Andrew Reid

At Photokina I talked to product specialists Jörg Ammon and John Morris, both of Canon Europe. We talked mainly about video on the 7D Mark II. Read the full article here

  What the hell is it with all these fake comparison videos on YouTube recently?

Just tried the firmware update. Works but didn't see the claimed improvement in video quality.   Hack project seems pretty real though.

  Try it guys.   I will do once I have some time tomorrow.

You're right, TN has improved a lot recently. People could really do with trying the Samsung as I have before dismissing my views on it quite so readily.

I plan to transcribe the interview from my iPhone recording. It was never meant to go online as an audio file, just a rough quality recording to transcribe from. There's a lot of background noise from the show floor on it and much of the implied unpleasantness was in the body language of the product specialist actually, more so than what he said.   I don't want to be in such a difficult personal situation with Canon. There are good people at Canon. I have a good relationship with people at Panasonic, Sony and eventually want to have the same with people at Canon. If I am critical of their products on EOSHD then it is because I want to see better products from Canon not because I have a personal issue with them. The truth is there for you all to see, the DSLRs are simply not delivering the advances we want for video and the Cinema EOS line is priced out of reach for many of us.   I was chatting on the record to a German product specialist at Canon named Jorg who was very friendly. I was asking tough questions about video on the 7D Mark II but he was doing very well to answer and to explain the other advantages of the camera and who it was aimed at. After about 20 minutes we were discussing moire and he called over a Canon UK manager who happened to be close-by, to ask him if moire had been fixed. You should have seen the face of this guy. You could feel the stress in both of our voices in his presence, it was simply horrible. He refuses to answer whether moire had been sorted out, then proceeded to be extremely rude and dismissive for a good 10 minutes until I decided I'd had enough and ended the interview. It ended with him saying within earshot of me and in a bitter tone "who's next" as if his time was better spent talking to some kind of 'yes' man.   The guy's name is John Morris, he's a product specialist at Canon.   I feel that in being so dismissive of my concerns over video on DSLRs, he is dismissive of all of us really, as a community, because you all (mostly) share my concerns. And on a personal level, as a representative of Canon at Photokina I feel the attitude he displayed fell well short of what is expected from people at such large companies.

  Well we're on the V3 now and still no 4K.   The sensor in the V1 was actually capable of doing it years ago.

Fake. Beware of the plant videos!

Seriously you two, were you expecting a 4K IPS panel for $599?   Come on, time to get a fucking clue.

The D810 now shoots better quality 1080p out of the box than the 5D Mark III. It isn't 4K or raw but it's good. In fact Nikon are now providing better image quality than Canon across the range in video mode. Beginning with the D3300 and D5300 which provide a better APS-C image than the 7D Mark II with less moire, Nikon have taken the same improvement to image quality and applied it to the D800's successor, the D810. Read the full article here

The reasons to shoot anamorphic are the same they've always been. Maximise vertical resolution and recording area, obtain wider aspect ratio and benefit from other characteristics and stylistic traits of the optics like flare, stretched bokeh, etc.   Our scholar froess here is an annoying troll. If anyone wants to learn and not take the bait, click here -   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format

Canon wait until the others have made their move and usually follow up a few years later with the same thing at a lower price.   Then as tumbleweeds roll across the floor, eventually Nikon gets round to copying Canon!   Even took them a while with full frame FX format!   So I am not expecting any low-priced 4K camera from Nikon soon, if anything it will probably be a Cinema Nikon and $10k!

Cool. Is it $599?   :D  B)

If they are competitive with the competition I have no problem buying a Nikon. I even have a V1!   Like I say... IF they are competitive with the competition....

Too late I already have my A7S.

  Nice but be careful going smaller than 28" with 4K. For me 28" is the sweet spot. Not so big that your eyes have to track for miles side to side, but not so small that text and icons vanish when using it at the native 4K res.

