Canon 5DS takes a backwards step for video - severe rolling shutter, moire and lack of uncompressed HDMI

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

Th is extremely nice, the first improvement in video I've seen in Canon line-up since the 5DIII and actually 5DII minus moire, this looks great! 1080p detail, very clean of aliasing/moire, shadow noise looks better, canon colours, and it's on the 5Ds! 

I wonder why Canon kept these very obvious IQ improvements undercover, any company that has an improvement in anything mentions it in the PR. Perhaps they didn't just want anyone buying the 5Ds for video for the lack of Headphone jack and clean HDMI out, or wanted to market video for a next release so couldn't burn their cards on these improvements. 

[David Bowgett]

It's just I remember someone saying it did... but I can't find it again...

You may be thinking of the A7rII, which does do full sensor readout, albeit only in APS-C mode. Even if Canon were somehow able to perform a full readout on a full-frame 50MP sensor without frying the camera, it'd produce truly insane amounts of rolling shutter, which would easily be noticeable in the sample videos.

However, if Canon maintained the same video scanning pattern from the 7D Mk2/ 70D sensor and sized it up by 1.6X, it'd give a ~2.5K resolution.

[Nikkor]

The d800 oversamples from 2300 pixels to 1920 and you can see the moire, the d810 probably does the same but you don't have moirée. I think there is some sort of fancy processing going on.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

I highly believe it's pixel-binning clusters of pixels, as they do on the 5DIII & 7DII to avoid line-skipping moire/aliasing. All current Nikons do it too. It's not as bad as line-skipping and not as good as full read-out & downsample. Eliminated these skipping issues but doesn't give the eye-popping resolution of oversampling. However 5DS sensor resolution seems to contribute in making a sharper image vs all the Canons.

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

This is nice 1080p, really good DR too when pushed in post.

[dr_jon]

I shot a rolling shutter test for the dvxuser thread, or anyone else who wants to play... there is supposed to be quite an angle on the vertical line and I moved it fast enough to achieve it.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?303559-Measuring-rolling-shutter-put-a-number-on-this-issue!

Oh and I agree they don't have the bandwidth to read the whole sensor, but I really am sure I did see it somewhere (planning on buying the camera does aid memorising odd facts that come up). They should certainly be able to read two sensor pixels per video pixel and could do who knows what on-sensor combining to make those pixels. Maybe they just meant they used all the pixels in the 16:9 area with on-sensor combining, it is very clean and my initial ISO 3200 test is also looking okay.

[dr_jon]

BTW as I only have a Basic Vimeo account the originals only last for a week. I did post some other stuff, including a brief video at ISO 3200 which was a lot less noisy than I was expecting.

[dr_jon]

BTW "Samuel H" at dvxuser measured the rolling shutter (from my test video) at 27.7ms, so not that great but not dreadful (5DmkII is 25.9, 5DmkIII is 20.5, A7s full-frame 1080p is 30.5, and A7s 1080p APS 19.5).

Full results:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?303559-Measuring-rolling-shutter-put-a-number-on-this-issue!

[hmcindie]

BTW "Samuel H" at dvxuser measured the rolling shutter (from my test video) at 27.7ms, so not that great but not dreadful (5DmkII is 25.9, 5DmkIII is 20.5, A7s full-frame 1080p is 30.5, and A7s 1080p APS 19.5).

Full results:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?303559-Measuring-rolling-shutter-put-a-number-on-this-issue!

If you use magic lantern on the 5dIII you can get the rolling shutter down to 16.9 ms by tweaking timers.

 

 

[dr_jon]

Thanks - didn't know that, although I gather from people's comments that it may be a while before ML manages dual Digic-6 cameras.

[Shield3]

Second video is much nicer.

Wow.

That is one hell of a clean 1080p image going on.

Wonder why Canon themselves talked it down?!

Clearly they want us to buy the Cinema EOS cameras for video, don't they. Even to the point of them claiming their flagship DSLR has moire... when actually it looks to do far better full frame internal 1080p than the 1D X, 1D C, GH4 and 5D Mark III put together.

