pointing out that the original post of this topic was something along the lines of "does 14bit give noticeably better colour?". It's a perfectly valid question or talking point for discussion about one aspect of image quality, and has nothing whatsoever to do with lighting, story, frosted glass or frosted flakes or whatever somebody had for their breakfast... So to veer off into those topics is to miss the point of this thread.

Now, here's a video! This is the last project I shot on the 5D3. Hope you like slow cinema!

 

[Davide DB]

27 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

I also remember when on video forums people would post videos that they had made!

Two big categories: cats & backyards 

[Tim Sewell]

1 hour ago, hyalinejim said:

Now, here's a video! This is the last project I shot on the 5D3. Hope you like slow cinema!

A truly beautiful piece of work.

[ade towell]

1 hour ago, Tim Sewell said:

A truly beautiful piece of work.

I'll 2nd that, you have a great eye some lovely compositions

[jpfilmz]

16 hours ago, mercer said:

I will end with this, though. Since we're all being so brutally honest... none of these cameras look that good. If you're shooting with a P4K and a Sigma zoom, or a 5D3 with ML Raw... they all look amateurish. So when you guys attack other people for their choices... remember your choices probably look questionable as well.

 

They look great and professional in the right hands.  Alot of these people don't know what they are doing or talking about.  

[jpfilmz]

I still…even with the bmpcc4k and R5 8k raw haven’t be able to replicate this look and motion from 5D3 Raw.

 

 

[mercer]

12 minutes ago, jpfilmz said:

I still…even with the bmpcc4k and R5 8k raw haven’t be able to replicate this look and motion from 5D3 Raw.

 

 

This was one of the films I watched right before I bought my 5D3! Great look!

[PannySVHS]

I watched the whole film and I am happy that you used the pure raw RAW image from the camera. Beautiful decision for the your beautiful film. @hyalinejim Thank you for sharing!

[TomTheDP]

On 3/28/2023 at 6:09 PM, PPNS said:

From what ive read is that the difference between 12 and 14 bit readout on that specific sensor in that specific camera is less than half a stop of dynamic range.

 

my sentiment on this issue can be boiled down by this little thought experiment:

imagine youre DPing something and you have to budget for only 1 of these choices:

- a theoretical camera with a 14 bit readout that lets you record in 12 bit log raw or 444

or

- an aputure 1200d, a little set of grip gear and a camera with a 12 bit readout that lets you record in 12 bit log raw or 444

 

which one would you pick?

I have never had to make that choice as the difference in price is minimal. If you are getting an Alexa Mini or Sony Venice that is a different story.

But yes between choosing one of the 12 bit readout cameras on the market and an older RED or Alexa I would definitely go with RED or Alexa. I always have access to basic lighting packages. Now if it were a situation where I thought we would have to film at 6400 iso or something I would have to go with something like a S1H but aside from that personally I wouldn't.

Looking at Gerald Undone's review and his dynamic range tests of that sensor, it looks significantly better than the previous Fuji sensor which I owned at one point. Almost purchased the XH2S as soon as I saw that review and his findings.

A lot of the dynamic range of that sensor is in the shadows and it does get noisy. But if the color rendition is maintained and the noise monochromatic I like that look. One of the traits of an Alexa is that underexposure results in noise. However it doesn't have color noise and maintains color rendition nicely. Of course the XH2S doesn't have the Alexa's highlight retention.

@jpfilmz
There is also something about older canon color science that is really nice.

@hyalinejim very nice work!

[hyalinejim]

1 hour ago, PannySVHS said:

the pure raw RAW image from the camera

Yes, I think the first shot of the sun coming up on the landscape has a fade in of something like sixty seconds. So like, it is indeed getting brighter in the scene but I'm also doing a one minute fade in from black. At the time I probably needed RAW for this. I think it was just before the GH5 10bit 422 era.

You mentioned in a DM that the original file downloaded from Vimeo is much cleaner. There is terrible banding in the streaming version for the first minute, but the footage itself is pristine.

What's interesting to me looking at it now is the softness of the footage as I'm used to looking at 4K (and I think the softnes looks great). I may have shot it at 2.8K or something, I'm not sure, for 2048 x whatever DCP delivery. But then I may even have blurred it a little bit! I know I definitely blurred the title and end credits as they looked a bit too sharp to me.