Re: 50D & SX1 Replacements Next Week?
I shoot both video and stills with my 5D mark II. What I would feel would be revolutionary upgrade, would be fixing the absolutely worst problem in the current line of HDSLRs:
- it is the aliasing. It is bloody awful and it is everywhere. Aliasing is bad, it is evil, it eats all the resolution!
I have 5D mark II and it suffers from severe aliasing. After starting to notice it, I see it everywhere, and it sucks. It ruins the resolution and the video is not really true very high definition because of the aliasing despite being theoretically 1920x1080 pixels, 5D has no more than 720p resolution in reality with the aliasing artefacts. With this line-skipping image shrinking algorithm for video ruins the video resolution.
If they would just fix this issue, have pixel perfect 1080p recording without aliasing, without any other advancements, it would be enough for me to consider upgrading my 5D mark II for the new camera. All the other flaws are okay and I can live with them, but the aliasing, due to bad line-skipping algorithm instead of interpolating from the pixels, really ruins the image. Revolutionary video becomes with this aliasing flawed video.
The second thing I would hope for would be higher bitrate for video.
I would be happy with the current 5D still photo features, I would not be wishing for anything else, I can take great stills on my 5D, the video section is what is the flawed one on it. What I am only asking for would only require a faster processor in the camera and a better algorithm and that would be all that would be needed for revolutionary upgrade. Implementing the software, if the CPU/DSP capacity was there, should not be a big deal. This really should be on top of the product backlog. Fix this and then there are grounds to make the camera better. By not fixing this, it does not matter how nice other things are there or aren't there, because this problem is a blocker.
If your eye does not catch aliasing yet, please read this:
http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/article.php/20
Be warned, after you begin seeing it, you will see it all the time on 5D mk II, 7D, 1D MKIV or 550D video footage. I even saw in some Sony NEX-VG10 test video similar aliasing (I was thinking that maybe because it is supposed to be video camera, it would be free from that flaw, but even it seemed to have in this one Zeiss test video super terrible aliasing on vertical lines, about as bad as my 5D does). If Canon does it right, they concentrate their efforts on this most severe problem of the 5D mark II that cripples the video and makes the footage to scream "this is video!" instead of having the feeling of "film like" or better. By fixing only this flaw (and maybe increasing bitrate), the Canon becomes a great cinema tool, even without recording raw. Of course, if it recorded straight ProRes 422 and maybe had 2K resolution (slightly better than HD), it would be superb, but I would like to stay realistic with wishes from big corporation that potentially moves slowly and potentially has product managers who don't know or don't see what aliasing is and how terrible and bad it is and how it ruins the video from HDSRLs and how severe the problem really is. Look at the resolution charts. Once you see the problem, you can see that it is not only the resolution charts, but real actual footage that looks crappy because of it, and it even makes the compression to work badly because there are sharp lines that should not be there and they eat the bits that could be otherwise used to save real pixel data.
No more AF points or whatever, I don't care a bit, I use manual focus on video anyway, I only want to get rid of aliasing and will then live happily ever after! I would be even happier though if it came with better codecs, full-HD unobstructed HDMI output etc., but before that the basic biggest issue should be fixed, please Canon fix the aliasing, please! I don't really care about new lenses at the moment or whatever accessories, I am happy with the L-lenses I have currently, but they don't matter if the camera records flawed pixels because of aliasing. That is worse than worst chromatic aberration I have ever seen on any lens. Lines and colors are generated out of nowhere because of skipped lines. I unfortunately can't afford Red (which of course does not have these issues at all, their cameras are not line skipping), I want that Canon fixes this issue for their next models.
