Canon 5D Mark III/X Commercials Being Shot? [CR1]

[Bennymiata]

Video on DSLR's is here to stay, regardless of what you may think.
I've found it very handy from time to time to take a video instead of stills, but it doesn't mean I'll stop taking stills 80% of the time.

I also have a very good Sony HD camcorder, but find that my 60D takes better video than the specialised camera. I don't mind focussing manually, as when I started taking photos 50 years ago, that's all that was, and I still take many of my shots using manual focus.
Once you're used to focussing manually, it can be pretty quick and accurate.

I like the fact that I only have to take one camera with me when I go out on a shoot, and be able to take stills or video with the turn of a knob and the press of a button depending on what I see and want to record.

 

[Lawliet]

When you know the frame is set and there will be a brief quick peak moment. 60fps beats 12-14 at that point.

Neither work for those impressive peak moment shots - thats where you use a 1000fps camera for slow action or a good trigger plus flash or some nice gadgets for the interesting stuff.

What remains? The need for illumination at least 2 stops above normal cine/video levels; much more if you aren't in control of the environment. From a practical standpoint: the price of that 24-70II or the next body just became irrelevant, as in (quite a bit) below either the consumables or electricity bill for the month. Or for outdoor works a single day cont. lighting costs me about as much as a full year of strobe usage, thats using quality strobes. Either economy or quality goes out of the window...

 

[Noink Fanb0i]

I know I would need to post in any thread where Kate Beckinsale is mentioned. She's the only reason I watched Underworld: Awakening in IMAX 3D and Contraband.

Anyway, one detrimental thing about Canon concentrating more on DSLR video is that it takes time, money and employees away from developing better features for the stills aspect of those DSLRs. It's not as if Canon, or any other company for that matter, has unlimited resources to allocate on both aspects at the same time.

 

[necator]

Lawliet, you are completely right.
The power of even the small battery-powered flashes is massive, if compared to continuous lights: A 580ex-II (assuming it has about 60Ws) could be substituted by 12000W light bulbs. Now take some real studio strobes with >1000Ws.
So flash is a convenient and very strong lightsource, specially dedicated to photography and not reasonably substitutable by continuous lights.

 

[moreorless]

</strong>Received some detailed information that 5D Mark III/X commercials are being shot in England and France. One film is about making a cinematic piece with the camera, the other is for Euro 2012.</p>

Start match of Euro 2012: 8th June
Final: 1st July

So now the question is - is that a teaser or trailer for it before release? Will the camera's be out in photographer's hands?

If it's just a teaser - then general release isn't for another 4-5 months.

It doesnt of course mean that the adverts need to be shown during or near euro 2012, if Canon has paid a significant amount for sponsorship rights then they'll probabley look to exploit them as much as possible even on products that come out well before the euros.

 

[avian]

Shooting hdvideo and using a single frame as a foto doesn't make much sense even when it's shot in raw.
The resolution of video is way lower than that of shooting single frame burst fullres pictures.
Your now using a 22Mpix camera to shoot 2Mpix resolution foto's.
Plus the pictures will have a 16:9 size.

 

[tt]

LaForet was looking at what RED had on offer - a still from their higher end kit isn't that bad MP wise. It's more to think about at the future, but a possibility.

 

[Lyra Video Productions]

I agree, it's a different medium. I think there's a time and place for each. Something I'm curious to hear what people think about here--Shooting on a RED camera you can essentially shoot video in RAW; each frame is like a RAW image. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this (it could just be their marketing speak). Someday, I don't see why most video formats couldn't advance to a point in which each frame is a very hi res photo. Will this change the way photographers work?

See Vincent laForet article http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/06/17/vincent-laforet-the-future-of-photography-is-convergence/

In some circumstances (mining for the shot in post frame by frame) could be suitable.
Primarily for a video camera that record in a format that records each frame.

It's an interesting exercise to think about how videographers construct their shots etc -
There are a few photographers hat at the least do video shorts - and many do video production as a part of their work whether they're on screen or not. Not like they just do blog posts with stills!

Printing definitely helps with perceived value. Video screens and projectors are still a rarity to be used as frames for art content beyond studios and galleries/museums.

(sorry if this is getting way off topic...) Every professional on these forums should read the article tt posted from Vincent Laforet. Great article, tt. In the next 10 years we're going to see huge price drops in the kinds of technology RED cameras are using today and convergence is going to be a very real issue. Photographers will be shooting more video and, from the looks of it, videographers will be shooting more photos.

To those saying that picking out the best still from video stills would be tough, I doubt it would be as hard as you imagine; it would just be a different way of sifting through photos. You have to remember you're not comparing each frame next to each other, you'd be playing the video, scrubbing through looking for the "moment". I shoot video with plain old HD quality and from time to time I have been asked to give a screen shot for use on the web and in a few instances for small elements in magazines--it wasn't as hard to pick these out as I had feared. Remember, some RED cameras shoot 5k video--much higher resolution than normal HD.

These techniques are already being used today: http://www.red.com/experience/photography

As for the lighting argument--that cost and power consumption will go up with continuous lighting--I suppose that may be true--but there's an entire industry based on continuous lights--and it's very doable. Not to mention as time goes by light sensitivity will increase and improve as well.

Like Vincent Laforet, I'm not saying this is the future for photography--I'm just saying it's something to be aware of as a professional in the field.

 

[Lawliet]

I suppose that may be true--but there's an entire industry based on continuous lights--and it's very doable. Not to mention as time goes by light sensitivity will increase and improve as well.

