Canon EOS 5D Mark II in the Wild
Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 11:43AM The Canon EOS 5D Mark II has shipped in Asia, and the videos are pouring in. Today we have a Korean adaptation of Reverie and some gorgeous Beijing streets at night, complete with perhaps my most vivid Beijing memory, constant spitting.
Both of these movies allow Vimeo members to download the originals for closer inspection, which is worth doing as Vimeo tops out at 24 fps for HD. That means these 30 fps movies are getting a crappy 24p conversion when Vimeo compresses them, which hides some of the 30p smoothness, but not in a good way. Watching the originals, you vividly perceive the you-are-there smoothness that comes from 30 fps and a 360 degree shutter. Some love it, I hate it, but regardless of how you feel, on Vimeo you are not getting the true 5DmkII footage experience.
EOS 5D Mark2 Movi - Prism from chador on Vimeo.
Canon EOS5DmkII, One night in Beijing. from Dan Chung on Vimeo.
Discussion with Dan Chung here.
Vincent Laforet has some new footage up on his blog as well, including some aerial tilt-shift work.
Reader Comments (10)
I love Laforet's work, the Bejing bit had me yawning, though. There seems to be alot more effort put into the Bejing short as opposed to Laforet's but it doesn't show onscreen. Laforet's seem effortless. Absolutely beautiful.
I guess this means no last minute firmware change for 24fps if these are all shipping cameras.
Still sitting waiting for them to ship in the UK... I'm really hoping for a 24p update by Jan, as I'm shooting a short then... Otherwise will either do it at 30, or see what a speed-ip looks like.
As stunning as Vincents rapid fire work is, Dan Chungs more reflective footage from Beijing gets me a little more excited about what the 5Dm2 can do for me.
I can see myself sitting quietly on a street corner with a tripod and a bag of old manual lenses, absorbing the world around.
Jumping in a helicopter with gyro-stabilising camera mounts and a few TS lenses? Not after i pay for the camera at least.. ha!
Keep holding that Boombox, Stu!
It is so impressive to watch a video which was videotaped in Korea in your blog. Because, scenary in the video is so familiar to me. I'm a korean who enjoy visiting your blog and who is living in a Seoul. thx for good information. (and sorry for my uncomprehensive english expression.)
Last Wednesday I used my two 5D MkII's in a 3 camera music video shoot. The third camera was a Sony PMW-EX1. Audio was recorded on two additional devices. One audio recording device was an Edirol R4 Pro. The other audio recording setup was a Tascam USB Interface to a MacBook Pro.
The Sony Camera, Edirol, and Tascam/MacBook Pro devices all synced sound perfectly over the full duration of the shoot (just over 20 minutes). To clarify - once the different sources are sync'd quickly and easily to the slate clap on the waveform at the beginning of the shoot they all stayed perfectly in sync for the rest of the video.
Both Canon cameras audio and video sync'd perfectly to each other but drifted significantly from the other 3 devices even over a 3 minute segment. The is a very serious problem for me and one that introduces significant post-production trouble and expense.
This issue was so unexpected (I haven't run into this in years of working with a range of equipment) that I performed 3 subsequent tests to confirm that the 5D MkII's run too fast. The results from the test show both of my 5D Mark II run about 14 frames too fast in 10 minutes. Audio that is 1 full frame out of sync is noticeable on sharp sounds causing an echo. Audio that is 2 or 3 frames out of sync causes echo on any sound and looks odd in terms of lip sync.
That the two Canon cameras audio sync'd OK to each other tells me that the cameras can be calibrated to a standard. Evidently they are just calibrated to an incorrect standard.
Anybody else experience this? Does anybody really know if this is likely a chip issue or a firmware issue? Does anyone know an easy reliable way to get the clips to conform to the standard without time-consuming constant tweaking?
Here's the Canon EOS 5D audio sync issue or problem.
Last Wednesday I used my two 5D MkII's in a 3 camera music video shoot. The third camera was a Sony PMW-EX1. Audio was recorded on two additional devices. One audio recording device was an Edirol R4 Pro. The other audio recording setup was a Tascam USB Interface to a MacBook Pro.
The Sony Camera, Edirol, and Tascam/MacBook Pro devices all synced sound perfectly over the full duration of the shoot (just over 20 minutes). To clarify - once the different sources are sync'd quickly and easily to the slate clap on the waveform at the beginning of the shoot they all stayed perfectly in sync for the rest of the video.
Both Canon cameras audio and video sync'd perfectly to each other but drifted significantly from the other 3 devices even over a 3 minute segment. The is a very serious problem for me and one that introduces significant post-production trouble and expense.
This issue was so unexpected (I haven't run into this in years of working with a range of equipment) that I performed 3 subsequent tests to confirm that the 5D MkII's run too fast. The results from the tests show both of my 5D Mark II run about 14 frames too fast in 10 minutes. Audio that is 1 full frame out of sync is noticeable on sharp sounds causing an echo. Audio that is 2 or 3 frames out of sync causes echo on any sound and looks odd in terms of lip sync.
That the two Canon cameras audio sync'd OK to each other tells me that the cameras can be calibrated to a standard. Evidently they are just calibrated to an incorrect standard.
Anybody else experience this? Does anybody really know if this is likely a chip issue or a firmware issue? Does anyone know an easy reliable way to get the clips to conform to the standard without time-consuming constant tweaking?
I contacted Canon tech support and the girl there couldn't care less. She said: There is no fix and that the 5d isn't really a video camera so what did I expect? Nice!
Michael, I have seen your posts on a variety of blogs but no answers. I have been having the same problem and I think I have found the solution to the edirol/canon challenge. I will assume that you are using Final Cut Pro. When you drop the video into the timeline, FCP will ask if you want to change the sequence settings to use this video. Say yes, if it does not, then you choose the right settings already. FCP then automatically re-calibrates the footage to 29.97FPS as opposed the 30FPS which the canon records at. This slows the footage very slightly. So you need to change the speed of the audio to compensate. Highlight the audio track, go to modify - speed and then change the audio speed to 99.9%. I have only tried this on one 12 minute sequence but it worked great. Good luck and enjoy the camera, it's blows my mind every day! By the way you need FCP version 6.0.4 to be able to do this.
Just had the same synch issue with a 12 minute clip. Even though my timeline and sequence were set to 30 fps I still had to set the sound to run at 99.98%
If I do that the video from the 5d MK II and my SOny pcm d50 synch just fine