Topics

1

EOS Bodies - For Video / 5D3 video new vs. old firmware - might be different after all

« on: April 30, 2013, 03:11:42 PM »

A tweet from J.M. offers this sample of video taken using the internal recorder with the same settings, old vs. new firmware:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vuwbn2582pv67i3/5d3121.png

So maybe I actually was correct in my initial take (a post I since deleted) where I said it looked like the video was sharper. I first I was sure that it was crisper, but then I decided I had tricked myself.

Internal vs external seems similar but new vs old firmware seems different.

Maybe it does grab more details and not mush details in shadows as much now.



(I think I have seen a few very weird artifacts with the new firmware though perhaps popping up in video. A couple nasty weird things, but not sure yet.)

(It doesn't look as crisp but artifact free as the 'raw' DNG stuff ML discovered though.)

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EOS Bodies - For Video / ML apparently discovers hook to 'raw' liveview feed

« on: April 26, 2013, 04:23:37 PM »

http://www.eoshd.com/content/10221/magic-lantern-discover-2k-raw-dng-function-on-5d-mark-ii-and-iii
http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/2604-magic-lantern-discover-2k-raw-dng-stream-in-live-view-on-the-5d-mark-iii/

Now I don;t know if they will be able to get video out of this but as they say here it at least brings up some curious questions:

"Image quality is very good – pin sharp 2K. Why the hell is this feature not implemented if the cameras are capable of it?? Also if the sensor can provide 2K DNG in live view, why is the video mode so soft and challenged for dynamic range? I find this very puzzling."

Bizarre indeed (if what they say is true and there are not catches, perhaps it is pin sharp but aliased, at least on the 5D2 or maybe on both???)!

If it can make pin sharp full 2K frames at 24fps rate on the 5D3 and even 5D2 then why does their video engine end up putting out on the 5D2 hugely aliased, trace soft HD and the 5D3 output a soft but clean HD and why in both cases is it only 8bits and not at leat 10bits and why is the DR so extremely limited when after so much downscaling it should be much better you'd think. Is Canon marketing crippling cameras even FAR more than we ever imagined?? Is there some minor technical detail (could well be but if so might not some relatively inexpensive extra few parts not have fixed it)?

Maybe they are leaving out some crucial bit of info since it seems hard to believe, especially regarding the 5D2, that Canon would hide the ability to get sharp and aliasing free video.

3

EOS Bodies - For Video / Amazing new ML firmware for the 5D3! Clean HDMI [DOESN'T WORK!!]

« on: October 23, 2012, 03:40:49 PM »

http://www.magiclantern.fm/whats-new/104-releases/143-second-alpha-for-5d-mark-iii

Hopefully I have enough posts to get this topic going and not sit in limbo as the two other guys who tried to start it up.

4

EOS Bodies / 1DX the favorite of dark agents everywhere

« on: October 19, 2012, 09:15:02 PM »

spotted the good old 1DX on the season premier of Nikita 

5

Lenses / 24-70 II

« on: September 18, 2012, 08:37:49 PM »

Wow, just saw some RAW samples taken on the wide end, stopped down, testing landscape-type performance. And wow they looked good. Never seen any zoom ever deliver that on FF before, well at least not any wide or standard range zoom (some of the 70-200 and 70-300 type zooms have been pretty amazing for some time).

While canon sensor division sleeps and their body division largely stumbles and milks (other than putting 1DX AF into 5D3 which was genius) their lens division carries on as always, charging ahead, hitting new performance marks, always innovating. Looks like they did deliver the best standard zoom ever (maybe there is so esoteric brand or scientific something but ignoring that stuff)! Wow, really impressive looking, looked sharp to the extreme edges and even extreme corners looked very solid. Yes, stopped down, but try that at 24mm or 28mm on any other zoom on a FF and you get mush to one degree or another.

Canon has really been on a roll recently with one amazing lens after another.
Well done.

