Low noise and High color
That’s an engineering feat. The sensor technology, noise filter and color circuitry, and compression method all have to match – and the stars have to be in alignment – and then the result is movie-quality video. It is possible for all of the other qualities to be in place and for the resulting video to look like home-movies or old-VHS tape. The EOS 5D Mark II’s major selling point to photographers is its new image quality technologies. While I won’t list all the image quality technologies here, Canon is building on the success of its past 5D camera with its new CMOS technology. (As mentioned before, it has a 4:2:0 color space, which is equivalent to HDV, as opposed to true HD which usually has a 4:2:2 color space.)
Affordable
Did I mention that Microfilmmakers don’t want to pay $60,000 for the camera (body only) and $15,000 for a decent lens? At $2699 for the camera body or $3499 for the camera with a cool lens, the EOS 5D Mark II is within Microfilmmaker’s price range.
So… from the specs you can see in an advertisement or read about in a camera review, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II looks like it could be an incredible tool for filmmaking. But is it?
That’s what I determined to find out in this in-depth review.
Take a look at that Canon EOS lens. That’s a 24mm-105mm zoom lens. It is crystal clear, and produces beautifully sharp images. There are many Canon lenses to choose from, offering incredible creative control to filmmakers that was only previously available on a video camera with a 35mm lens adapter.
Ease of Use
The box came with all the gear on the picture below (Left). The EOS Utility software (pictured right) loaded up easily on my Macbook Pro and ran flawlessly. Video clips appear in the import window in line with still images. Then you choose your import options.
To record video on the EOS 5D Mark II, you have to put the camera in “Live View” mode – so that the image through the camera appears on the 3” LCD on the back of the camera (as opposed to the viewfinder). After you do that, you need to press a record button. Peculiarly, the button that you press to record video is different from the one that you press to take still image shots.
It’s almost like video recording is an extension of the still camera’s enhanced LCD viewing feature. In that regard, it’s not like you see on other cameras where you simply put the camera into video mode to record video and still mode to record stills. Instead, the camera clearly favors still images and then adds video recording on as an additional feature of Live View. It appears almost as an afterthought and the manual is slightly too terse to be usable. For example, it took me forever to find out that to record you have to press a different button besides the shutter release button.
Holding the EOS 5D Mark II is quite a bit different than holding a traditional camcorder, as seen by the Canon Vixia I also own.
There are a number of problems with the physical design of the SLR camera for video production uses. In the above image, you can see that the natural way to hold the SLR camera opposes the wrists so that the camera becomes extremely stable. However, this makes it extremely difficult to move the camera in the typical way that you would pan, tilt, or track a video camera to follow the action. You end up moving the camera with your elbows and your back, and the result is not smooth. The motion doesn’t look filmic for this reason.
The way that we hold video cameras opposes the plane of each wrist. One wrist pans, and the other wrist tilts – resulting essentially in a full-range-of-motion Gimbal joint.
