As you may have seen from my earlier post I became the owner of the new Canon T2i (or 550D as it’s known in the UK) at the weekend. Clearly before using any camera in anger it’s important to see what it can and can’t do. I will say that I am not a Canon DSLR expert. I have been following the fuss and much admire some of the work done with these cameras by Phil Bloom, but frankly after playing with the Canon over the weekend I have to say I’m disappointed. Yes you can achieve shallow depth of field very easily and you do get a filmic look to the pictures, but look at the footage on a big monitor and it just looks soft. At first I wondered if this was the lens I was using, so I tried a couple of others including a nice Tamron 28mm prime. I tried different apertures, shutter speeds etc, but every clip I’ve taken looks soft. In isolation, on scenes with low detail this isn’t immediately apparent, but anything with lots of fine detail looks soft. Some of this is aliasing, look at the roof of the house in the T2i image, it appears to have diagonal roof tiles, this is a pretty typical aliasing artifact. I shot some closer shots of the buildings and the brickwork aliased like crazy.

Flowers, EX1 on left, T2i on the right.
Looking at the flowers picture you can see that the EX1 has picked up more of the subtle texture, or at least it has recorded more of the texture. I’m sure some of the Canon’s softness is due to compression artifacts. The other thing that I found is that it is tending to crush blacks a bit. I have played around with the picture styles and you can reduce this a bit, but there is very little detail in deep blacks, which would IMHO make grading tricky. The one good thing I did find was that it is very noise free at 200 and 400 asa, it’s also useable up to 800 asa or at a push 1600asa, so it would make a good camera for very low key scenes, provided you use a good fast lens. Looking at the Canon pictures there was something pleasing about the deep, almost crushed blacks. I think this helps contribute to the Canon DSLR “look” so I quickly threw together a new picture profile for the EX1/3 and PMW-350, but I’m afraid that the details of that will be the subject of another post, as I have work that I must do first! The EX images in the frame grabs were shot with this picture profile. As we all know the ergonomics of the video DSLR’s is pretty poor for video. It’s tricky to hold and you have to use an add on Loupe to make the LCD useable as a viewfinder. You can’t zoom mid shot and without peaking or zebras adjusting exposure and focus accurately is difficult. I was hoping to be able to use the 550D as a B camera for those situations where I need a small, discreet camera, but having seen the pictures, so far, for me it will be reserved for holidays and shooting where you not supposed to video and for shoots where supper shallow DoF is essential. I have to say I’m really disappointed, I wanted this camera to be so much better, I knew it would suffer from aliasing, but I wasn’t expecting the soft pictures, I guess some will say that the softness adds to the filmic look, but I’d much rather do that with some nice pro-mists or filtration in post production rather than starting out with soft pictures. Perhaps I’ve done something wrong? If I have please add a comment!

UPDATE: I was so convinced that I must be doing something wrong that I shot some more clips, this time with less harsh lighting. No, change however, the T2i is still soft and the new clips show just how big a problem aliasing is. You have to consider that the coloured moire patterns are recorded like that, no amount of grading will get rid of it. A small amount of diffusion on the camera should help, but then your going to have to work out how much to soften and diffuse each shot to make sure your not making the pictures even softer than they already are.

