Notes On Video

Last Tuesday I went to a lecture at MIT on " Documentary Film and New Technologies ". The description was very promising: Emerging digital technologies are opening powerful new ways to create and even to reconceptualize the documentary film. How will handheld video cameras and ubiquitous open-source computing change the nature of documentaries? What are the implications for makers and viewers of documentaries of today’s unprecedented access to online editing and distribution tools, to an ocean of data never before available to the general public? I thought that there would be a discussion of new technologies (DSLRs! WiFi enabled cameras!), ubiquitous filmmaking (cellphones! iMovie for the iPad !), new distribution ( iTunes ! YouTube!) and unique sources of funding (KickStarter!) Instead I got a rather esoteric discussion on how traditional funding sources have changed a little, and hints at interactive media replacing linear storytelling - with a dash of  maybe . There we...

My first 48 hours with the Canon 5DmkIII [Updated] | Philip Bloom | Blog Philip tweeted some additional thoughts on the 5D Mark III : Philip Bloom @PhilipBloom the #5dmk3 video footage looks SOOO much better with post sharpening. Never like it with MK2 but it really makes a difference here Frame grab from #5d3 video at 1080p. Graded& a touch of post sharpening in Premiere. Loads of detail. Much happier and added this post-script to his preview: EDIT: After doing some experimenting do some work on it in post. Bit of grading and post sharpening the footage is coming to life beautifully. Detail that is not there before is coming out….thankfully! I am still shooting footage and testing camera out. I will update this review in a few days… CineStyle on the 5D Mark III and fixing softness in post | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Andrew has also added some notes on the Mark III : First a quick word to the wise – VLC Player is not giving accurate gamma with 5D Mark III footage at all so d...

At last nights Pub Night at  Rule Boston Camera , Ron Risman [ Cameratown ] talked about Timelapses. Some interesting tips I picked up included: Don't use auto aperture If you have a Canon camera, don't use an automatic lens - or if you are, use the "disconnect" trick[1] to turn off the aperture control on the lens. Evidently, if the lens is fully automatic - all Canon's modern lenses are - and you are shooting at anything but fully open, the camera switches back to fully open after each shot, then switches back to the set aperture (say f/8) to take the next picture. But it might be f/7.6 for one shot, and f/8.1 for the next. This will cause flicker. Ron showed an example video that had been shot at different apertures. The smaller the aperture (i.e. f/16) the more pronounced was the flicker problem (obviously, if you actually shoot wide-open, then the problem doesn't occur!) This was news to me; I'd previously read that you had to shoot fully manual...

Now that the 5D Mark III is arriving in people's hands, we're learning more about the video capabilities. It appears that while the camera shoots in even less light than the Mark II - and has some nice features like the audio-in plug and a reduction in moiré - the actual picture quality isn't that much better than the Mark II 's. Certainly not much of a jump when you consider how long the Mark II has been out: My first 48 hours with the Canon 5DmkIII | Philip Bloom For me, resolution was the thing I wanted to really see an improvement with. I shoot a lot of deep depth of field high detailed shots. Yes the moire and aliasing is gone it seems, and this is wonderful, but the detail is rather muddy on high detail shots. [...] Rolling shutter artefacts seem barely improved. Still clearly visible. A disappointment for sure. No clean HDMI output. Both the Nikon D800 and D4 have this. Canon 5D Mark III review | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Andrew is so unhappy with the M...

5D Mark III codec noise research - example file | Andrew Reid | Vimeo DON'T PANIC : but some people have encountered a noise issue with the 5D Mark III . It's unclear if it's a camera / settings / conversion / software / or user issue. Exhibit A for the 5D Mark III codec issue of heavy noise even at ISO 160. This isn't ISO related it is an encoding issue. Research required to find out what is causing it. As of now, this footage is unsuitable for professional use. I'm seeing tons of crawling noise over the image and it isn't stable. Noise appears in all apps I have used so far: Quicktime X, VLC 2.0.1, Premiere Pro CS5.5, 5DToRGB transcode does not help. First day with the Canon 5d3 ( photos and video ) | Jacob Gibbins | Blogspot Some nice photos and very good video shot with the 5D Mark III : Canon 5d3, 70-200 2.8 , 24-105 , 15mm fish , slider, tripod , mics etc All shot and edited in one day... Canon EOS 5D Mark III quick tests | planetMitch | Vime...