6

EOS Bodies - For Stills / 5D3 AF - just a few more positive notes on the one shot mode performance

« on: August 29, 2012, 08:44:55 PM »

Some more messing around with 5D3/5D2/7D and 24 1.4 II. The 5D3 definitely handles it the best. Sometimes the others do well with it, but not always. The 5D3 AF has some magic that makes it get a very, very high percentage in focus at all sorts of subject distances and lighting conditions, only under super poor (as in a single 40 watt bulb that is half obscured and shooting tricky targets not being directly lit by even that) lighting does it start to miss semi-often but even then it does the same as 5D2 and much better than the 7D (or 50D for that matter). For some tricky and not so tricky targets at a wide range of distances the other evening the 5D3 barely had a miss and by far more than half were utterly dead on at f/1.4 (the rest were in focus but just barely a smidge off of perfection, but totally fine) while the 5D2 and 7D were having plenty of clear misses and many fewer absolutely utterly dead on hits.

And paired with the high precision AF of the 70-300L, as per lens rentals, it really does tend to just nail the AF spot on with that one, absolute perfection.

Job well done.

7

Lenses / Latest Canon lenses have an ultra-precision AF mode but only some bodies take ad

« on: August 01, 2012, 11:09:36 PM »

surprised this hasn't been posted here yet but:
http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/07/autofocus-reality-part-3a-canon-lenses

Very interesting results!

Any lens older than the 70-200 2.8 IS II did much worse with phase AF consistency than with liveview AF on both bodies, 5D2 and 5D3, no surprise, already well known and expected.

Regardless of lens age they all did much worse with phase precision than contrast focus precision on the 5D2.

But with a 5D3, all of the new lenses, on that body only, focus much more precisely!

The 70-200 2.8 IS II was sort of in between somewhat better but not like with the newest lenses.

They found that the new 24mm 2.8 IS, 28mm 2.8 IS, 300 2.8 IS II and 70-300mm IS L all focused much more precisely when used with the new 5D3 (and likely 1DX) AF system than on the older 5D2 and that the 70-200 2.8 IS II possibly focused somewhat better (although they were not sure in this case). They said those few lenses actually focused almost as precisely with phase AF as with contrast liveview AF. The old 300 2.8 IS did not.

So apparently the new AF system can hook into some secret stuff with the newest lens designs.

I wonder if that means that third party lenses are not likely to be able to match the same AF precision of the new Canon lenses on the 5D3/1DX, at least not for some time, since they won't have the special whatever it is that makes the new Canon lenses focus extra well with the new AF system.

part 3B (http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/08/autofocus-reality-part-3b-canon-cameras) has now been added to the part 3A stuff I talked about above.

Basically yeah only the 5D3 and 1DX have the new ultra precision AF unit although the 1D4 isn't that shabby.

7D, as I've long said, has a LOT more in common with the cheaper AF units than the 1 series ones, it's more the xxD just with more points and some more speed added and more options than high quality focusing units and sensor and most updated code

the newest lenses have high precision rotation readers that allow for nice closed loop AF, without both the new high precision readers in lenses and the new high precision detectors (1DX,5D3 and to a lesser extent 1D4) you won't get the ultra precision

i think you also need to use the center point or at least the center column other than very top and bottom points of that.

Nice that I swapped to both 70-300L and 5D3.

He will test Nikon next. That will be interesting.

8

EOS Bodies - For Stills / 5D3+1DX (and partly 1D4) enable ultra-precision AF with newest Canon lenses

« on: August 01, 2012, 11:06:50 PM »

surprised this hasn't been posted here yet but:
http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/07/autofocus-reality-part-3a-canon-lenses

Very interesting results!

Any lens older than the 70-200 2.8 IS II did much worse with phase AF consistency than with liveview AF on both bodies, 5D2 and 5D3, no surprise, already well known and expected.

Regardless of lens age they all did much worse with phase precision than contrast focus precision on the 5D2.

But with a 5D3, all of the new lenses, on that body only, focus much more precisely!

The 70-200 2.8 IS II was sort of in between somewhat better but not like with the newest lenses.