The aliasing issues on the Canons are well documented and well known. Yes you can reduce it’s effects by keeping the DoF shallow so that your backgrounds are always out of focus, but that restricts you to only shooting low detail objects such as faces and even then you need you make sure the person isn’t wearing a clothes with a fine pattern and that they don’t smile because you see lots of jaggies on their teeth. So this means you need some diffusion or softening in front of the lens.
One of the key reasons that the pictures from the Canons looks soft is due to aliasing. The high frequency harmonics generated by the aliasing on edges are softening the pictures and you can see this by rotating the camera and watching the picture soften and sharpen as the angles of edges change.
As for my lenses, no it’s not them softening the pictures. I can use them on the same camera to take beautiful pin sharp photographs. Switch the camera to video mode and I’m sorry but compared to a true 1080p camera it’s soft, more comparable to a 720p camera. In addition if my lenses were not sharp I would not get aliasing.
If you look on Vimeo at Phil Blooms latest clips take a look at the timelapse video “sky” that he did in Dubai. Look at the quality of that video, look at the gorgeous subtle textures in the sky and buildings, then compare it with one of his faces videos, they look soft by comparison. The difference: The timelapse video was shot by taking stills, where the camera is using the full resolution of the sensor, in video mode the Canon’s are discarding most of the sensors pixels to get the resolution down and the read rate up.
I’m sorry but until the aliasing is brought under control the Canon’s IMHO are not ready for prime time use. Sure you can make good looking web clips, but you can do that with many, many other cameras. The ONLY thing the Canons bring to the table is shallow DoF. In just about every other aspect they are lacking. Lower resolution, lower dynamic range, heat issues, limited clip duration, no audio control, no timecode, dreadful ergonomics for video.
Next time you watch a movie look at the DoF. It’s almost never taken to the ridiculous, un-natural extremes that has become the latest craze. Yes shallow DoF can be a useful tool for focusing attention on a particular subject, or to give separation between the subject and background, but consider what super shallow DoF will look like projected on a cinema screen or big screen TV as opposed to a small web video.

HDW : Strange…but if I had reported some of Alisters findings I would have been shot down in flames but it’s good to know other more technically astute video professionals have the same views on HD SLRs as me and if you follow Alisters blog as I do you will be interested to read that the BBC, Sky, Nat Geo, Discovery etc have barred their use. If you would like to read Alan Roberts assesment for the BBC then click here…

http://thebrownings.name/WHP034/pdf/WHP034-ADD39_Canon_5D_DSLR.pdf

Fantastic a lens that you can stick onto your Panasonic GH1 and film in almost zero lighting conditions.

This is an example taken by David Leggett and is a cracking example of what this lens can achieve .

WEB ADDRESS….http://noktor.com/products.php

RED Digital Cinema are in the process of producing the worlds first Digital Stills Motion Camera dedicated to firstly filming and secondly stills. So how does this differ from the HD DSLRs like the Canon 7D…simple…as yet no one at Canon or any other stills camera manufacturer has grasped some simple but important design concepts when producing a hybrid camera that records video.

Everything that has come out of the HD DSLR stable has two major faults…

1. Not one manufacturer has payed any attention to sound. (No sound metering or manual volume control).

2. The ergonomics of the DSLR don’t lend themselves to filming especially the static LCD.

Some people argue it’s “early days”…..SORRY…….What a load of tosh, those who think it’s early days must be stuck in the last century, we have had professional video camcorders for over 20 years with all but none having important design features like hi-rez re-positionable viewfinders, sound inputs, audio metering and control…..need I say more.

That’s why I don’t take this technology seriously because neither have the people who design them !  It’s budget video making at it’s worst…why because every Tom, Dick and Harry can afford this craze but sadly less than 5% are making serious video productions and most of them are ZERO budget pretty pictures anyone could produce.

THE THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU…

Glass is important

Don’t kid yourself it’s not film…it’s film like !  The good old depth of field (DoF)… something photographers have been playing with for years in fact contrary to some leading HD DSLR pioneer teachings only the best glass like the Canon “L” series can give you sharp pictures at f2.8 or wider apertures, that’s why they all have a Canon 50mm f1.2 “L” lens and not the far cheaper 50mm f1.4 Canon lens !  I have yet to see any lens review that outstrips a Canon “L” or Nikon “ED” lens.

I have just spent my last week in December with a 30 man crew on a BBC Drama using ARRI prime lenses on a Sony 750 with a 35mm adapter to get the film like DoF. All films are made with very expensive prime lenses, a prime lens has one focal length eg. f=50mm…why…because zoom lenses are not as sharp as prime lenses. Movement in film usually involves a dolly or a jib…not a zoom lens.

The Problems with Shallow Depth of Field (SDoF)

OK so now you have the ability to produce that coveted SDoF at f.2.8…”what do you focus on”…strange question till you look at a subject with a SDoF, your focusing becomes hyper critical, way beyond the abilities of most people even with the coveted “Zacuto” LCD loupe. The reason most of you have not seen this major problem is that you are not viewing a true 1920 x 1080 full resolution screen. Most of you have only seen ‘pretty pictures’ produced on a 640 x 380 72dpi on a computer screen. By the law of physics as you reduce the size of a picture you also reduce the magnification by which you are viewing it…so for example you could film an interview in HD with a wall 4 feet away in focus and the interviewee out of focus…in HD it looks bad in fact unusable but if you squeeze the same HD picture down for the web you can get away with it as so much detail is removed the picture looks fine !