  4096 is the cinema standard. It is a bit like 1920 vs 2048 for 1080p and 2K. I don't think I've ever seen a 2048 2K monitor in 1.85:1 aspect ratio so doubt the PC industry will make one.   Another option is the high end IPS 21:9 3.5K display from LG. It's very nice for anamorphic footage ;)

The issue with high end APS-C stuff is that it has reached the end of the road, certainly with regards pricing, because why shoot APS-C if you can get a full frame camera for the same price?   It defies the whole point of APS-C existing, which is to offer a lower price than full frame.   Canon's APS-C lens range is rather lacking too. Nothing faster than an F2.8. A lot of people have EF primes, even full frame zooms and they are using them on an APS-C sensor which is nuts. Once these users realise the benefit of full frame sometime during their deliberations on whether to drop nearly $2k on an APS-C camera they will not be buying a 7D Mark II I can promise you that.   The AF system is just about the only thing it has going for it and even that's a minor difference to the other high end Canon DSLRs.

  I don't think it is good enough to reverse a halving of DSLR shipments in the last 2 years though.   A lot of 7D owners have already upgraded. 6D, 70D, 5D Mark III, or if they're a video user then a Cinema EOS camera, and if they can't afford that they many of them will have already jumped ship from Canon altogether for a GH4 or a Sony A7-something.

  This is a video site. I'm amazed you haven't noticed that fundamental principal of EOSHD yet :)   And what Canon marketing stuff have you been reading that makes you think dual-pixel AF is fast enough for sports stills shooting?   Have you used it? Dual pixel AF is still mega slow. The 70D's standard phase detect sensor via optical viewfinder shits on it, as does the GH4's contrast detect based system.

Ok let's try and be more helpful. What price do IPS 4K monitors start at Leeys?

  I don't know what you are suggesting there John! SLR Magic have been working on the 2x prototype for a while, it didn't just pop up within the month.

That shot was cropped from full frame, so I think the corners are a bit beyond what the lens was designed for really. If you want to avoid C/A in the corners, simply use a smaller sensor or a longer focal length with it.   The LA7200 has a lot more C/A than I've seen on the SLR Magic.   What's the signature of the H-K9L glass and does it have a certain colour bias?

This screen is capable of a 1080p > 4K upscale, which is meant to enhance the upscaling.   I haven't tested it yet but the Mac does a similar thing since Retina came along. Very advanced upscaling.   Image quality, whether it is pixelated or soft or not depends more on the quality of the upscaling. Potentially if the upscaling adds detail it can look better than on a native 1080p display.   Thing is whether we like it or not, native 1080p displays are a dying breed on laptops and desktops (if not yet tablets and phones).   The days of viewing our 1080p footage natively full screen with a 1:1 pixel mapping are going to be over pretty quickly.   All the more reason to get a 4K camera to do justice to your 4K display.

They are right about dynamic range being important but actually from the perspective of us, i.e. video shooters on far more democratically priced cameras than the Alexa what you want is that full pixel readout the 4K cameras have (GH4, A7S, etc.). Pixel binning and line skipping on 1080p DSLRs damages the image in all sorts of ways. Dynamic range suffers, so does colour.   So 4K is not just about a resolution gain for us, it is the gateway out of line skipping hell.   Once you appreciate that and get a 4K monitor like the Samsung for $599 I just reviewed you will see how something like the GH4 or A7S has pushed the envelope in all respects for image quality, codec, dynamic range, etc. compared to what we had before from our consumer DSLRs.   And if you want 1080p or 2K out of it just downscale in post. I question whether you need to go to all that effort to soften the lens on set to improve skin, I think it can be done in post with a reduction in micro-contrast and some other techniques as well as a final delivery in 1080p on a non-clinical display technology such as a projector.   The other argument is interesting, does the higher detail of 4K and HFR 48p kill the illusion of cinema. I think it depends on the subject matter. For documentaries where you want hyper realism it's great. For a costume drama or glossy escapism like Dallas I can see why creatively Rodney Charters has concerns about it. He's completely right to have those concerns, as are the actors. 4K and HFR certainly didn't work for me when I watched The Hobbit. Hated it.   But whether creatively it suits your project or not, the fact is 4K is coming fast and is the next standard for us all. Same as 1080p is today. And nobody wants to shoot 480p today do they?   People watching movies on mobile phones and tablets need 4K more than they think. At such close viewing distances you really notice.