Notes On Video

Canon C300 News Roundup First the Good News: EOS C300 receives coveted broadcaster approval | Canon Europe The C300 receives the BBC's stamp of approval: Canon has announced that the groundbreaking EOS C300, the first camera in Canon’s Cinema EOS System, has met the standards the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) requires from cameras tested to the European Broadcasting Union’s recommendation EBU R118 for High Definition TV production. CANON C300: Trimming White Balance, Plus a Look at Daylight vs. Tungsten Color | Art Adams This may not seem completely good news; it's an article about how the C300 white balance isn't totally "white," but it offers some tips to address this: This isn’t unusual at all. A lot of cameras do this. Even the Arri Alexa white balances cyan, which is why I use it primarly on preset—and even then I have to pull some green out of the image to suit my taste. (For daylight I use 5600K CC-3 preset, and under tungsten light I u...

Canon Rumors. Possible 4K HDSLR. Why I’m Not Buying A 5D3 Just Yet | Jared Abrams | WideOpenCamera Repeat after me: "there will always be a better camera in the future." Though I will admit that the time between releases seems to be accelerating. Jared explains why he isn't buying a camera right now: Canon Rumors is reporting a possible 4K DSLR from Canon on April 16th at NAB 2012. There is also another event on the 15th. Two big announcements from Canon on the heels of the new 5D3 makes me want to wait and see what will be shown at NAB. I also think we may see a 4K camera from Sony. Hustle: Color Grading Canon C300 Footage | Chris Portal | Blog Chris blogs about the other half of this weeks presentation at the Boston Creative Pro Users Group : The whole color grading process took a total of 7-8 hours over the span of 2 days. Having worked with 5D, 7D, Alexa, Red, 16mm, 35mm, and now C300 footage, Rob described the C300 footage as having significantly more latitud...

Hot news for those waiting for NAB announcements; the Sony leaks have started appearing! EOSHD reports: The Sony NEX FS700 – 4K for $8k At NAB 2012 next month, Sony will shake the digital cinema market to its core. Sony’s answer to the C300 is a 4K Super 35mm update to the FS100. It will be available in June for a provisional $8000. My source (based in Taiwan) says that the FS700 does 4K via 3G HD-SDI to an external recorder. The FS700 is said to include 3 internal ND filters yet retains the NEX E-mount. Looks like they found some space for those missing FS100 NDs after all! ND filters and 4K for under $10K? Where do I sign up?! They claim that it will be in the same body as the FS100 ; but this seems unlikely to me...it might resemble the FS100 , but they'd have to do some surgery to put in ND filters. Of course, just because last year they told us they couldn't put ND filters in there because there wasn't enough space, doesn't mean that they won't suddenly...

Last night's Boston Creative Pro User Group meeting at Rule Boston Camera featured pizza and beer, Carl Peer of Canon U.S.A. discussing the Canon 5D Mark III , and Rob Bessette , colorist at Finish Post discussing grading the short " Hustle " (shot on the Canon C300 and graded on DaVinci Resolve .) I'm not going to write at length about the meeting as they were video taping it, so it's probably is going to appear on the web near you somewhere soon. But here's the pieces that stood out to me: Canon 5D Mark III ISO 25600 on the Mark III is about equivalent to 6400 on the Mark II   How are you reducing Moiré? "It starts at the sensor, but then afterwards, it is about how you are going from 22MP down to a 1920 x 1080 image, which is about 3MP. So how you get down into that is how you are going to reduce moiré in the large scale. On the small scale, it does happen at the sensor, but on the large scale, it is about how you are reducing that [frame si...

The C300 and the Ice Cream Factory for “You and your Canon C300″ | Philip Johnston | HD Warrior Despite the title, this is not a post about shooting with the Canon C300 . It's about looking for "the shot," and creating visually interesting shots with some imagination and lighting: I planted two 600W LED lights behind the mixtures but the white light destroyed the effect I was looking for so I added red and yellow gells to the lights and then added a third camera light at the back and lay a blue gel on top of it. Review of the Canon 5DmkIII now with full video review and footage | Philip Bloom | Blog Philip has expanded his review, adding a 17 minute video that you can view on his blog or on Vimeo: "I am much happier with this camera now, than I was a few days ago when I first got it." There's some nice footage of New Zealand too: EDIT: After doing some experimenting do some work on it in post. Bit of grading and post sharpening the footage is coming ...

C300, the good the bad and the ugly! | Paul Joy | Blog More on the color aliasing issues in highlights with the Canon C300 : As you can see the issue appears as alternating green and red pixels which is really distracting and darn right nasty to look at when watching the moving images. I’ve done a lot of testing with this issue now and it happens with any lens, at any aperture and with or without ND engaged. It happens regardless of any picture profiles or gammas too. Panasonic GH2 vs 5D Mark III | Andrew Reid | EOSHD PanasonicHD Except for the shallower depth of field and color rendition (for some things) that the Mark III provides, Andrew really prefers the GH2 : The 5D Mark III is an incredible stills camera and the sensor is much improved in low light. However the video image is not really an improvement on a nearly 4 year old predecessor aside from cleaning up a bit of moire. The 5D Mark III is as soft as the 5D Mark II, and almost as poor as the old 550D and 600D, the im...

At the MIT forum " Documentary Film and New Technologies " I was taken by this answer from Patricia Zimmermann to a question about the difficulty - particularly with interactive work - of knowing which platform to use. I found the answer fascinating because it is really about the longevity of mediums. I look at the floppy disks I still have lying around, with documents created in old applications; should I be trying to preserve them? or should I be thinking of the medium as more like theater; something that exists for a moment - or a year - in time, and is then gone? Q: How do you deal with the broad question of the instability of platforms? What does an aspiring young documentarian do facing not only the enormous number of choices, but also the deep, deep question about whether the chosen platform will be around in five years? What do we do about being in a moment where platforms are very instable? I’d like to take this on. It’s interesting to me when you use the words...

$3000 Nikon D800 thrashes flagship $6000 Nikon D4 for video | Andrew Reid | EOSHD Another comparison of  D800 and D4 video: The resolution is not compromised although there is some aliasing on horizontal lines and false colour moire on very fine fabrics. The issue doesn’t seem as bad as on the Canon 5D Mark II or 7D from what I’ve seen but it is there if you look closely. To be fair though it does not flare up as easily as some cameras do. Nikon D4, D800 Compared with Canon 5D Mark II and Sony FS100 | Den Lennie | Blog Den and Guy Thatcher spend some time playing with different cameras, including the D4 and D800 : Here is a very short low light comparison with the cameras set roughly around 2000 ISO (although we set the D4 to 4000 ISO because it looked dark in the LCD) Scene is only illuminated by the screen of my 27" iMac. Lenses used were Zeiss 35mm f1.4 on Nikon's and on FS100 and Canons a 24mm f1.4 L series. Geotagging location surveys | Jeff Heusser | fx...

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...