Canon 5D Mark III topic

Aria

Given the fact that Canon made the C300 and there's a possibility of 4K 5D, I didn't expect that this Mk3 was gonna be the ultimate VDSLR. Still I think it provides a great option for video. FF, All I frame, less artifacts, better resolution, Headphone, Audio control, SMPTE, Great Low Light... It looks pretty good.

The only thing I want to know now is what they did with the Color. Is it 4:2:2? 8bit or 10bit?

willianaleman

Accordingly with Studio Daily, it is 8-bit only. The missing feature:

"Still only 8-bit recording, fragile 1/8-inch mic input plug, built-in mic is mono only, HDMI output still hobbled, video recording limited to under 29 minutes 59 seconds"

troyjason

Agree with Aria - "The only thing I want to know now is what they did with the Color. Is it 4:2:2? 8bit or 10bit?"

Anyone know? I like the C300 Color...4:2:2 right? Is the MK3 similar?

Anyone?

Chaos123x

4:2:0

John_Farragut

If they put everything of the C300 inside the 5D Mark III, then it would be a C300. It is what it is: a cheaper DSLR video solution from Canon. Why expect Canon to put everything into the entry level solution? You already get so much today for such low prices, to me it's mind boggling.

troyjason

ah crap that blows. Ill order another GH2 then.

The MK3 needs a magic lantern hack already.

proaudio4

Not surprised and not interested. I doubt image quality will surpass the C300 - which IMO is not "all" that great. Which is NOT going to happen knowing Canon.

vegandelight

Im with John_Farragut on this. As a still photographer im really happy how this turned out. I do enjoy video but you got to consider its a still camera with video.

bwhitz

@vegandelight "Im with John_Farragut on this. As a still photographer im really happy how this turned out. I do enjoy video but you got to consider its a still camera with video."

Yea, but this "still camera" has about 20x the processing power as the C300. It's true that we have many great options these days... but they're really holding back. It's just doesn't feel right, when making a camera investment/purchase, that it's only about 1/10th as good as it can be... Just because they're "protecting" their product markets.

When companies literally OWN an entire industry market, and can just slow-roll technology for years on end without fear of competition... then something needs to change.

@proaudio4 "I doubt image quality will surpass the C300 - which IMO is not "all" that great."

While I'm not really that excited for the 5DIII, I actually do think the overall IQ will be better than the C300. I really don't like the way the C300 renders detail... looks like the XF camcorders... because, well, it is just a large sensor XF camcorder. There's nothing "digital cinema" about it.

The whole "advanced sensor" crap with the C300 is just a marketing spin because the 4 year old processing they're using isn't capable of binning/sampling a 4k sensor. So they do it on the sensor readout and call it a "new design".

John_Farragut

They've always held back. But never was there a time that so little money gives you so many creative possibilties. Thing is, people want full frame 1080p without moire and aliasing, 4:2:2 color, 60p with uncompressed hdmi out, perfect picture quality, at such a price that nobody would buy cinema cameras anymore (stretching it a bit). Meaning everybody will have the same cinema camera, so to speak, even the soccer mom. Remember the time before the RED one? Digital cinema cameras below $30000 didn't exist. And now we have a variety of "cinematic" cameras at every budget. We have come a long way from small chip video cameras to large chip DSLR. Yes, companies are holding back picture quality, but at the same time, you would never have been able to get this film quality at this budget a few years back.

Aria

@John_Farragut, I'm bothered by this. The technology is at such a point that there's really no reason that one of the camera companies hasn't put the most wanted features in a small and affordable package. The only thing stopping any of these companies is protectionism.

Micro Processing is so advanced and so cheap now that it's really amazing what can be accomplished. The 5D3 is pretty darn close and the minor tweaks they could easily have made are well within the technical capabilities of the cameras processors.

The thing that was really frustrating is they didn't do it in the C300 either!!! IT's not even as robust as it could be given the price point. Still I like what i've seeing so far from the 5D3.

stoney

@djhessler Google Magic Lantern.

B3Guy

so what's the deal with the timecode stuff? does timecode really work without the devices actually being connected?

