Oh Canon...
Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 3:25PM How can you, on the same page, say both this (italics mine):
…This sensor size difference means that for any given combination of aperture value, subject distance and angle of view, images from the EOS 5D Mark II are going to have much shallower depth of field than images from a conventional HD device… This difference in the look of movies created by the EOS 5D Mark II is part of the reason why we believe it will be embraced by creative professionals.
…and this:
In addition to the adjustable settings listed above, the following settings are made automatically by the camera and cannot be adjusted by the user:
- ISO speed
- Shutter speed (from 1/30 to 1/125)
- Aperture
Yep, if there’s one thing creative professional embrace, it’s an utter lack of control.
Please Canon, the camera is released, it’s a huge hit. Get to work on a firmware update to add 24p and manual exposure control.
Reader Comments (25)
"The relatively large imaging format of the EOS 5D Mark II creates a look that cannot be duplicated by any other movie capture device on the market today."
AAAAAARGGGGH Cmon Canon, if you really think professionals will embrace it with the current limitations your kidding yourself. Even a really BASIC Handycam will let you adjust the shutter speed and keep it there. 24P/ 25P adjustable ISO & shutterspeed or quit using the words 'Creative proffesionals'
Get those firmware drones burning that midnight oil!
J
Wow.
funny thing is, 30p is not available at all on the pal hv30s and even on the xh1as it's said to require firmware downloads, supposedly, as canon says, because 30p is only good for ntsc countries, and incompatible with pal. yet the 5d shoots 30p only, even in pal land. c'mon!
That is one VERY irritating camera!
Makes me want to never buy it... wierd that I am considering whatever RED comes up with that is $$Thousands more... rather than deal with camera companies that do not get it.
Boombox. Holding it high and proud.
I really hope some Canon employees are reading this blog.
Does Red really get it, though?
While Canon does seem to be stuck in their own little world on these particular features, Red seems to be just as equally stuck in it's own.
Just think, Canon is a just mere few features away from being awesome at a fraction of Red's price.
It's very early in the game. I wouldn't even be giving up on Canon if the Red were available now. There's time.
Agreed Brian. And we can hope that Panasonic will show the way to a hybrid camera where video is not a ghettoized afterthought. Canon and Sony will have to pay attention when people start buying $1,000 LUMIX Gs instead of $7,000 HDV camcorders.
I talked to the guys who apparently involved in development of the 5D Mark 2 at InterBEE 2008 in Tokyo last week. Thing is, they seemed to be rather amazed how huge the reaction had been - they said they had this technology put into the camera just for the sake of memo purpose during still photo shooting ; )
They knew very little about the motion camera - 24p importance comes first, and ironically they had no idea why we should avoid changing shutter-speed during recording.
When I asked about the firmware updates, they said there were dozens of technical difficulties which would not easily let them do it. The camera is not intended to evolve with the firmware updates unlike Red cameras. They did not hear about the Red either... quite a shame on the ignorance.
BTW, I am long time reader and first time poster.
Stu, keep the blog astonishing as it has been !
Thanks saru, that is thoroughly depressing.
Anyone want to help me write a post in Japanese?
Yeah I'd help you out
Send them a petition !
Wow! Thanks for the news saru. All this time we were asking for 24P in the wrong language :(
Game on Saru, send me an email and we'll do it. Click my name on this comment to see my blogger profile, there's an "email" link there.
Stu, an e-mail has been sent.
Check it out.
Cheers
well canon obviously loves to make the user jump thru hoops for exposure and aperture control. even the much touted HV20 makes you cheat with an SD card in "still" mode to properly set up for 24p 1/48 and it won't even save the preset...
when will companies learn that users are not afraid of choices and want to learn to express their ideas and creativity with tools that allow that.
{Stu smashes the boombox to the ground, slips into his Ninja outfit, pulls on his Tabi shoes and sharpens his sword.}
Go get 'em Stubert-san.
Dude, who told you I had a Ninja outfit?
ok, so frame rate isn't something can be altered easily. but what about using adapted manual nikon or m42 lenses which would let you adjust the aperture as you please on the fly? would that help things?
that's sounds like a pretty cheap work around considering you're working with manual focus anyway.
sarus comment breaks my heart :(
i dont understand the technology but the spock logic would have me believe that it would be an easy firmware fix to create a slower frame rate because it is having to do less and the same goes for shutter speed and ISO...we are asking for less, not more.
Measuring the hype generated by some videos shot with the preproduction model, Canon will not come with a firmware upgrade before they sell 200,000 bodies in the first month or so, ... or there will be another model to be released at twice the price with SOME of the pro level features enabled.
... Unless there is an announcement from Nikon or some one else with a camera that has it all.
