Andrew Reid

[media]http://vimeo.com/65260452[/media] These past days I have been trying to make myself useful to Alex at Magic Lantern and testing the DNG raw video recording on the 5D Mark III with a nightly build of Magic Lantern. Here's what the video quality looks like in the DNG video modes at 30fps. Click the image below to expand... [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/10294/3-5k-canon-5d-mark-iii-raw-video-with-magic-lantern-and-latest-updates]Read the full article here[/url]

That's very far from the current consensus.   1920x720 is under the date rate that a 1000x CF card can do, so should be possible. You can see my next blog post, there's a LOT of stuff in that. I won't reveal too much until that is online, but already the 1920x1285 14bit raw is very usable as a 30fps 1 second burst mode like the Nikon V1. Rendering my sample clips as we speak.   Bear in mind also that is still very early days with this. Lots of progress is in the pipeline just takes time.

Magic Lantern is truly amazing.   With the GH2, Vitaliy did good work but it was only ever tinkering with existing settings and features.   With Magic Lantern they are running C code on the OS and it is like a computer. Astonishing achievement.

  So tape the orange ring up with black tape then? I don't think it is an issue for stealth. Hand on the lens covers it anyway. I've never had a better non-reaction of people to this camera when pointing it in their general direction.   On the 1D C test shoot with Slashcam I was filming a blossom tree and a woman in Berlin who was standing on the pavement over the road actually stomped over to me and asked me if I was filming her. She harassed me down in a u-bahn station and went out of her way to do so. She even asked to see the shots. Some people have real hang ups about personal privacy and you need to be careful. Granted it happens VERY infrequently, but if Henri Cartier Bresson had to go round the street handing out release forms doubtless he'd have missed a few decisive moments :)   No VF? That's not correct. With the add-on it has one of the best EVFs around. I tried the Zeiss optical one too. Very nice for composition, very bright.

My friend Nino has his F55 review out http://ninofilm.net/blog/2013/04/30/sony-f55-review-music-video-deja-struck-by-the-light/   Some stuff stands out -   - Very clean image even at high ISOs, but like Nino I have my doubts whether they are actually high ISOs as we know them.   - Built in 0.9 and 1.8 ND filters not strong enough for shooting at the native ISO 1250 in day light, still needs a matte box or an ND on the lens! Nino had to stop down to F8(!!) to get exposure in day light with the 1.8 ND setting. As far as I know, Sony had to introduce an entirely new material to make an ND filter on the F55's large sensor even possible (with high quality) so seemingly it has a lot of room for improvement in terms of the strength of the ND in future cameras.   - The camera has issues with burning strong blue electric light sources even when they are not over exposed. This seems to be something which is common to a lot of Sony cameras. Nino noticed it as far back as the EX3 and even the NEX 7 does it.   - In-camera downsampling to 1080p is done very well, can barely tell the difference between downscaling 4K to 1080p in post and the in-camera 1080p XAVC   - Important options buried in menus, which aren't very responsive. Another Sony issue. Says Nino - A lot of very important menu points are hidden away deep in submenus and so I think there is still a lot of space for optimization. The menu really could use a rearrangements with some of the most important settings positioned more prominently.   - 50MBps MPEG-2 4:2:2 proxy files generated in-camera on the fly. Very useful features for editing 4K, makes it much easier and less time consuming.   Aside from the quirks it certainly seems to be a Red Epic beater for low light, speed of workflow with XAVC and motion (global shutter).

Reading up on all the Andromeda stuff and asking people on Twitter what they know.   Apparently RealStream were under NDA when they got bought out.   It seems whoever bought RealStream did not want to be outed.   "Why" - that is the million dollar question isn't it...   Seriously you wouldn't believe what kind of dodgy stuff goes on out there. I know people who have worked at the top of large companies. No matter what the reputation, there's a ton of dark stuff that goes on. I know it for a fact.