Spring Revolution – my shoot with the Canon 5D Mark III – first impressions | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Minor issue with the Canon 5D Mark III effects some Mac apps: The colour space of video is now broadcast HDTV standard Rec. 709 (thanks for the discovery, David Newman on Twitter). The 5D Mark II had the old standard definition 601 colour space, which didn’t make any sense at all. Meta data and timecode is stored in the Quicktime clip, no THM file is present. VLC Player 1.9 doesn’t playback the ALL-I H.264 – unusually for that app. Quicktime X is OK but I don’t use it. Instead, updating to the latest VLC Player 2.0.1 fixed the issue. EOSHD test of Canon 5D Mark III ISO 12,800 | Andrew Reid | Vimeo Andrew has also posted a short, low-light, hand-held video clip: 5D Mark III footage shot with Leica R 50mm F2 wide open, direct from the card, edited natively in Premiere CS5.5, no colour correction or any other alterations in post. ALL-I 1080/25p. Canon 5D Mark III Graded | Stu Ma...

“Borrowed” – what’s it like moving from an HDSLR to the RED Scarlet-X? | Josh Negrin | Planet5D Josh recounts his experience moving from the Canon 5D Mark II to the RED Scarlet : I’ve never been much of a camera manual reader, but I did myself a favor and read through the RED Scarlet manual, before day two. Oh, and I also ordered us an LCD Hood (Hoodman 5.6″ Monitor Hood for RED Cameras, which fits the 5 inch touchscreen perfectly). In the manual, I found that the top button, on the side of the lcd, will let you punch into the image, and a simple auto focus setting will allow you to either press the front record button down half way to get focus or by simply touching and holding on screen where you want the focus. 10 Reasons to love the Sony FS100 | Corey Steib | Blog Corey provides ten reasons to "like" the Sony NEX-FS100 , though sometimes it seems like he's damning with faint praise: 3. The Handgrip Ok I agree with everyone that this handgrip is not the best ...

The upcoming Boston Creative Pro User Group March 28th meeting on "Filmmaking with the Canon EOS 5D Mark III" & "Color Grading Your Next Project and Canon C300 Footage on "Hustle"" has moved location to Rule Boston Camera .

Boston-based corporate and documentary cameraman, Ben Eckstein , shares his experiences (and footage) shooting with the PMW-F3 along with a refresher from Sony on the F3 and the NEX-FS100 . 10am to 12n with Breakfast RSVP: events@rule.com March 28: Showroom Demo at 12n featuring F3 and FS100 accessories.

Seppe Van Grieken Has An Early Hands On A Production Canon EOS5D MKIII | Seppe Van Grieken | DSLR News Shooter Seppe gets to play with Dan Chung 's 5D Mark III . He finds the menus complicated, and the image quality a little bit better than the 5D Mark II,  but says he's saving for the C300 instead: Low light performance in video mode is pretty good, it produces quite clean images on everything under 10,000 ISO. Detail is certainly not at the same level as the Canon C300 though – maybe it’s a bit better than a 5DmkII. Moire seems to be much, much better than the 5DmkII – almost invisible. Rolling shutter still seems to be there, but not as bad. Has the DSLR video bubble finally burst? | Philip Jonhston | HD Warrior Philip is a long-time ENG/videocamera operator, so he may be a little biased against DSLRs, though I think he's somewhat right: I think the bubble has burst big time, this marketplace has moved on and with a hard hitting recession sales of the new DSLRs ...

DataVideo iPad Prompter upgraded for Canon C300 | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior I have the DataVideo TP-200 Teleprompter , and for $575 (plus the cost of the iPad if you don't already own one!) it's a great little device. However, Philip has discovered that the C300 is too tall for it; he demo's a workaround: Sometimes you buy technology and it works just fine but the DataVideo iPad Prompter as it stands won’t work with the Canon C300 without severe vignetting. The problem lies with the camera itself, it’s too high and brings the lens far to close to the top of the 45˚mirror and on a 17mm lens the top part of the mirror assembly and the sides interfere with your picture. The answer is to lift the mirror assembly 32mm above the base plate. Seagate GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt adapter | Dong Ngo | C|Net A while back I experimented with the Seagate USB 2.0 and Firewire adapters for their GoFlex Desk drives, and found that while there was a measurable difference in copyi...

Dan Chung of DSLR News Shooter   just got his Canon 5D Mark III and is tweeting about it: Finally got my 5DmkIII in my hands - some strange layout choices. Not quite the same as the 5DmkII. Some better some worse. Focus magnification now either on the left side of screen or the Set button - I find it harder to use when handholding Aperture control is nice as you can set it on the main dial and lock the shutter speed, no more accidental changes in vide On screen meters seem to require a whole lot of other stuff on display to clutter the screen. Anyone figured out how to remove that stuff? Using a 5DmkIII alongside a 5DmkII for video is going to be very very confusing. Control layout too different HMDI out of 5DmkIII also not quite what I was expecting - basically windowed 1080i, similar to 7D Really annyoing thing is the audio meters are outside the windowed HDMI area - U lose audio meter if U scale an EVF to fill the screen The Moire is much much better on the 5D3...