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3D vs 5DMrkII exposure (explanation)

April 8, 2009 By

I knew when I made the previous post that I had done something stupid. I double checked everything, made sure every setting was as I expected, etc… Still, there was something at the back of my head telling me that I should not made this public because it would hit me back straight in the face

Well, 15 minutes after leaving for work, I realized what the problem was: I forgot to remove the @#$%#$% polarizer! You have no idea how stupid I feel right now… To my defense, my protection and polarizing filters are from the same brand so it is hard to notice which one is on if you dont pay attention. Actually, it is not that hard, I was just stupid

Mea culpa, Canon 5D, I love you! I will never doubt you ever again!

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5DMrkII vs D3 exposure differences?

April 8, 2009 By

Edit: I was stupid! Explanation here.

Last week I went shooting with my friend Christopher who is a D3 owner. It was more of a scouting trip, to find nice locations in downtown Montreal ,for future shoot than anything else. To make a long story short, we ended up doing some tests/comparison between our two cameras. Frustratingly enough, Chris managed to do a shot that I was failing to get. Wanting to get the same picture at a real man resolution (21>12), I dialed the same settings on my 5DMrkII and took the shot, expecting the same results.

Oh boy, I was in for a surprise! Glancing at my LCD I clearly saw that my image was different than his (mine was darker). It could have been and LCD brightness setting so we compared histograms. Technically, if we both shot at same ISO, shutter speed & aperture, the amount of light burning the sensor should be the same, resulting in the same image/histogram. Unfortunately, it was not the case! How comes?

I was about to post the two shots but unfortunately, it seems like I deleted mine (probably out of frustration!). Dont fear, I still have a valid example. The darkest image (left) is from my 5D @f4,5 for 1/60 and the other (right) is from the D3 @f4,5 for 1/100, both at ISO800, @70mm and were taken minutes apart. Even with 2/3 more light (1/60 vs 1/100) the 5D picture is still much darker, and at full resolution much noisier so imagine how the 1/100sec one was!

Anyone has an explanation?

img_1207dsc_3122

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Should you get a manual focusing lens?

March 9, 2009 By

You must have noticed by now that a lot of cinephotographers are using old Nikon or Zeiss lenses with their 5DMrkII. These lenses allow their owner to set the aperture directly on the lens, removing one of the variable of the automatic exposure control in video mode.

I must admit that I was about to get one of these. They are just so more convenient than the series of tasks required to get the desired aperture/ISO/shutter speed.

Well, if you can wait a few more days (or week), the next firmware update from Canon might make these lenses obsolete!

Ok, this is all rumors and speculations from www.5dfix.com but it seems plausible in the current context. Lets not forget that competitors are coming in with video d-SLR or bridge cameras too and they have been listening to all cinephotographers complains! They offer full control over the exposure triangle, 24p and even 60fps!

Nothing like competition to push innovation! And nothing like a rumors to give us hope!

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False Manual Video control advertisement from Canon?

January 22, 2009 By

Hudson, from the cinema5D forum made an interesting discovery while reading the Canon 5DMrkII white paper (yep, some people really read these things). Look at page 14 the in the middle of the page you will see this:

canon_wp_5d

If you read the whole thread you will see that they have tried to contact Canon to have some explanations. Canon reply was quite sketchy and would probably not hold very long in court.

Hence the rumors of class action for false advertisement. It seems like some people dont understand the meaning of the word control. Going this route would probably be the easiest way for Canon 5DMrkII owners to get a firmware update that would allow real manual control.

In case you are reading this Canon, control means that I could pick the ISO, aperture and Shutter speed that we want. Actually, if you give us aperture and ISO we can live without the shutter speed.

So now is time for action guys! If you live in the US contact one of these ambulance chaser lawyer, if you are from the rest of the world (Google Analytics tells me that you are 65% of my visitors) click on the Digg link to bring more people to the cause or join the cinema5D forum and sign the petition.

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Exposure control videos from Bruce Dorn

December 26, 2008 By

Bruce released 3 very informative video on his website about how you can control the exposure of the Canon 5DMarkII using neutral density filters. The principle is simple: if there is too much light, the camera will close the aperture, which in turn will increase the depth of field. The solution is to use the filters to reduce the amount of light that goes into the camera, so it opens up (automatically) it aperture, and create a nice bokeh in the process.

Quick recap:

Video 1: shows the various filters and explanations

Video 2: explain the advantages of 4×6 filters vs 4×4

Video 3: example of the video captured

Over all the whole thing last about 20 minutes and it is a good investment if you want to shoot video with your 5D. Go and watch it! My only complain is that Bruce did not show the one thing I was interested to see: Depth of field changes controlled by the circular variable ND filter. 

Note: you can also use a circular “normal” polarizer to do the job, it is just that the variations are between 0.5 and 2 stops so you will only see much of the difference if you are in medium lights.

Link: Bruce Canon 5D markII section

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