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Canon 5D Mark III review


Andrew Reid
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[quote author=gene_can_sing link=topic=444.msg2819#msg2819 date=1332452257]
About 4 years ago, Canon was handed the keys to a lucrative new species of camera. How they managed to Fu#K it up so bad is beyond comprehension. There was NO competition and they could have just owned this industry if they just weren't so greedy.
[/quote]

Same goes for Nikon, with the D90. They lucked into the ENTIRE DIGITAL CINEMA MARKET. With a live view function! I repeat... I live view function on a consumer DSLR!

And what do they do!??

Canon decide to charge $16000 and Nikon decide to ignore it.

My patience only goes so far. That is why I am Sony and Panasonic until further mind changes.
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Andrew, you say:
[quote][i]On actual 1080p resolution however they[/i] [Canon and Nikon] [i]are unfortunately as bad as each other.[/i][/quote]
Are you just comparing the internal codec of both cameras or are you also including & comparing the D800's uncompressed HDMI out?

Cheers
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FS100 - great buy!

I've had mine for over 6 months (upgraded from a hacked GH1) and absolutely love it! a beautiful image, and my god... peaking!

Just wait till you try your Leica R lenses on it, match made in heaven!  :)
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[quote author=Andrew Reid - EOSHD link=topic=444.msg2822#msg2822 date=1332454131]
[quote author=5DGH link=topic=444.msg2810#msg2810 date=1332444620]
[quote author=5DGH link=topic=444.msg2800#msg2800 date=1332434463]
"Today I bought a Sony FS100."

Considering what you've said all those years, not to mention your criticizing others, I find it very surprising that you bought FS100 - just like the others.
I understand your disappoint with 5d Mk III but you've always hailed GH2 over cams such as FS100. In that regard, nothing is changed. GH2 is still GH2 and FS100 is still FS100. Yet, you're now with FS100.
What gives?
[/quote]
Now you're listing all the good things. A while ago, you wrote this: [url=http://www.eoshd.com/content/588/the-sony-fs100-why-professionals-are-all-mad]http://www.eoshd.com/content/588/the-sony-fs100-why-professionals-are-all-mad[/url] along with many other posts & mentions dissing FS100.

If I'm not mistaken, articles on EOSHD is not written by a team of people, right?
[/quote]

I'm still the same person but I've changed my mind about the FS100. Substitute FS100 for F3 or C300 in that article and it still stands  ;D

My point there was that the FS100 was £4500 more than a DSLR, yet similar image quality (to GH2). That is still true but we are talking about the £3000 5D Mark III here. The FS100 is a year old and has come down to around $4000 used and $4699 new. The one I bought cost £2750 when converted from the USD price of $4300. The UK RRP of the 5D Mark III is £3000. So it actually works out cheaper to get a FS100 than this particular DSLR, with all that extra video functionality.

And last time I looked, 5D Mark III doesn't do slow mo does it?  ::)

Things change, and I change my mind to adapt...
[/quote]

Andrew, since that you are so unhappy with your 5DIII I can do you a deal and swap my GH2 immaculate condition with Lumix 14-140 lens with Quantum hack plus my lightly used 5D2 body with only 5,000 shutter actuation, that is equal to around £2k at current used market for both and I will add £1,000 in cash to push it up to £3k.
David Dickinson cant make you a better offer?
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Do you have an orange sun tan as well Simco?  8)

A generous offer but I shall hold off for now... 5D Mark III remains with me for now. I'm seeing if I can work with it and solve some of the issues like the codec noise and softness in post.
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[quote author=Andrew Reid - EOSHD link=topic=444.msg2848#msg2848 date=1332498138]
Do you have an orange sun tan as well Simco?  8)

A generous offer but I shall hold off for now... 5D Mark III remains with me for now. I'm seeing if I can work with it and solve some of the issues like the codec noise and softness in post.
[/quote]

So there is still hope with the 5DIII? It will probably take another 3 years before Magic Lantern makes any meaningful but incremental hack since the 700 lines cannot be improved upon by firmware alone. Just think a grand will buy you a GH3 due out in a month or so.
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Great article. Just to clarify on one of your earlier points though, I'm 99.9% sure the FS100 doesn't output 60p over HDMI even though it can record it internally, even the F3 can only do it over dual SDI. Did you buy that FS100 off ebay? I almost pulled the trigger on that one recently! lol
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@Tim:
[quote author=Tim link=topic=444.msg2843#msg2843 date=1332487391]
Andrew, you say:
[quote][i]On actual 1080p resolution however they[/i] [Canon and Nikon] [i]are unfortunately as bad as each other.[/i][/quote]
Are you just comparing the internal codec of both cameras or are you also including & comparing the D800's uncompressed HDMI out?

