Notes On Video

Christopher Witz got hold of a Canon 5D Mark II and seems happy with it [ My 5DM2 opinions.... ]. As a still camera he felt the resolution and noise levels were as good as his Canon 1Ds Mark III. In fact, the only advantage of the 1Ds III he feels is in frames per second and the buffer transfer. He also noted that the LCD of the 5D II is much better than the 1Ds III. But it’s the video that he’s most excited by: The video quality is "Oh my god" the 1st time you see it play back on a 1080p screen.... blacks are crushed a bit ( picture style fixable ) but that's ok.... Very little noise.... this thing practically sees in the dark. On the other hand, he bemoans the inability to lock settings, suggesting that if you’re doing multiple takes and want to keep the settings identical, your best bet will be to leave the camera running between takes! A little more troubling: If you're planning on smoothing out your shaky footage with "smoothcam" or any other post stab...

Dan Carr is expecting his Canon 5D Mark II any day now, and in anticipation he's just posted an informative blog about the options for attaching external audio devices to the camera: Video accessories for the Canon 5D Mark II: Part 1 - Microphones . Initial tests from various photographers indicate that the video quality is excellent, but the sound quality from the on board microphone is poor, not only that but it also picks up noise from the camera mechanisms such as the IS, aperture and just simply touching the camera body. He covers some inexpensive external mics - like the Sennheiser MKE 400 - as well as XLR to 3.5mm converter boxes like those from BrachTek . I actually have an earlier model BeachTek, and can attest to their usefulness for using different professional mics with consumer video cameras.