Canon EOS 50D Firmware 1.0.5

The Obvious question: Manual control for Movie mode?

Here is a NEW (partly rewritten)white paper from Canon:

http://www.usa.canon.com/uploadedimages/FCK/Image/White%20Papers/EOS%2050D%20and%205D%20Mark%20II%20WP1.pdf

AFTER SO MANY requests/suggestions/inquiries/reviews/forums even mentioning the “white paper” statements about the “depth of field control” -page 6- (by email, on-line forms, and even phone calls) Canon can be considering this seriously.

In the new white paper, page 3, it says:

(Capital letters by me)

“Perhaps more importantly, with the EOS 5D Mark II’s large image sensor and its ability to use very fast lenses, users can obtain shallow, selective depth of field that is difficult or impossible to achieve with regular camcorders with smaller image sensors. This sensor size difference means that, for any given combination of aperture value, subject distance and angle of view, images from the EOS 5D Mark II will have shallower depth of field than images from a conventional HD device. EOS 5D Mark II users can take advantage of this feature to produce high quality HD movies.

Canon is gratified at the overwhelmingly positive market response to the EOS 5D Mark II camera. Based on this success, it’s ONLY NATURAL THAT ADVANCED USERS ARE LOOKING FOR MANUAL APERTURE CONTROL in movie mode, AND CANON IS LISTENING TO CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTS AND FEATURE SUGGESTIONS.

In the meantime, we hope that our comments here will help to clarify the White Paper’s statements on depth of field control in movie mode.”

— A firmware update allowing FULL MANUAL CONTROL in Movie mode, can achieve one thing: MORE SALES on EOS 5D Mark II and CANON lenses too (instead of using Nikon lenses by customers to achieve -at least- Aperture Control in movie mode)

– AND EVEN MORE, this can give Canon LOT of NEW CUSTOMERS who are really interested in the 5D Mark II Full HD Movie Mode to use it PROFESSIONALLY (I am one of those, like so many others)

So, if Canon certainly “listen to customers”, then we will get a positive response soon.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT FEATURES TO IMPROVE:

– More Frames in BRACKETING MODE (allow up to 9, SO IMPORTANT FOR HDR Photographs, more and more common these days)

– DIRECT ACCESS to Movie Mode

– Besides you use Movie mode or not, LOT of peopel are and will use it, so for features improvements WRITE YOUR ONW LIST:

If there is a Firmware Update coming, it is not so wrong topic I suppose.

Lot of people is requesting that.

The 50D comes back with FW 1.0.5 from Canon Workshops since 18.2.2009 in Germany:

http://www.dslr-forum.de/showthread.php?t=452232

I did a quick google search and found this flickr exif entry.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/estebandid/3272224876/meta/

Hello DP,

well you have that firmware 1.0.6 for 50D, so you have also a movie-record-option on your 50D ??? ;)

id would be fantastic…

Thanks for writing about this. There’s a bunch of important tech information on the internet. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your web site. I’m impressed – I try to keep a couple blogs pretty live, but it’s a struggle sometimes. You’ve done a great job with this one. How do you do it?

Mine came preloaded with FW version 1.07 in March 2010 when purchased new