They found that the new 24mm 2.8 IS, 28mm 2.8 IS, 300 2.8 IS II and 70-300mm IS L all focused much more precisely when used with the new 5D3 (and likely 1DX) AF system than on the older 5D2 and that the 70-200 2.8 IS II possibly focused somewhat better (although they were not sure in this case). They said those few lenses actually focused almost as precisely with phase AF as with contrast liveview AF. The old 300 2.8 IS did not.

So apparently the new AF system can hook into some secret stuff with the newest lens designs.

I wonder if that means that third party lenses are not likely to be able to match the same AF precision of the new Canon lenses on the 5D3/1DX, at least not for some time, since they won't have the special whatever it is that makes the new Canon lenses focus extra well with the new AF system.

part 3B (http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/08/autofocus-reality-part-3b-canon-cameras) has now been added to the part 3A stuff I talked about above.

Basically yeah only the 5D3 and 1DX have the new ultra precision AF unit although the 1D4 isn't that shabby.

7D, as I've long said, has a LOT more in common with the cheaper AF units than the 1 series ones, it's more the xxD just with more points and some more speed added and more options than high quality focusing units and sensor and most updated code

the newest lenses have high precision rotation readers that allow for nice closed loop AF, without both the new high precision readers in lenses and the new high precision detectors (1DX,5D3 and to a lesser extent 1D4) you won't get the ultra precision

i think you also need to use the center point or at least the center column other than very top and bottom points of that.

Nice that I swapped to both 70-300L and 5D3.

9

EOS Bodies - For Stills / 7D vs 5D3 vs 5D2 well-lit, bright subject reach test (ISO100 and ISO6400)

« on: July 17, 2012, 09:36:24 PM »

Here is a comparison of ISO6400 reach for a bright, well-lit, high contrast subject (the reach advantage for 7D will be less if the subject has dark tones or is in a darker part of the image or you underexpose in general, while it's still very clear, surprisingly, for a bright subject well lit it might be barely there for a black crow in a dark corner of an image most likely; I may do mid-tonality reach comparison later since many subjects might fit that scenario):

top image is the 7D re-scaled to match the bill size on the 5D2 - you notice that it delivers BOTH less noise, less artifacts and more detail than the 5D2 and slightly more detail and less artifacts than the 5D3 with maybe a touch more noise

second image from top is the 5D2 - you notice it retains a bit less detail than the 5D3 bill

third from top is the 5D3 bill - you notice that it and the 5D2 show a less detail than the 7D bill even at ISO6400, the 5D2 shows tons less

bottom is the native size 7D bill - bright subject, well-lit the 7D still has a sizeable reach advantage over the 5 series cams, especially compared to the 5D2

but again for a subject that is not so super contrasty and is made up of many tones much farther from white the reach advantage may prove to be much less

make sure to click the image to see it at full scale



If you use firefox make sure to click all of these images to make sure you are seeing the full 100% view
and note that the 5D3 looks brightest and the 7D darkest so at ISO6400 the bodies are probably not applying the same gain so the effective ISO compared here is highest for 5D3 and lowest for 7D most likely which would give 5D3 a slight disadvantage and the 7D a slight advantage.

10

EOS Bodies - For Stills / 1DX new all-time low-light king?

« on: June 27, 2012, 06:19:28 PM »

Hard to tell from one test of the sort posted, but wow, the high iso looks impressive. It's shocking, but it might actually beat the 5D3 by a good 2/3 of a stop! I'm not sure if it is even possible to build one that would do better without radically different tech. This may be the best we ever get from any standard design. High ISO appears to be insanely good on it. At worst it ties the 5D3/D800/D4 but I think it almost certainly beats them all, some by a margin not even really thought to be entirely realistic. Some insane high iso!

I really don't see the D4 being able to match this level of performance (and it has 2 less MP), although I guess the difference won't be all that large, maybe a solid 1/3 stop behind? (again with 2 less MP though).