My 5dsr will be here tomorrow - I am going to test this as well.  Hopefully I'll have the same results; I will be using the Sigma 50 art stopped way down (F/5.6 - F/8)

[kaylee]

My 5dsr will be here tomorrow - I am going to test this as well.  Hopefully I'll have the same results; I will be using the Sigma 50 art stopped way down (F/5.6 - F/8)

please share your results~! i wish more ppl were shooting video with the 5dsr. i want to see more from it

[Shield3]

I need to figure out the best method for 50.6 MP stills first, which was the point of the purchase.    Video may only be shot out of convenience.

[Shield3]

please share your results~! i wish more ppl were shooting video with the 5dsr. i want to see more from it

The 5dsr 1080p/24 footage looks noticeably better than 5d3 non-raw footage IMO.  Nice and detailed; clean.  Shot some last night and the good 'old Canon colors are there.  The AF in video mode works better than I thought it would.  Not quite to the level of the 70d's dual pixel AF, but much better than not having it.  Very impressed with the still image quality of the 5dsr so far.  I've tried it with the Sigma 50 1.4 art, the 35 F/2 IS, the 70-200 II and the 16-35 F/4 IS.  All look great.

...which annoys me why Canon didn't include 1080p60 on this camera.

 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

I need to figure out the best method for 50.6 MP stills first, which was the point of the purchase.    Video may only be shot out of convenience.

To get the best results off the 50mp 5DsR. 

-Shoot at 100 ISO 

-Expose to the right, so you never push up exposure in post, which increases noise hugely on Canons

-Put it on a tripod 

-Open liveview, 10x magnification, and manually focus

-Use 2/10 second timee 

-Shoot at RAW format 

-Stop down the lens to f/5.6/8 

-Import the photos to Canon's own Digital Photo Professional, apply the tweaks in the ''RAW Panel" as White balance, brightness, contrast, and sharpening. Export to 16bit TIFF,

-Import into lightroom if any further changes are required.

(DPP strangely gives the highest quality Raw conversion for Canon cameras in my extensive tests, sadly it's not a great application to use but good enough) 

 

 

Of course this is suitable for Medium Format style shooting/aesthetic like landscapes, interiors, architecture, astrophotography, etc. But using the camera handheld with a wide open iris and 800-1600 ISO will still give amazing results as we've seen in the 5Ds eye popping portraits, even at JPEG, canon has a beautiful JPEG engine in-camera with a great picture style control, don't be afraid of shooting the 5DsR at JPEG, the images are marvelous. Just make sure focus is correct as it's very easy to see focus errors at 50mp files, same with noise, at 1:1 you might see some annoying noise but remember you're looking at a 50mp file at full magnification so applying noise reduction will eliminate the noise while keeping enormous detail left, ending up with a cleaner and higher resolution, higher depth colour image than any 5DIII 20mp image. Again, expose correctly or higher as pushing exposure up on canon cameras really destroys the image. 

 

I'd love to see some video. Even just JPEG/Tiff grabs we can play with. Shot at neutral with minimum sharpness and contrast. Would be very grateful for some grabs. 

[Shield3]

To get the best results off the 50mp 5DsR. 

-Shoot at 100 ISO 

-Expose to the right, so you never push up exposure in post, which increases noise hugely on Canons

-Put it on a tripod 

-Open liveview, 10x magnification, and manually focus

-Use 2/10 second timee 

-Shoot at RAW format 

-Stop down the lens to f/5.6/8 

-Import the photos to Canon's own Digital Photo Professional, apply the tweaks in the ''RAW Panel" as White balance, brightness, contrast, and sharpening. Export to 16bit TIFF,

-Import into lightroom if any further changes are required.

