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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Canon 5d Mark II users: lock down those primes... playa

Tom,

I'm newer at working w/ moving pictures as I'm from the still world but the footage has been looking pretty sweet to me. No moiré pattern artifacts that I can see. The main problem I find with the camera is that I can't manually control the exposure, or lock in an exposure. If the lighting in a scene changes during recording, the camera will change it's exposure.

We had this ASMP event at our studio so I was playing around documenting the event, here is a link to it - no color correction at all - this is straight footage out of the camera (just converted to ProRes to edit). It was really dark in some of the studios while they were speaking and you can see from the footage, it's not bad. I shot this with a Canon 16-35 f/2.8 & the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS http://vimeo.com/3550305
 
i wonder why i'm the only having so much trouble with the 5D2 footage. :(

maybe it's my particular camera. i wonder if anyone else has any thoughts on 5D2 footage vs EX1 footage, for example? to me, a lot of the stuff i have been shooting on the 5D2 doesn't seem to hold up all that well at 1080p. it's soft, the color is questionable, and i keep getting crazy artifacts on certain shots with high-frequency patterns, like waves on a lake or thorns on a cactus, etc.
 
No moiré pattern artifacts that I can see. The main problem I find with the camera is that I can't manually control the exposure, or lock in an exposure. If the lighting in a scene changes during recording, the camera will change it's exposure.

Chris, there are plenty of artifacts to be found, they're just not *that* noticeable in certain scenes, specially those without distinct rectilinear forms and shapes (i.e. nature). Also, you can retain adequate manual control and lock suitable exposure settings as long as you do certain things while using certain lenses and accessories.

But, as it comes out of the box, not quite.
 
it's soft, the color is questionable, and i keep getting crazy artifacts

The color I'm getting from the 5D2 is fantastic. Worlds better than my XH-A1. Neutral picture profile and a few custom white balance cards get me where I want to be most of the time.

As for the softness of the 5D2, I think that's a combination of two things. First, there is noise reduction that *cannot* be disabled, probably because it helps to reduce moire. Second, whatever method is used for binning/debayering/resampling results is low resolution. (So you have aliasing in one linear direction and softness+aliasing in the other direction.)

For the crazy artifacts, I too am bothered by those a lot. But many photographers and viewers don't even notice them. The artifacts can be reduced by softening the image optically before it gets to the sensor with a filter.
 
Chris, there are plenty of artifacts to be found, they're just not *that* noticeable in certain scenes, specially those without distinct rectilinear forms and shapes (i.e. nature). Also, you can retain adequate manual control and lock suitable exposure settings as long as you do certain things while using certain lenses and accessories.

But, as it comes out of the box, not quite.

Tico,

Please share any of these tricks you have with locking in exposure settings.

Thanks
 
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