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Canon 5D Mark III topic
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  • @rigs "Bloom is pouring coolaid for the world on this."

    This is just what happens when you're one of the bigger bloggers... and end up on the "radar". I really do like him personally, but you can kind of feel canon's influence lately. I really wish he could go back to being a bit more objective again... because I do like the personable touch of his reviews and such.

    I mean his statements about the C300 being one of the best options right now? C'mon... maybe if it's FREE to you. But the performance/spec to price ratio is maybe the worst in the last 10 years. The lack of 1080p 60fps over-cranking is just pitiful. That alone justifies the price coming down to the $3000-$5000 range. I'm just not even thinking about investing in another camera that doesn't shoot full-res 60fps. Even with the softness of the new 5DIII... I MAY have bought one if it could do 1080p 60fps. But it still being 720p... with the new processing... was just icing on the cake. That soft, soft, cake. ;)

  • I'm sure the 5D3 is another amazing stills camera, as is the D800. The video in daylight is still behind a GH13, let alone a hacked GH2. The fantascism on the C300 really makes me scratch my head, for the same price you can get RAW 4k with the scarlet, and the workflow is just as simple, maybe even simpler.

    On a high-end PC, you can edit gop1 gh2 files just as easily as Scarlet X files. Drag and drop in Vegas Pro, apply realtime GPU effects, oh yeah - and change any and all settings WB, ISO, etc etc all on the fly.

  • So I got round to trying the video out on the EOS5D MkIII

    If you select 1080p you'll see some sections are a bit soft - thats down to me not understanding the way that that the focus works whilst you're recording.

    I do have some footage of helicopters - this is really where you see the difference with the GH2. I'm going to be happy having both.

  • This Adorama comparison between the 5D Mk III and the Nikon D800 does seem to suggest that the Canon is superior when it comes to reduced noise with higher ISO. The Canon seems to have slightly better DR too. What do others think?

  • it looks to me than Nikon has a better DR, less blown out highlights for sure..

  • There are rumors of a global mk111 return to factory recall by Canon, anyone else heard this?

  • @Rambo

    I think it is related to this "light leak" thing.

  • plasmasmp: "The fantascism on the C300 really makes me scratch my head, for the same price you can get RAW 4k with the scarlet, and the workflow is just as simple, maybe even simpler."

    Haha you jerk. You never worked with raw yet - did you? RED workflow is not even a little bit as fast as the one of the C300. With the Canon you can go directly in post - without grading, without proxy and without buying additional disk space... BUT.. both are very lovely cameras with awesome picture!

  • Looks like the ML team popped the 5D3's cherry...

    https://twitter.com/#!/autoexec_bin/status/195800277079687169

    Let the 'uncrippling' begin!

  • Here's an odd thing.

    Took the EOS5 Mk3 for a walk tonight, took some Raw and HDR images along with a few seconds of video - checked them on the screen for obvious duffs.

    Took both cards out of the camera to check the files on a bigger screen --- there not there!!! Took a couple of HDR shots on the same cards to check, all working.

    Just the files from earlier today missing ...

  • Seeing dpreviews tests comparing the jpg engine of the mkIII it makes me think that this is related to the video resolution being on the soft side. the video is probably taken through a similar pipeline as the jpgs, just with a different target resolution.

  • Just for fun....

  • Found two dead pixels so far. What a bummer!