I recently sold my X Pro 1. The man who turned out in the end to win the auction decided to start asking questions in the closing 10 minutes of the auction AFTER placing a 1400 euro bid.   After he won the auction, he decided he didn't like one the answers (the camera was about 12 months old) and didn't pay. He moaned at me and said he was very unhappy the camera wasn't brand new despite me listing it as USED. I'd used that camera about 6 times in 12 months!!   I assumed the deal was off, and then a full 4 days later he decided out of the blue to pay and then demanded next day delivery.   I'm not Amazon and I don't work for eBay. The whole thing is a joke.   eBay is like a little microcosm of modern society. They've removed any sense of buyer accountability or morals from the capitalist system :) The consumers are running amok.   The other little trick I've noticed is the "dog eyed consumer" who wins an auction, they sends you a mail fishing for a huge discount because they're oh so disappointed at something or basically a bit poor and suddenly don't think the item is worth what they felt it was 10 minutes ago whilst bidding.   I always tweet my stuff for sale before putting it on eBay through gritted teeth. It's totally a broken system.   Anyway hope your GH3 has sold JLW - have a free thread bump from me.

  I think the problem is doing a high quality debayer on the raw. The compression to JPEG isn't the processor intensive bit. It is the debayering.   All the camera has to do for DNG is dump the 1s and 0s to a very fast 512MB buffer memory chip. Then write 512MB to the card (that takes longer).   Imagine with every DNG file having to process all that data - 5MB of it - like opening a raw file in Photoshop - but in-camera.   Clearly the camera is doing a very simplistic debayer of the 2K raw to provide an image for live view and the H.264 encoder.   But we need a much higher quality one for decent 1080p MJPEG, otherwise you may as well stick with the existing H.264.   That's my understanding of it.   DNG is the option with the least processing, least CPU intensive, but sadly the most data to shuttle off to the card.   Of course Blackmagic cameras debayer their 2K raw just fine to ProRes in-camera, even the Pocket Cinema Camera. So it is doable with today's technology. What Blackmagic are doing could be very specialised though. Whether Canon have that technology, I don't know.

  You'd be surprised how hard it is to do with digital what he did with film.   First DSLRs are out. People react differently to a big lens and camera.   You could pick a small mirrorless camera, but none of them are full frame so the look isn't the same as a Leica M3.   Of course you could just get a Leica M 240 but if I were spending that much it'd go towards a film not stills!   Oddly enough the Nikon 1 V2 with 18.5mm F1.8 came pretty close for decisive moment street photos. Superbly fast AF, tiny, and very good built in EVF. It's just that the Sony RX1 has the quality and look of 35mm film, whilst the V2 has the quality of a good digital compact camera.   I didn't get on with the Fuji cameras. As a poster said above, he said he felt the Fujis are better street cameras. I just don't agree. The X100 had a miserable focussing system whether in manual or AF mode. Not responsive enough for a decisive moment and of course it isn't full frame. On the X Pro 1, I had several issues - again a terrible feel to manual focus, dreadful AF and some horrible electronic noise reduction going on in the raw file processing which I couldn't turn off. The hybrid viewfinder which worked well on the X100 didn't suit the nature of interchangeable lenses and the body was way bigger than my Olympus OM-D E-M5. It was the worst £1900 I'd ever spent.   I liked the X10 compact better, but it ain't no Leica!   I've tried the new X100S, love the split-image manual focus assist - just like with a Leica you immediately know which way to turn the focus barrel to lock focus and you're not tempted to hunt around slightly for a perfect lock on. The feel of the focus ring is much improved too but the AF is still well behind Micro Four Thirds and Nikon.   Canon EOS M AF takes 5 seconds to lock focus in good light and that has phase detect AF pixels on the sensor... But then that's Canon for you.   NEX 7 and OM-D E-M5 are fine efforts but they just don't have the full frame image quality going on that a Leica M or Sony RX1 gives you.   I hope that gives some perspective as to why I think the RX1 is the best tool yet for doing decisive moment street photography. I can't think of another one of my cameras I'd rather use for stills, unless it is a particular lens I'm looking to use on the GH3 / 5D3.   Video of course is another matter. I'm baffled by Sony's slapdash implementation of image quality on it. They think they can get away with it in video mode but they couldn't do that with stills! I can only assume the Japanese designers really don't care about video. Only stills.

Added full resolution 24MP 6400x4000 JPEGs (from raw) http://we.tl/VuaRBuQBo9

The Sony RX1 is a compact camera that beats Leica and Hasselblad for image quality. [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/10248/sony-rx1-review-stills-camera]Read the full article here[/url]

Yes there is and not too far off now. I've been writing it for the past 9 months!!