Back to my original question “what do you focus on” if you are filming someones face with a SDoF of f2.8 you have one choice…the eyes, always focus on the eyes but remember you will need to drop down to f5.6 if you want to include the nose.

Getting that all beloved SDoF brings more problems than it solves and remember people being interviewed tend not to stay still making that critical focusing a nightmare. Photographers have always used SDoF but at a cost…for every sharp picture of a moving animal or runner 10 frames either side are out of focus but thats now an easy sacrifice in the digital age of large memory cards.

Removing the lens

During my time with the BBC at the end of last year I was amazed at the number of times the prime lens was changed, we had about 7-9 scenes a day so that would be a minimum of 14 lens changes mainly from wide to tight, strangely enough it made me appreciate my zoom lens as these lens changes were eating into valuable production time.

If you have any knowledge of DSLRs you will know that the more times you remove the lens the more likely you are to introduce dust onto the mirror or worse the filter that covers the sensor itself, this will indeed happen if you are frequently removing the lens to change a shot, try getting a speck of dirt off your sensors filter in the middle of a shoot outdoors !  If you don’t spot the dirt which is highly unlikely if all you are using is the colour LCD you will continue to shoot with dark specks spoiling your unusable footage.

Recording Time

Now let’s see page 123 of my Canon 5D2 manual “After you start shooting a movie, the movie shooting will stop automatically if the file size reaches 4GB”. If you film events like weddings and the ceremony is 25 minutes that good old 4GB limit or 12 minutes could compromise a very important part of your video.

Audio nightmares

Ever wondered why their is so much pretty pictures with no lip sync interviews on 98% of HD DSLR footage…sound…sound is the DSLRs Achilles heal. What you get in the camera is a micky mouse mic or a 3.5mm jack input allowing you to record with a better quality mic plugged in but no control of the gain and no metering leading to very poor amateur sound.

To overcome this you need to record lip sync sound externally with a decent digital audio recorder like a Marantz PMD661. This introduces many more problems as you are not in control of your sound as you would be using a professional video camcorder. I will assume a one man crew as many of you will be…

1. You have a directional mic on top of your HD DSLR…is it switched on, are the batteries fine because you have NO indication that you are recording sound on the DSLR, you need this sound all be it crap to sync your PCM sound being recorded on your Marantz.

2. Is the Marantz set up correctly, are you recording external sound or with the in-built mics, have you chosen Mic or line inputs…have you pressed the record button correctly.

3. You need to make sure the audio CF or SD card is correctly labeled and stays with the CF card out of the DSLR all adding to a logistical nightmare.

Editing

Because your HD DSLR does not record the same usable codec as your Sony EX-3 you have to transfer then encode the footage to a usable editing format and that takes time, then for every interview re-sync the sound with the PCM sound further adding time to your edit…possibly time you don’t have.

All for what

A shallow DoF and better low light filming, remember you only get the shallow DoF at the wider apertures and wider apertures means expensive glass…don’t let anyone kid you otherwise.

Yes put in a nutshell all that effort and who is going to notice …a few people on You Tube…you are not making a Hollywood blockbuster…99.9% of you never will or even want to !

Filming with what effectively is a photographic camera does nothing for me, it’s cumbersome, finicky and more bother than it’s worth. These cameras are not built with video as their primary use, as soon as we get a film like camcorder with a SDoF you can bet there will be a glutt of HD DSLRs on ebay.

There is no doubt about it 35mm adapters are on their way out thanks to the HD DSLR and they give bloggers like me something to write about but for now I will stick to my video camcorder and as for my Canon 5D2…that only appears for stills photography as it was primarily designed for.

UPDATE I do wish people would read this article for what it is… I am not anti-VSLR as some people think… I own a Canon 5D2 and will re-assess it’s usefulness when we get the new firmware update in February. Lastly, I do not pretend to make movies for the film industry so as yet have little use for a shallow depth of field, I do take photographs and find the SDoF very useful in the right place.

