On 17/9/2008 Canon introduced the Canon 5D MK2, this camera has readily demonstrated to be groundbreaking for film makers all over the world – for the first time Canon announced an HD full frame DSLR that is ideal for impressive video image capture.
This attribute was put in by Canon mainly because journalists have been demanding it for a long time, additionally the unity between stills photography and video inside the same system was rapidly becoming feasible.
Nobody was more stunned than Canon when film maker Vincent Laforet was among the first filmmakers let loose on the completely new camera. His first effort Nocturne would not disappoint, it’s no overstatement to say it set the field of film-making on fire. The true reason for this is the way the huge full frame sensor inside of the camera makes it possible for the operator to generate a truly wonderful depth of field that traditional small sensor cameras simply cannot replicate.
The conventional film cinema look is tough to define but one of the significant elements is the depth of field that a 35mm film aperture generates. The Sensor (or film gate) in the Canon 5D is a great deal larger than the sensor found in a 35mm movie camera, actually it’s closer to filming on 65mm.
Despite this astonishing depth of field property and it’s very quick adoption through the film making culture, the canon 5D MK2 camera does have it’s challenges when filming video.
One of the major challenges is line skipping or moire. The canon has to dispose of information from the several thousand pixels that make up it’s sensor to ensure that it can produce a 1920 X 1080 HD image. It does this by losing every third line of data – line skipping. This can prove disastrous for anyone who is filming a subject that has several horizontal or vertical lines – as when the image steps across the removed lines of data it can look unpleasant. I usually try to avoid check shirts!
Another difficulty is image ’skew’, this is evident when panning left to right swiftly – vertical lines bend and twist noticeably – this is a dilemma on all CMOS video sensors but famously poor on the Canon because it’s scan rate from the top to the bottom of the sensor is very sluggish and there is no internal compensation. A way around this is to simply stay clear of any quick pans!
Another drawback may be the ‘form factor’. A DSLR is a very cumbersome form to film with, there is no focused eyepiece so just two points of contact – both hands. If at all possible three points of contact are necessary to get a secure image whilst filming handheld video. In the past two years quite a few amazing camera support systems have been produced by a wide group of suppliers but they all fundamentally do the exact same thing – deliver one more point of contact using a shoulder or chest support platform.
The rear LCD monitor is generally problematic to look at in bright sunlight and there are various 3rd party items to cope with this, from low-cost hoods to pricey lensed eyepieces and additional video display units working off the built-in small HDMI port. There are lots of worries with the HDMI supply, most notably, it is quite delicate and fragile. Additionally there is a delay when feeding the image from the dslr to a monitor after hitting record, this means patiently waiting eight or nine seconds before acquiring a monitor visual. This can be maddening in a documentary situation.
The camera records in 8 bit quicktime H264 and even though this generates dazzling pictures it’s not considered to be a pro recording data format due to the H264 compression setting. That being said, the camera has been used for a great number of TV dramas, documentaries and features. It’s visual image beauty seemingly outweighing it’s technical limits.
In spite of the stated problems, many film makers (including myself) put up with these grievances because Canon have turned out a seriously superb, creative, film-making device. When they can improve the stumbling blocks with the MK3 then they’re going to have crafted a truly awesome camera at a astounding selling price.
The Article Author, Mitchell Blatwood is a film maker constructing award winning film content for cinema, broadcast and corporate clients. He manages Tall Man Films and it has more than ten years experience with video production bristol. Please see the internet site for additional free tutorials.