PixCanFly

Giving you everything in a camera today means they will have nothing to sell you tomorrow. Businessman don't think like art practitioner.

cosimo_bullo

I'm looking forward to replacing our 5dii with this new body. Love the full frame look with a 24mm wide open, and in fact I had few problems with Canon's final 5dii video implementation. If the moire is fixed, I'm in.

namtot

for $3500 what more is there to expect? but i do agree completely that the c300 should be a hell of alot better given the price tag, or it should be about $6-7 grand. if canon can get image quality out of this thing comparable to the gh2 i think its a pretty bad ass camera.

disneytoy

I think this is a smart move for Canon. Every 5D mII user will buy a MIII. Inta and 91mb/s is pretty good. Surely Magic Lantern will eventually add cool features like HDR.

More importantly, I'm glad we had a timeline like RED Scarlet> C300> 1D Mark IV> Nikon D4> Nikon D800... And hopefully later this year, Sony will have some surprises and our wonderful Panasonic engineers will have 6-8 months more to digest all these announcements. And hopefully we will get some special feature. Come on how about 1080p 60 frames.

The big features to come out:

1080p 60 Better rolling shutter (Global Shutter) 4:2:2 10 bit HDR @ 24p (so 48 frames a second) Higher DR P-Log (come on that can't be that hard) 4K (frankly, 2.5K would be very useful and manageable data rate. Allowing reframing and room for post stabilization, plus many computers today already have 2560-by-1440 monitors) Peeking Tethering - external control of ISO, Shutter, Aperture. etc

All these will come eventually.

edwardm

The Mk III has a considerable amount of computation firepower with the new Digic 5+ processor on board.

The Digic 5 is between 5 and 6x faster than the Digic 4 that it replaced and the Digic 5+ is 3x faster than the Digic 5. Canon claims 17x faster than the Digic 4. That is a lot of CPU to improve signal processing, improve video compression, and to solve the moire problem.

But it remains to be seen just how good the 91 Mbps encoding really is going to be. I have an older Canon that had about a 44 Mbps H.264 encoder but the video compression was awful with artifacts and noise, and my GH-2 at stock low bit rates is far better at encoding.

I understand Canon added I- and B- frames and AVC - this is probably a newer encoder implementation - but then again, it could just be they doubled the bit rate without improving the algorithms, which would be better but not up to full potential. Looking forward to real video tests!

troyjason

agree with edwardm, and would caution that the Canon MK3 is a VBR file as well. Shadows plug and skin tones go to hell very often with VBR shots if it isn't done well.

We are lucky Driftwood makes CBR hacks for us - very lucky. Sure the file sizes are huge but for short clips it is great knowing that an actor/model closeup won't be mushypixelasspoop.

I think the Canon MK3 will be great - ill buy one if only because I am looking for a still shooter as well.

If Nikon were confident in the D800 clean HDMI out they would release an AWESOME sample to blow Canon users away right now....but alas they are silent. So is the D800 HDMI out just a tick box for people to "think" quality will improve. What is Nikon hiding?

evero

Beeing in the GH2 camp, I need to concider the mkIII carefully. For me the qualities comes down to:

Low noise and Full frame aesthetics, especially wide angle
Less moire, aliasing and rolling shutter (BUT how much less than GH2?... - maybe I'd guess less rolling shutter is the biggest improvement vs. GH2)

But still, I struggle with these issues:

Need to invest in lenses, but the current canon lineup is not very modern/futureproof concidering video ("smooth iris", continious focus etc).
No articulating screen. Not having EVF making it even worse. Makes it hard to achieve a compact rig (for docu-style shooting)
I often need ND (vari-ND solves parts of it, but built in ND or lower ISO would really be better)

I find the mkIII a nice upgrade over the mkII, but surprised that Canon didn't do more and I think my listed issues will outweigh the need for full frame aesthetics for now. And I still really enjoy my GH2. It will be interesting to see what possible future cameras like GH3, EOS 4k camera or AF200 will be like.

ignatius

The MK III is a great video camera. No question. But so is the GH2 and the 5D MK II before it. People will say "Yeah, but rolling shutter/moire etc". Ok, so you go and buy a MK III and let's say there's absolutely no rolling shutter or moire...great, but within a month everyone will be moaning about 8bit 4:2:0.

I say fuck canon, don't buy. Work with what you have until the next wave comes along. You can shoot amazing stuff on the old generation, and the one big thing everyone wanted from the new generation has been omitted. It's the only way you can get these bastards to play ball. Everyone wanted canon to step up to the plate, but this is a weak offering after 3 long years. Wait for your wave people because this is just a ripple.

That is, until we can actually see what the MK III is capable of!