I don't know Andy... The 5D Mark III and D5200 look a lot nicer with a bit of sharpening in Premiere. Not something I'd usually do and I never had to do it with the GH2, but to make the images pop a bit more it does help. True if you go too far you get an awful scratchy feel that isn't organic and on some cameras you can't do it at all because it just brings the artefacts out like on the 7D and NEX 5N.   Take a look at how close the 5D Mark III is able to get to the REAL resolution of the GH2 once you help to bring it out in post. It isn't about sharpness but just making the detail a bit less muddy.   Organic softness is good - I'm totally in agreement on that - but muddy detail is horrible!

At the moment heat is not the bottleneck. Let's try to stay on topic please.

I agree eBay is now heavily biased towards the buyer, some people I've dealt on eBay treat me like a shop, one day I will have to don a badge and uniform and deliver the camera in person with a cheesy smile. It isn't much fun working for eBay!

Try sharpening this one, it is less compressed for the interwebs...   http://www.eoshd.com/uploads/d5200-sharpen-this.jpg

You are trying to sharpen a heavily compressed JPEG downloaded from Wordpress.   I'll see if I can find the master MOV clips and upload. But I am quite busy on testing the 5D Mark III raw at the moment and finishing off the Sony RX1 review.

Consider this - the hacked 5D's 2K raw image is better than the 1D C's 1080p.   We are being diddled.   The more that comes out the more I am sure of it.

It's funny that these guys were laughing at the DSLR crowd a few months ago, kind of ribbing us about how easily people get excited about raw when what really matters is the script, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.   And now the joke is on them! Remind me what the C300 shoots again... Erm is it 8bit mud!?

No, that theory is discredited unfortunately.   If you convert compressed H.264 to 10bit ProRes, it is the same to grade as the master files. Transcoding gains no extra image quality. I once read a very good blog showing this but unfortunately I forget the source. Unless you're trying to fix a compatibility issue like 5DToRGB did with GH2 footage and Quicktime on a Mac, you're best off dropping the original native clips straight into the NLE.

The CF cards are certainly cheaper than spending $8k on a 4K recorder for the C500. Well, it's less than that now thanks to the Odyssey 7Q but you get the point.   However, the fact remains that the 1D C does its image a huge disservice by offering zero changes over the 1D X for double the price, other than the image itself. Zero. Nothing. Put that image in the C300's body Canon please. Next time they may get it right.   And whilst they're at it, please sort out the low end and DSLR video. It is a bloody mess. More video features are being reversed engineered out of the 5D Mark III than Canon's own engineers added in the 3 years between the 5D Mark II and 5D Mark III. They could have 2K raw video, maybe also 3.5K MJPEG 1:1 crop in that camera at the drop of a hat. I have no idea what the hell is stopping them.

Which frame are you referring too? Is it this one -   http://www.eoshd.com/uploads/d5200-sharpened.jpg   It surprised me too.   Just try downloading the full JPEG and sharpening it in Photoshop, you will get the same result that I did.   There's not much in it between the GH2 and D5200 but the GH2 does still have an edge for resolution and the D5200 is much better in low light with a cleaner codec and larger sensor.   By the way the D5200's sensor also ranks very highly for stills at DXOMark, basically the best APS-C camera out there for image quality. Toshiba really did do well.

You can't uncompress compressed video, the data is lost forever.   Upscaling is a different thing. DVD players used to do it. Standard definition DVDs to 720p. Sony's 4K TV will do it with 1080p. I don't know of any plugin or workflow for Premiere, Resolve, Final Cut Pro, etc. that does it. I find that a glaring omission in the editing world!

Canon can't take legal action if they tried because it isn't illegal, nor does it infringe copyright. Canon should take the approach of Panasonic. Welcome the project, then build the features into the next model.   Just the fact that they have added DNG and 30fps raw bursts is incredible enough in itself.   To get raw video would be truly beyond anyone's wildest dreams, beyond even a Philip Bloom April fools.

eBay fees are truly crazy. 10%! You are welcome to sell the GH3 here, good luck with the sale.