5D Mark III Magic Lantern wish list poll

[psolberg]

if the data is binned before readout by low level sensor circuits as some have suggested, I doubt a firmware induced process change on the post binned data will help resolution. The reason the D800 beats the 5DmkIII in perceived resolution is because internally it takes a 2240 x 1260 frame resulting from demosaic (yes, that's 1260P video) and downscales it decently to 1080p. Although the OLP delete mod on the 5DIII does help things.

I think the most realistic expectations from tweaked firmware should at least bump the bitrate so that the codecs don't fall apart so easily under motion. That has so far it is the weakness of both the D800 and 5DmkIII (although not an issue if you use the 4:2:2 HDMI out on the D800 + ninja 2.0)

ultimately, I decided to skip the 5DIII since it was clear Canon is not going to put the hardware in it that would cause it to cannibalize its precious C line.

 

[Policar]

if the data is binned before readout by low level sensor circuits as some have suggested, I doubt a firmware induced process change on the post binned data will help resolution.

The resolution isn't really that bad, though, if you look at resolution charts. Something like 800-900 lines, which isn't terrible. It's the apparent softness that's an issue, and that's compounded by the bad sharpening algorithm that you can't turn up at all or you get halos. It's not an elegant solution, but sharpening in post really does help. But sharpening also brings out compression artifacts. If Canon or ML could improve the camera's sharpening algorithm (and add focus peaking and zebras) I would be thrilled with this camera for video.

There's little chance of more resolution out of the camera, but either less sharpening or a higher bitrate (though 90Mbps seems pretty high as is in terms of SD card buffer) would make a big difference. Clean HDMI out would be fine, but at that point, just buy an FS100 instead. The point of dSLRs is their size and ease of use; external capture can be a pain.

 

[syder]

I believe the combination of sub-sampling, bit-depth, image size (e.g. 1920x1080) and frame rate (e.g. 24/s) are all combined to create a bit-rate for the movie. This is how many numbers are passed through the system per second. It is this final number that states the overall quality of the system and also the type of storage media requirements involved.

Not really... The codec - the type of compression used to store the data is massively important in understanding bitrates. For example the 5DMIII has a 90mb/s intraframe codec and the far lower long GOP codec, which have the same subsampling ratio, image size, bit depth and frame rate.

Describing the bitrate as the 'overall quality of the system' is also quite misleading... I'd take the 1080p 24mb/s footage off a D800 over the 25mb/s 576i minidv footage off a pd150 or xl1 anyday