Cheers
[/quote]

He means the true resolution of the camera, they say 1080P on them but it's a bit cheeky to call them that, it doesn't resolve 1080P lines of resolution. They could equally say it's 8K if the camera internally uprezed the image to 8k, but that wouldn't make it 8k! The 5d2 and 3 do around 700 lines of resolution which makes them look quite soft, the C300 does a lovely 1080 like the Alexa or a downrezed RED. The FS100, GH2 and Sony F3 do something inbetween, like 850 and look closer to C300 than 5d. The new Nikon's look like the Canons though I don't think there have been any resolution tests with them yet.
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I am new to DSLR video shooting but opted for the 600D due to the fact that I don't like the cost of the 5DII etc when the video is not vastly improved over the 600D in terms of mush for landscapes etc (I also have the Legria HFS21 which funnily enough has the same lovely natural 'grain' look that the C300 has (similarities pretty much end there though)

however, you stated this in the original article:
' Canon currently has nothing in-between the 5D Mark III and C300 for video and even more worryingly nothing under it! The NEX 7 and GH2 are both better buys than the current 7D, Rebel or 60D for video image quality and digital cinema features'

Canon actually have the awesome XF300 and 305, why is this VIDEO camera always overlooked it seems  (which actually sits above the entire Canon DSLR range and just below the C300 for around $7000 (AU). ( It's also Broadcast quality straight out of the box provided you have a good cameraman lol)


Has anyone else seen the detail it is capable of  resolving? While still not the full 1080p they all claim, there is actually more detail and less mush in footage shot on it as it's closer to 1080p than even the 5d Mark II or III but then you would expect that considering it's closer to $10,000 than $1000.

It is clear that although possible instead of using their superior 50mps XF codec (found on their Pro video camera's, they have still opted to use a hideously old codec in their DSLR... co incidence... clearly not!

I also think Canon themselves have jumped on their own bandwagon from intense response to consumers (including many pros) wanting to use their DSLR's for 'video'.

What I'm getting at is that if the same people who have embraced the DSLR for video and made it more popular than a video camera itself because of the DOF etc, instead focusing on e.g.: improving the XF300/305 then we would probably already have the camera of all of our dreams for less than $10,000 already.... (that's just my opinion btw :)
the 305 is not perfect by any means but actually superb video (which could still be made even better , i.e.: instead of removing the moire from the 5D video, how about remove it from the XF305)

check this video out and download (apart from the occasional mpeg blocking on fast motion which I tend to think is because the original file has also being compressed but check out the quality and the detail and whats funny,.. the file is only running at 12mbits/second and it's even better than the DSLR range at over 50mbits/second h.264
Imagine what this footage would like at is full 50mbits XF codec !!!

[url=http://vimeo.com/15089085]MacRitchie - Canon XF305[/url]

(look at the stunning detail in the opening shot)
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c300 probaly use APS-C crop of canon 5dmark iii sensor ...
when u upscale c300 to full frame u got 22.3 MP...(2.14158238 * 8MP * 1.33 = 22.7864365)
all companies do that ...
design one sensor technology and the upscale or downscale size and deactivate some options for cheaper or photo cameras ...
image from 5d iii sensor is probably perfect 4 MP and then canon use some black magic to do worst possible downscaling to 1080p ...
c300 has huge profit margin ...
if canon does no line skipping and read whole sensor with pixel binning only way to get such low resolution HD is on purpose to protect video division...
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Andrew, sorry but you are totally wrong on the rec709 section of your MKIII review, it still is full range not 16 - 235, looking at Dan Chungs samples for example, with Avisynth they're clearly full luma.

[url=https://vimeo.com/38728208]https://vimeo.com/38728208[/url]

What has changed is the color matrix from BT601 to BT709 this only affects any conversions to RGB, like for preview and color processing, probably done because when users transcode they generally loose the BT601 color matrix reference, so before BT601 would have been incorrectly replaced with BT709 as BT709 is default for HD when nothing is declared in the header, as a result pinks would shift to orange, now that mis representation won't happen.

Also Canon MOVS are still flagged as 'full range' in the header of the h264, so any codec like QT immediately squeezes the luma 16 - 235 bringing it into the NLE to ensure it encapsulates the full range data, this is unnecessary for an NLE like CS5 to avoid the luma sqeeze the full range flag just needs switching off.

But if decoded with a codec that just decompresses without scaling luma, it's clear to see mkIII sources are still full luma.

Finally I'd suggest avoiding 5DToRGB well at least the beta, may be that's updated now, because the test I did with it recently with Canon MOVs showed that in fact 5DToRGB scales the luma 16-235 in transcodes to DNxHD for sure.

Only the color matrix has changed.

A link to a couple of test files to illustrate codec handling of Canon MOVs.

[url=http://www.yellowspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/fullrangetest.zip]http://www.yellowspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/fullrangetest.zip[/url]

And a link to a Canon MOV (T2i) illustrating what really is in a full range file where the flag has been switched off to see how a NLE handles them differently depending on flag on/off.. Personally I think that the Canon MOVs should be quickly remuxed and the flag switched off to avoid unnecessary luma squeezing.

[url=http://www.yellowspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/flagoff.mp4]http://www.yellowspace.webspace.virginmedia.com/flagoff.mp4[/url]

Due to the codecs honoring of the full range flag any transcoding with tools like Mpegstreamclip will also squeeze the luma.
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