TAKING THE BULL BY THE HORNS

http://www.hdwarrior.co.uk/2010/01/13/canon-5d2-used-to-film-video-overview-of-sony-ex-1r/

Interesting bit of news via Philip Bloom’s blog is that the 5Dmk11 firmware update (no date as yet) seems not only to have 1080 24/25P but 720 50P as well which will be a welcome surprise to everyone who owns a Canon 5Dmk11 stuck with 1080 30p.

These are far more usable frame rates and may even bring a smile to an old grump like me who has been less than favourable towards the DSLR camp.

Giants

Once again we are seeing an influx of well produced videos shot with HD SLRs this was shot on a Canon 5DMk11 by Creative Producer Conrad Piccirillo for the NBA Indiana Pacers.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/finalcutstudio/5dtofcp.html

Isn’t it strange that I should be the “only” one supposedly sailing against the tide of let’s all go out and spend the best part of £3K on equipment to make film like movies, when I have actually got a 5Dmk11 but heaven forbid I bought this camera for photography not for filming with.

I produce corporate videos for a living so my best, most expensive piece of kit is strangely enough a Sony EX-3 camcorder, I am also a professional photographer and have the ability to switch kit now and again…recently I switched from a Nikon D3 to a Canon 5Dmk11.

What I am trying to tell you in a round about way is that I am of the older school although I am fully committed to digital…be it video or photography. It has taken almost two hard years to work out a workflow for my SxS card system all be it MxR card holders using SDHC cards. I was all for solid state…bring it on, till it arrived and scared the pants off me…no archive or should I say “not as we know it , Jim”. (One for the Trekies).

Two years later I am happy with my lot… then, we get all this talk about the saviour of the budget film industry…hooraah…we can all make films now all you need is an SLR that has been frigged to take HD video footage but again in a format that needs converting.

I have won the lottery I own such a camera, I too can make film like movies and maybe save a buck or two and get rid of the EX-3…………………..till I take stock.

I decided to test this phenomenon myself getting the odd tip from the master himself Philip Bloom, after all Phil seemed to have thrown away his expensive video kit and travel round the world filming solely with the Canon 5Dmk11 so their must be some mileage in this.

Sadly unlike Mr Bloom I have decided not to embrace my HD video 5Dmk11 and use it for it’s intention…a photographic camera.

I have tried very hard to see the benefits of using the HD SLR as a video camera but the negatives far outweigh the positives…it has taken me two years to be happy with tapeless and embrace HD as a format…as a video cameraman I am happier using equipment that is fit for purpose than to use a camera that gives me more problems than it solves.

HD SLRs are in my opinion a sad reflection of todays society who want everything in the one small package, a cost cutting exercise for both video and photography…spilt 50-50 down the middle…we all know what dilution does to any business.

Having shot the sum total of 45 minutes of Canon 5D mk11 footage to date I am increasingly getting put off by “Wobble Vision”. I then look at some of the “Masters” of HD SLR filming to see it’s not just me !

Wobble Vision is nothing short of the cameraman’s ability or should I say lack of ability to keep the camera steady whilst filming, this is partly due to the impractical design of the SLR itself, we are so used to having “Steady Shot” in our camcorders that it comes as a shock to see how unsteady we all are.

It’s not all down to the shakes, HD has a tendency to magnify mistakes and small detail which is why actresses hate HD productions because is shows up the smallest flaw in make up etc. Canon have IS lenses which means Image Stabilizer…this can dampen the shakes quite considerably but sadly the most popular “L” lenses used to date are the 24-70 f2.8 L lens and the 50 f1.2 L lens both are not image stabilized.

Canon would be better to have the IS in the camera but that takes away their lucrative extra cost IS lens market so for the mean time we are going to have to use monopods or tripods in order to stabilize those rogue shots…the alternative is to accept a drop in standards…again…and I don’t think that will be good for our trade.

Personally I think this is an expensive game… First it was let’s all buy video adaptors…before you all got sore backs…now it’s HD SLRs with their two plus points shallow DoF and the ability to film in low light…big wow…once Scarlet appears you will all be following the pied piper down that expensive road…mark my words.