(Please download the original 5D 1080p file, it only streams in 720p. No artistic value. Not representative of final firmware. No salesman will call.)
Looks like someone didn’t get the memo!
In the last few hours the first 90Mbit 1080p Quicktime file was made available from a pre-production 5D Mark III.
The subject matter is mundane but finally we get to see what the true resolution of this camera is like.
The test is shot at ISO 3600. Here’s my verdict…
The file, available to Vimeo plus members is a large 535MB download. That is half a gig for just over 2 minutes of footage. All the fabrics are there purely to test the resolution of the camera. Here’s what Tonis has to say about his test:
“This is as random of a low-light, jello, moire and aliasing test as I could set up in few hours, texture wise at least 🙂 Pure raw touch-and-go footage directly from a $30 16G low end CF card”
In my hands-on earlier I said that the resolution of the 5D Mark III didn’t seem to be improved from the 5D Mark II and is not at the GH2 or C300 level for really clean, finely detailed 1080p. Was I right?
It seems I was unfortunately. I wouldn’t say resolution was fantastic. It is just ‘OK’. It lacks the fine noise grain of the GH2 and I find that very fine details are a bit muddy. But a bit of softness is no bad thing for cinema. It depends how you watch it. On a projector it should be fine. On a pin sharp LCD monitor not so much.
It is not a bad image by any means but resolution is simply not true 1080p and not or is it at the hacked GH2 level.
It is only marginally better than the D800 I feel, and the 5D Mk II. Moire is however much better than both of those, almost absent.
What surprised me about this clip is that noise was higher than we’ve seen so far – ISO 6400, even 12,800 has looked silky smooth on the officially sanctioned videos from Canon. It’s possible they had some heavy noise reduction applied (which would explain how soft they looked)Â or that heavy compression and avoidance of under exposure hid it.
Noise doesn’t have the fine grain appearance that it does on the GH2 which is disappointing considering that the 5D Mark III has the high bitrates to maintain a fine grain structure in the encoded video. Again this is due to less than perfect scaling.
It is still an amazing camera and an improvement on the 5D Mark II, which is no bad thing… But the D800’s HDMI output might be pretty competitive with this. Let’s hope so anyway, competition is a good thing.
Click here to go to the video and download it if you are a Vimeo plus member. Playback only streams in compressed 720p format.