Doable - yes, we do it all the times. For a price. A backpack for photography, a 35t-truck for moving picture.
The old sensitivity fallacy. No, its not sensitivity that causes the costs(using Dedos for photography works ok for quite a few cases, same for L7, Seladors, KinoFlo/Creamsources), its the ambient light. No matter what you dial in on the camera, getting a decent contrast ratio takes the same effort, thus a Max18 for a nice annual income to replace a strobe set that costs about as much as a spare bulb for the Arri.

We're repeating the same mistake we did with video: believing it makes anything less expensive. Sure it the bills went down, because they cut all the people and stuff that make film look good, thus the stigma of video looking cheap. Rinse&repeat in HD.

 

[Lyra Video Productions]

I suppose that may be true--but there's an entire industry based on continuous lights--and it's very doable. Not to mention as time goes by light sensitivity will increase and improve as well.

Doable - yes, we do it all the times. For a price. A backpack for photography, a 35t-truck for moving picture.
The old sensitivity fallacy. No, its not sensitivity that causes the costs(using Dedos for photography works ok for quite a few cases, same for L7, Seladors, KinoFlo/Creamsources), its the ambient light. No matter what you dial in on the camera, getting a decent contrast ratio takes the same effort, thus a Max18 for a nice annual income to replace a strobe set that costs about as much as a spare bulb for the Arri.

We're repeating the same mistake we did with video: believing it makes anything less expensive. Sure it the bills went down, because they cut all the people and stuff that make film look good, thus the stigma of video looking cheap. Rinse&repeat in HD.

Yeah, good continuous lights aren't cheap and they are heavier than carrying around flash equipment (though LEDs are changing the heaviness factor). If you're just talking about shooting outside in the daytime then sure... you need a boatload of light (or a little know how with big reflectors, etc.). I wasn't talking about that--I was talking about low light or controlled light environments (sorry I didn't clarify). In this situation light sensitivity does matter. Hear me out.
You're right, it is all about contrast ratio and quality of light. If you have a camera that gets great low light performance then that means your ambient light--your base exposure--can be lower. That means for your key light/back light/etc., those lights don't need to be as powerful. That's why now (as opposed to the early days of video) instead of doing a studio set up with a bunch of 2k fresnels you can get by with a lot less, without sacrificing quality. So depending on the type of shoot, yeah you can get by without a truckload.

You shouldn't assume that I'm making "the same mistake we did with video." I wholeheartedly believe in spending time on lighting. there's no excuse for not paying attention to lighting (unless the client just can't afford it--and even then at least keep lighting in mind. Personally I'd probably do some lighting anyway...). If video looks cheap nowadays it's operator error as far as I'm concerned. With recent advances in dynamic range and shallow depth of field, etc. you can get a great image if you know what you're doing. A lot of other video people out there believe the same thing.

Going back to my original post then, like I said, I just think this new technology of RAW ultra hi-def video is something to watch out for. Weather it's good or bad (or easier or harder to get good quality), it will become more prevalent over time.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Shooting hdvideo and using a single frame as a foto doesn't make much sense even when it's shot in raw.
The resolution of video is way lower than that of shooting single frame burst fullres pictures.
Your now using a 22Mpix camera to shoot 2Mpix resolution foto's.
Plus the pictures will have a 16:9 size.

But, a 4K frame is 12mp, quite respectable. People buy cameras for their 10 or 12 fps, a 30fps that takes 12 mp frames is something to think about. I've grabbed fromes from my 5D MK II video just to see if I could. Its pretty quick and easy to pick a frame, because you watch the video at full speed first, then, you know within a second or two where the image you want will be found.

 

[Lawliet]

[I wasn't talking about that--I was talking about low light or controlled light environments (sorry I didn't clarify). In this situation light sensitivity does matter.

Beware - lets assume you can get the studio ambient level down to 1lx, you need about 4k-16k lx to use the whole range sensor. To actually reap the benefits you require light levels in excess of the good, old TV studio, no high sensitivity scenario unless you can cut light spillage and pollution by the equipment itself below moonlight levels. Not that working would be easy when the crew can't see a thing

With recent advances in dynamic range and shallow depth of field, etc. you can get a great image if you know what you're doing. A lot of other video people out there believe the same thing.

Ironically neither DR or DOF were unsolveable problems in the first place - even that last millenium consumer camcorder could do wide angle/shallow DOF/TS-effects if you knew your toolkit.
I don't see that many people taking actual advantage of raw video, quite some temptation to not do your homework but fix in in photoshop aside.

 

[Lyra Video Productions]

"To actually reap the benefits you require light levels in excess of the good, old TV studio, no high sensitivity scenario unless you can cut light spillage and pollution by the equipment itself below moonlight levels. Not that working would be easy when the crew can't see a thing"
What are you even talking about? Did I say anything about getting things down to 1 lux? There are plenty of great things being shot in lower light now than ever before and it looks amazing.

"To actually reap the benefits you require light levels in excess of the good, old TV studio,"

You're wrong. haha. people shoot things in TV studios every day that look amazing on camera.

"you need about 4k-16k lx to use the whole range sensor."

First of all--I'm talking about future technology... so it can be whatever we want it to be. But in all honesty, if you have data to back up those numbers I'd actually be interested in seeing that and what it means to "use the whole range sensor."

"Ironically neither DR or DOF were unsolveable problems in the first place - even that last millenium consumer camcorder could do wide angle/shallow DOF/TS-effects if you knew your toolkit.
I don't see that many people taking actual advantage of raw video, quite some temptation to not do your homework but fix in in photoshop aside."

I never said anything of the sort that you couldn't get good images out of older video technology. I used to shoot on IMX videotape and I'm well aware of how good you can make it look. But it's easier now. Highlights don't clip as badly. Sensors are bigger and so you can get a shallower depth of field more easily. A 2/3 chip only gets you so far.

Honesly Lawliet, I enjoy a good back and forth but please stop putting words in my mouth. A pissing contest isn't what I'm looking for.