Topics

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EOS Bodies - For Video / Has anybody been using the 6D wireless function for live view to a tablet?

« on: January 24, 2013, 11:34:15 AM »

I just started this thread in the "EOS Bodies -- for Photographs" department.  Since this topic is of at least as much interest for videographers, I hope any of you with info will join the conversation over there.

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EOS Bodies - For Stills / Has anybody been using the 6D wireless function for live view to a tablet?

« on: January 24, 2013, 11:31:29 AM »

There's going to wide variation in latency/lag time depending on the brand and model of the tablet you're using -- the speed of the "network" depends on this as well as the camera.  An acquaintance at Google suggests that there may be enough of a difference between the Apple and Android Canon apps to make a noticeable difference; as for hardware, the processor speed and its architecture as well as a list of things unknown to me, play their part.  Any experts in the house?!

What (current) make & model are you using, and how's it doing?  Can you compare across platforms?

If I owned a 6D my special interest would be in mounting a tablet from a base plate on a flexible arm in order to compose and focus manual-only lenses in live view.  How large is your live view area within the Canon app?

For reference, Jeff at the "OK-Canon" center scared up what he called an "iPad3" and measured the live view picture at 5" x 4 in landscape, with no cropping he could spot, although the aspect ratio is a little off.  He said some controls were in dead space to the left and right, though if you called up more these slopped onto the live view image about 1/2" on either side.

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EOS Bodies - For Video / Here it is ladies and gentlemen, that nose under the tent isn't a camel's...

« on: April 17, 2012, 03:24:25 PM »

... it just might be the nose of the future, that future we've been waiting for o so long.

http://www.eoshd.com/content/7927/the-downfall-of-the-big-guys-just-began-blackmagic-2-5k-cinema-camera-with-12bit-raw-for-3000

http://www.eoshd.com/content/7943/nab-update-exclusive-interview-with-blackmagic-cine-shooter-john-brawley-panasonic-af100-successor-deleted

The more I study this the better it looks ...

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Video & Movie / Heading to London, mate? Better keep your lens cap on!

« on: March 19, 2012, 05:35:37 PM »

Sign of the times:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/19/police-payout-student-arrested-filming

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EOS Bodies / Will anti-aliasing filters doom even forthcoming Canons to early obsolescence?

« on: January 30, 2012, 04:43:17 PM »

In recent years we've seen the M-9, offered by a revitalized Leica at about triple the price usual for such a full frame body,  along with the designer casing and restricted functionality evocative of Apple Computer but with more than a twist of retro love -- at last you can buy new triple-priced lenses without such sissy features as speed or auto-focus.  The customers can't love it enough, and fall to almost mystical terms when they try to describe the IQ.   (There have been whispers that Leica's unimagined success at the high end has driven many of Canon's top execs into counseling.)   Pentax entered digital Medium to raves with the 645D; we have gasped at the entrance of Sigma's SD1 with its Foveon X3 (APS-C) at a stonking $7000, body only.   En route is the FujiX-Pro1, a poor person's M-9, in a way, that has the heavies at Luminous-Landscape dancing the frug the twist and the wa-watusi in anticipation.  Then there is the expected Nikon 800E...

What these five bodies have in common is the absence of anti-aliasing filters.  Stripped of this dulling scrim (some say), an APS-C sensor out-resolves the best full frame, and other aspects of lens IQ leap ahead as well.  Moire (they say) is hardly an issue at today's high resolutions anyway and can be eliminated entirely by in-camera digital signal processing (Leica), Fuji's quasi-random 6x6 color filter array or that triple stacking of photo-sites (Sigma).

So tell us, who that knows, just how easy is abandonment of the AA filter, what does Science and Engineering say?  Will it be a new dawn?  What if anything will Canon offer here?

Finally, is this a case -- for now at least -- in which the interests of still and movie shooters clash? (The lower resolution and higher data rates would make moire more of a problem and harder to manage with the latter, I imagine.)  Light: please, heat: not-so-much.  I have a foot in both camps.  Let us love one another.

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EOS Bodies - For Stills / Flip out displays -- why the resentment?

« on: January 29, 2012, 05:00:50 PM »

Bought a 60D as my first dslr, in part because of what Canon calls the "Vari-angle" monitor, aka "articulating display" or flip-screen.  This was high on my fierce little list as a Must and has proven even more useful and important to me than imagined.  Video, I admit, is my eventual destination but it's been all still photography for six months and here also flipper is essential.

Let me count the ways:  for angles all the way down to ground level, or eighteen inches above your eyes, this allows you to frame without stretching out flat on the street or in the mud, or climbing a tree or a drainpipe -- landscape afficianados take note!  A minority of circumstances perhaps but a disproportionate source of winners.   Essential for reportage, especially the high shots.  Easier for journalists to conceal what they're up to -- the sneaks can face away from a subject.

Very very useful for portraiture out of the studio and even more for self-portraits or any kind of cheap wireless remote shooting.

Two considerations that hadn't occurred: swiveling the monitor away leaves a nice recess for the nose when using the OVF.  Leaving the monitor screen turned inwards in the closed position protects it completely from scratching.  (I leave it in this position most of the time when shooting too -- I find less and less need to check it when conditions are familiar.  When I do use the screen, it's opened out to the left; there are no greasy smears on it.)

In video where pulling focus matters, a good loupe becomes an attractive alternative to a heavy and expensive external monitor, to name just one advantage.

So what's the beef?  Why do so many dedicated Canoneers seem to choke on their lens caps over this?  I've seen the argument that flip screens preclude weather-proofing, yet for years and years cheap flip-screen video-cams have been guaranteed waterproof to at least ten feet!  And they work -- I've used them. The arrangement increases fragility?  The opposite is true.  It hogs valuable real-estate at the expense or more buttons?  There's still plenty of empty space on the 60D my right thumb could reach.

The argument from stills-only shooters that they must now pay for all these unwanted "video" features seems misconceived too, since even if this was only about movies, the mass entry of videographers into this market,  just now getting underway, should help keep prices down for everyone.

Sorry to have gone on so long!  It looks like Canon is leaving Vari-angle out of the high end once again.  What am I overlooking?