(The sad note, for the 5D3 users, is it seems proof that Canon did in fact reserve all of their new sensor fab for the 1DX only and decided to milk the old process one more time for the 5D3 sensor, figuring they could get away with it since they bumped up the body specs so much (but they also bumped up the price so much so.... hmm. Maybe it was all about insuring 5D3 had largest profit margin for a 5 series). Seeing the D800 sensor's quality I wonder if someone in Canon marketing is not ruing their decision.)
(That said the 5D3 is still one of the very best ever at high ISO, if not quite there. At low iso it's a pretty outdated sensor at this point though, at least if you ever shoot scenes with lots of dynamic range.)

11

EOS Bodies / 5D3 profiles and also 5D3 LCD color accuracy vs others

« on: June 01, 2012, 09:02:00 PM »

It seems to me that the 5D3 LCD shows colors slightly more accurately than the 7D and vastly more accurately than the 5D2. It seems to have about the same general accuracy as a stock new iPad using a stock image viewer. Doesn't quite match a well calibrated monitor though, colors are slight bit different and WB a little moreso. The 5D3 and 7D are close enough to at least be able to get a general in field sense of what WB matches the real life scene though. The 5D2, not so much.

For in cam jpgs/movies on the 5D3 it seems that profile Faithful gives the truest colors overall for stuff shot under direct sunlight or bright indirect sunlight, very late in the day or in deep shade or with odd lighting then it seems Neutral is better overall. Landscapes gives the most bizarre colors, by far, of all the profiles and Portrait the next. All the profiles oversaturate things, Standard and Landscape and Portrait a ton, Faithful a fair amount and Neutral a touch. Contrast -1 to -4 and saturation -1 to -3 is often a bit truer to life, that said, since no camera captures what the real experience is like, sometimes a modest artificially boost can be more natural in the end, it depends.

In ACR, Adobe Standard seems to give the most natural overall colors of all the built-in 5D3 profiles (you may need to knock down saturation a tiny bit though), although I found that under stadium lighting they all went wacky other than Camera Standard.

12

EOS Bodies - For Stills / A few hours with a 5D3

« on: May 12, 2012, 02:29:33 AM »

The dynamic range on this unit measures even a little bit worse still. a Full 1/3 stop WORSE than my 5D2. Nikon got 2.4 stops better since the 5D2 and Canon got 0.36 worse.    Nikon has about 5 or 6 recent releases, DX and FF, that just destroy the 5D3 for dynamic range. 5D3 even measured a full 0.4 stops worse dynamic range AND with worse banding than a 1Ds3 someone lent me some files from. The 5D3 actually has just about the worst read noise per photosite of all the Canon models. Worse than 40D,50D,60D,7D,1D4,5D2,1Ds3,etc. I had to go back to a 30D to find worse per photosite read noise. Not sure what they did with it in that regard. If they had it with 1D4 per photosite read noise it might have gained almost a half stop of DR compared to the 5D2 instead of losing 1/3 stop.

At ISO 100: Vertical banding seems to me to be at least as present as in the 5D2 although horizontal banding is 100% gone. 7D has the worst vertical banding by a long shot. 1Ds3 has none, the only Canon camera I've tested that has no vertical banding, it does have some horizontal banding but less overall banding than 5D3. The only Canon to really pass the banding test is the 1Ds3 and the 40D isn't bad at all from what I recall, otherwise they all suffer from banding, the 5D3 may be the best of the rest, although that doesn't really say a ton.

Anyway that stuff was all, to one degree or another, already known.

13

EOS Bodies / came across a 5D3 and D800 review (with emphasis on landscapes)

« on: April 21, 2012, 02:35:12 AM »

http://www.fredmiranda.com/5DIII-D800/

14

EOS Bodies - For Video / 5D3 short film, quality doesn't look so bad

« on: April 21, 2012, 02:29:48 AM »

Canon 5D Mark III - Copelandia	Small | Large

Make sure to sign in and download the original and then watch that.
He applied 35mm CineGrain.

15

EOS Bodies / any more word on the 5d3+24-70 II Pro Kit?

« on: April 11, 2012, 06:58:07 PM »

Way back when it was announced they'd have a pro kit for a few hundred off buying them separately but it's been radio silence since.... Anyone heard any updates? Still in the cards? It would help make the 5D3 price seem more reasonable and justifiable.