They are far too big and busy selling photocopiers than to listen to a vocal minority of potential users that will ignore their products from the camcorder division.
Lets just hope they realize it is not just about selling camera bodies here. The appeal of this camera is also the lens lineup. All the fantastic, and quite expensive and profitable primes and zooms we will be buying.
And after they've created an accidental market for DSLR-Video camera, they can start migrating their motion picture lenses to EOS mounts and people will be buying those too...
On the one hand I find it so easy to believe that one engineer suggested they re-use the movie encoder on the digic chip for memo-purposes, on the other hand not to see this as a foray into very profitable lens-selling... Canon don't seem a very stupid company to me. Big maybe, stupid, not so much.
Oh, and I'm from the Netherlands. So 30P sucks even more for me.
Canon didn't accidentally created a DSLR-video camera market - they were "dragged in" against their will into the DSLR / video camera race by Nikon with the release of D90. All they had to do, was to enable a new menu setting in the firmware and some basic video recording ability just appeared!!!! I am sure there are more hidden gems in there.
Just look at cameras like A650 and G9: they are the same electronics/lens combo in different bodies that have different firmware. The CDHK developments/hacks enabled some limited video recording on the 40D which officially is only a stills camera!
For the poor buggers living in 50Hz countries, when shooting video in any public places with lights dependent on the AC frequency (fluoros, street lights...) this camera is next to useless. Especially these locations are at low light levels where the 5DMk2 excels !? ... not to mention the TV broadcast requirements that are 25fps.
Already, some of the videos posted from the users in China show severe flicker on shots done under discharge lights.
The Canon video lens line up cannot be used on this camera. First, the sensor is MUCH larger than the 2/3 or 1/3 video chips and secondly, all their video lenses are designed and optimised for 3 chip with RGB prism blocks.
.
They may have been dragged into this against their will, but I'll be very interested to see if and how they respond. It seems there is money to be made here by Canon, not really at the expense of other divisions. These Video-DSLRs aren't going to replace ENG gear anytime soon, nor a lot of other types of video gear. There are many, many people in need of a new hobby with enough money to buy a 5DmkII, a hand full of primes and the DV Rebel's Guide. It is not all bad, you know, new markets.
I Already own a Canon 300D and a HV30. I bought non EF-S lenses to keep the 5D/5DmkII an option and will very likely buy one next year. I'll be buying it for it's photo capabilities mostly with video a good secondary purpose.
Even if Canon refuses to fix it, for me it will mostly be a moot point. I am an amateur, my things are unlikely to be shown on TV and on any computer screen 30p is not a problem. I'm sure the DV Rebel's Guide I ordered 5 days ago doesn't mandate 24p. I got the impression that was about being practical :)
I'll feel let down, of course. Being a software developer myself, these marketing decisions may seem even more infuriating to me - although I don't want to start that contest ;-)
I was thinking of the 35mm Cinematographic lenses, not the video lenses. The really expensive ones they use for all the 'real' movies. They probably have EOS mounts/adapters for those already.
Pascal,
The movie lenses cover only half the frame of the Canon 5DII. The 35mm movie cameras and other digital cinema cameras like RED have a frame diagonal of about 31mm only. They should be OK for the Nikon D90, that has a sensor with a 1.5X crop factor, but the lens mount is too small.
The flange distance for the PL mount Zeiss, Cooke movie lenses is ~52mm, but some of them, especially the wide angles are too close to the film/sensor plane and they will touch the Canon or Nikon camera's mirror.
I have a number of 35mm cinema lenses and I tried to test them on a 400D camera with a weird lab-test-bench contraption. Above 50mm focal lens, where I could get infinity focus, the sharpness and contrast is beyond outstanding.
It is not impossible to enable a 'crop' factor in the camera, as already is available for the Nikon D2x and above.
That would be very cool... think of the possibility of high speed as well. If they can do 30fps on a 24x36mm sensor, imagine what can be achieved on a 18x23mm window.
It's all in the firmware.
Thank you Valeriu, I hadn't realized 35mm motion film isn't used in the same way as the similarly named still photography. You live, post and learn. This moving picture stuff is wildly fascinating.
Do you still have the test stills/clips of those test shots? I'd love to see them.
Highspeed... that'd be something. Probably abused ad nauseum on vanitypipe.com too. Are there prosumer cameras that let you do that, yet?
But with the 50D just out, I'd hazard to guess we won't see a proper movie mode in a Canon mid-range DSLR until the end of next year. Nikon may be brooding on an interesting answer, of course. I wonder what Red has to say next week.
Come to think of it, if they have the right thing to say, I might even fore go the 5DmkII. I'm not quite sure what the right thing is, though. It'd have to mount my Canon lenses. Nah. Probably not, I'm more of a photographer.