(DPP strangely gives the highest quality Raw conversion for Canon cameras in my extensive tests, sadly it's not a great application to use but good enough) 

 

 

Of course this is suitable for Medium Format style shooting/aesthetic like landscapes, interiors, architecture, astrophotography, etc. But using the camera handheld with a wide open iris and 800-1600 ISO will still give amazing results as we've seen in the 5Ds eye popping portraits, even at JPEG, canon has a beautiful JPEG engine in-camera with a great picture style control, don't be afraid of shooting the 5DsR at JPEG, the images are marvelous. Just make sure focus is correct as it's very easy to see focus errors at 50mp files, same with noise, at 1:1 you might see some annoying noise but remember you're looking at a 50mp file at full magnification so applying noise reduction will eliminate the noise while keeping enormous detail left, ending up with a cleaner and higher resolution, higher depth colour image than any 5DIII 20mp image. Again, expose correctly or higher as pushing exposure up on canon cameras really destroys the image. 

 

I'd love to see some video. Even just JPEG/Tiff grabs we can play with. Shot at neutral with minimum sharpness and contrast. Would be very grateful for some grabs. 

Oh I have more experience shooting stills.  I just meant with this particular body - I have been getting very sharp shots with the 16-35 F/4 IS @ F/4 at 1/80 or faster shutter handheld, and even the 35/2 IS wide open looks pretty damn impressive.  I'm sorry you typed all of that  and it's great advice if I were shooting landscapes.  Believe it or not, you can shoot shallow DOF cream puff shots with this body just like a 5d3.  You just have to think a tad more before you snap and watch your shutter (1/60th is just too slow).  I even shot my kids moving around and it did just fine.  This shutter is dampened, along with EFCS it's just fine.

It's a far cry from the original A7r that I used.  Now then, I'd take most of your above advice to heart.

 

Let me grab some video clips.  I don't shoot neutral; I shoot portrait dialed down for the skin tones.  Everything you see will be Portrait -2 sharp, -2 contrast -1 saturation, ungraded 100%.

First shot:  Dusk.  Keep in mind this is 100% untouched straight out of the camera (0 editing - screen save from Media Player Classic Home Cinema 1.78 EXIF for the mov states:

File Name                       : 0V1A9551.MOV
F Number                        : 2.0
Shutter Speed                   : 1/50
ISO                             : 5382
White Balance                   : Auto
Color Temperature               : 5200
Light Value                     : 1.9
Measured EV                     : 1.63
Lens                            : 35.0 mm
Lens ID                         : Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM
Focal Length                    : 35.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 34.2 mm)
Camera Temperature              : 42 C
Metering Mode                   : Multi-segment
Exposure Program                : Manual
Shooting Mode                   : Manual
Exposure Compensation           : 0
Video Frame Rate                : 23.976
Avg Bitrate                     : 31.8 Mbps
Image Size                      : 1920x1080

[Shield3]

2nd image.  Indoors on auto white balance, everything pretty much manually set for exposure, but auto WB and ISO:
  Again straight out of the camera (I was picking my kids up and just threw the 35/2 IS on for some quick fun):

I would also like to point out this was all handheld and shot wide open with crappy elementary school indoor lighting.

EXIF reads:

File Name                       : 0V1A9539.MOV
F Number                        : 2.0
Shutter Speed                   : 1/60
ISO                             : 183
White Balance                   : Auto
Color Temperature               : 5200
Light Value                     : 7.0
Measured EV                     : 7.25
Lens                            : 35.0 mm
Lens ID                         : Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM

Same "reel" as shot two.  Oh yeah I always make sure high ISO noise reduction, auto lighting optimizer and all that crap is turned off. 

Again this is portrait skin tones.  If you want a real sharpness comparison, I can shoot something tomorrow stopped down to F/8 or so.  I still have my 5d3 and if I get a chance I can do a direct side by side screenshot with the exact same glass.

My daughter Christine...

Last one for tonight.  My son Nicholas.  I love the skin tones from this thing.  Tomorrow I will shoot my fence in the backyard with the 5dsr and 5d3 with the same settings / lenses.

If I get time.  Again all F/2, crappy light, 100% untouched.

[BenEricson]

Ha. Canon has BY FAR the best colors. It's no contest...

[dr_jon]

Also if you really want to shoot in 8k right now (sensor is 8,688 x 5,792)....