On 17/9/2008 Canon unveiled the Canon 5D MK2, this camera has swiftly proved to be very significant for filmmakers all across the globe - at last Canon released an HD full frame DSLR that was ideal for stunning video image recording.
This attribute was put in by Canon, mainly because journalists have been demanding it and also the convergence between stills photography and video within the same camera system was rapidly becoming practicable.
No-one was more surprised than Canon when film maker Vincent Laforet was let loose on the brand new digital camera. His first attempt Nocturne didn't disappoint, the fact is that it's no exaggeration to state that it set the field of film-making on fire.
The reason for this is the way the very large full frame sensor within the camera allows the operator to produce a truly spectacular depth of field that normal small sensor video cameras just cannot replicate.
The standard film cinema look is quiet difficult to outline but one of the major factors is the depth of field that the 35mm film aperture generates. The Sensor (or film gate) in the Canon 5D is a great deal larger than the gate present in a 35mm movie camera, the fact is that it's closer to shooting on 65mm.
Despite this amazing depth of field property and it's very swift adoption within the film making culture, the canon 5D MK2 camera has it's issues when filming video.
One of the major complications is line skipping or moire. The canon is required to get rid of information from the thousands of pixels that make up it's sensor so that it can create a 1920 X 1080 HD file. It does this by losing every 3rd line of information - line skipping. This could certainly prove catastrophic if you are recording a subject that has quite a few horizontal or vertical lines - as the picture steps across the dumped lines of information it can look horrendous. Normally I try to keep away from check shirts!
Another hassle is picture 'skew', this is recognisable when panning left to right quickly - vertical lines bend and twist noticeably - this is a issue on all CMOS video sensors but notably poor on the Canon simply because it's scan rate from the top to the bottom of the sensor is very slow and there is no internal compensation. A way around this is to simply stay away from any quick pans!
Another issue could be the 'form factor'. A DSLR is a very uneasy shape to film with, there is no professional eyepiece so just two points of contact - both hands. In a perfect world three points of contact are necessary to get a steady image whilst filming hand-held video. In the past two years a large number of proprietary camera support systems have been created by a broad array of suppliers but they all generally speaking do the same thing - provide an additional point of contact by means of a shoulder or chest support technique.
The rear LCD monitor can be very difficult to look at in vivid sunlight and there are many 3rd party solutions to deal with this, from inexpensive hoods to really expensive lensed eyepieces and additional displays working off the integral mini HDMI port. There are many issues with the HDMI feed, most significantly, it is really fragile but there's additionally a holdup when feeding the picture from the digital camera to a monitor after initiating record, this means waiting eight or nine seconds ahead of receiving a monitor picture. This can be nerve-racking in a documentary situation.
The camera records data in 8 bit quicktime H264 and while this creates lovely video it isn't really deemed to be a commercial recording format due to the H264 compression setting. That being said the camera has been used for several TV dramas, documentaries and features. It's aesthetic image apparently outranking it's technological restrictions.
Despite the afore mentioned complications, many filmmakers (including myself) put up with these troubles because Canon have produced a seriously great creative film-making dslr resource. When they can correct the grievances with the MK3 then they're going to have made a truly unbelievable camera at a sensational selling price.
The Author, Michael Barnes runs a video production cardiff company and the main website can be found here.
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