    DPP_0001 (Custom).JPG
    1200 x 800 - 39K
    dead-pixles.PNG
    541 x 386 - 194K
    dead-pixel.PNG
    344 x 261 - 7K
  • Bought a MKIII last week after selling my GH2. WHY??, well, I produce video for a living and the camera has to be useable out in the field and in a variety of situations. When I first got my GH2 I was blown away. After adding a hack (I did make a donation) the resolution and lack of noise was very impressive, I also wanted to use my B4 broadcast lenses I use on my regular full size ENG camera. The biggest problem with the GH2 (IMHO) is the sensitivity, the regular M43 Panasonic lenses are F4 at best, at the wide end (14mm). Wider, lower F stop lenses get seriously expensive and I regularly have to shoot in tight areas with minimal space. After more comprehensive testing with my B4 lenses I sadly came to the conclusion that they would only be useable in certain situations, why? Well, you have to switch in the 2X extender on the lens to fill the camera sensor, this means the lens drops from F1.8 to F3.6, couple this to the fact that the lenses are not useable wide open, way to much image distortion and CA means you have to stop the lenses down to about F4, with the extender-in this gives F8. couple the F8 to the already low sensitivity GH2 (compared to the 5D MKii and FS100) and you have a package that's only really any use with a good level of lighting, trust me, I did lots of testing with variable lighting, F-stops, ISO settings etc and the results all pointed in the same direction. (note that I also tested the lenses without the 2X extender but with the GH2 in ETC mode). Another issue with the GH2 was how the picture changed once you hit the record button (exposure and colour), is this just me?. As for the 5D MKiii. It's a VERY different 'package' to the GH2. Firstly, the sensitivity is incredible, there really is no comparison, you can shoot easily with minimal light and still get a lovely looking picture with little noise, I simply couldn't do this with the GH2. Then there's the lenses, I bought the 24-105mm lens, this is like a 13-56mm on the GH2 M43 setup (I think the crop factor is 1.86, I could be wrong), an M43 lens with these specs (and a constant F4 across the zoom range) would cost a fortune. Getting a nice wide angle shot on the full frame sensor is much easier and cheaper. Telephoto/long lenses are cheaper regardless of sensor size/format so there are no issues. I found the sound on the GH2 to be very good, this isn't the case with the 5D MKIII (although it can be sorted). Straight out of the box, the background hiss when using external mics is terrible, and I mean REALLY terrible. One strange thing though (other MKIII users could confirm here), if you progressively raise the audio gain, the background hiss gradually gets louder (as is the norm), BUT just after the half-way mark the noise drops off significantly (for one click of the gain wheel) but then comes back-up when you increment to the next gain point. So, raising the gain one point (in the middle of the gain adjustment scale) actually reduces the background hiss, this is absolute crap, anybody knows this cannot happen with regular circuitry unless there is a problem with the electronics/program OR this has been programmed-in. Canon, what are you doing... I found that reducing the gain adjustment right down to the second mark on the scale effectively removes any noise, you then need to feed an amplified signal into the mic input (the signal level is now more like line-level), the results are very good sound quality with no real background hiss issues. There's no doubt that the picture from the GH2 resolves more detail than the MKIII but the difference isn't as pronounced as I expected and the MKIII responds well to sharpening without adding any undue noise or artifacts (thankfully), the net result comparing both camaras means only a small 'real world' difference. Apart from the sound hiss issue the only other gripe I have with the MKIII relates to the image noise in the shadows. Even when the ISO is at 100 there's still some noise in the low-light areas of the image, both the GH2 and the MKIII are very similar here but the GH2 doesn't cost £2500... I expected the images at 100 ISO to be totally noise free (I'm using the all-I mode), but as already mentioned they are not, I'd like to think Canon will address this issue and sort it but of course we all know we don't always get what we want. I don't want anyone to think I have anything against the GH2, I think it's an awesome camera and coupled to the fantastic work Vitaliy and others have done only makes this an even better camera. For the money, IMHO NOTHING can touch it. Some say we shouldn't do direct comparisons but I think the bottom line is that all of us are trying to get the most out of all cameras and this ultimately leads to comparisons. For me, I would have loved a cross between the GH2 and the MKIII. At the end of the day the MKIII is a more useable filming tool considering the work I do...

  • @Galvoguru There is no black or white, no either ... or. I bought a 5dM3 too but I use it mainly for still photographs and I kept my GH2. For me main disadvantage of GH2 is that it works in best quality only with 24p. If you have to work in PAL land in 25p there is a lot of inconvenience.

    I am quite satfisfied with Canon's video quality of All-I Codec, very nice skin tone OOC and brilliant low light behavior. But.. (I posted that already in another topic) I've been out for 3 days shooting about 400 takes in 24p from 5 sec to 2 min with CM SkinTone Soft. It behaved very well, not a single fail or write/read error on two 32GB SanDisk 95MB/s cards. I made my test set up in my hotel room with a Canon 5D M3 and a GH2 an I could not believe what I saw. Bright light in southern Spain at 3 p.m. Make your own opinion...

    Pass: canongh2

    1) 5D Mark3 - All-I Codec 24-105L

    2) GH2 14-140mm | Canis Majoris Skin Tone Soft patch

    3) GH2 25mm Nokton Heliopan VarioND | Canis Majoris Skin Tone Soft patch

    all files converted with 5DtoRGB | BT.709 | FullRange

    I decided to shoot only with GH2.. it was superb handling high contrast. I will go on for another test this week to be sure I made no mistake. (I was very tired after 12hrs traveling that day)

  • @peaceonearth Thanks for the reply, I couldn't watch the video, I guess I need to sign-up to vimeo? I understand your comments re the GH2 and 5D3. Are you not seeing noise in the shadows on your MK3? I only see the noise on playback which makes me think it's the codec... With the high bitrate all-I setting I'm very dissapointed to see any noise...

  • you dont have to sign up, just type the password into the blank field: canongh2

  • @galvoguru My only problem with the 5Diii, is that if I was producing video for a living (which I'm not thankfully) and I had that amount of money to spend, I'd probably go for the FS100. I just don't see the value in the 5Diii unless you need both video and stills, or the unique look of a very large sensor.

  • @itimjim Well, the large sensor certainly gives that fantastic bokeh that no other sensor can give. The FS100 is quite a bit more expensive than the 5D MKIII, the FS100 body is almost £1500 more. That's a large difference in price, I also think there is a massive choice of lenses for the canon and these lenses coupled with the full-frame sensor give the widest possibly field of view. the bottom line though, is that this is a DSLR and not a video camera, I guess I'm asking too much...

  • ha,ha...anyway I don't go back to canon..too late

  • @jasonp

    Wouldn't be ironic if it was 4:2:2 output but it was not clean? Wow, April is still a long time away.

  • must surely be the competition from the Nikon D800. How Canon could manage to sell the 5dmark 3 $ 500 more than the D800 is beyond me. Those recent $ 700 rebates tells you how the 5d3 is selling. It could even be because of the d600 that in pure image quality is more comparable. I am talking more in terms of the camera market in general. That is the sales that are comprise the photo and video side of the dslr sales.