» Posts Tagged ‘dslr’
Will Nikon Enter the Large Sensor Video Camera Market to Compete with Canon and Sony?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Nikon has been pushing video extremely hard with their latest DSLRs, the Nikon D4 and the Nikon D800, and at least in the case of the D800, they’ve got a worthy competitor on their hands. Somehow the D4 didn’t get the sharpness of the D800, but it still got full, clean HDMI that can be recorded using a number of external devices to get a better codec like ProRes. If you’re curious, that’s not a real photo to the left. It’s what would happen if the D800 and the C300 had a full frame 35mm video camera child. Far-fetched? Maybe not. More »
5D Mark III/D800 Hands-On Part 5: Mark II vs. Mark III vs. D800 - Candlelight Revisited
The candlelight test that got an enormous amount feedback has returned. After a bit of a delay between this one and the last one (thanks in part to the craziness that is NAB), I thought it would make sense to really level the playing field between the two cameras since the exposure for the D800 is slightly brighter at equivalent ISOs. I’ve also done a little bit of color correction and noise reduction, and the results are certainly interesting compared to the last video. The test is embedded below, but be sure to go to Vimeo and download it in 1080p for the highest possible quality. More »
We’ve been testing cameras for performance in ideal conditions, and also in not-so-ideal conditions, but this is just ridiculous. Kai Wong and the guys over at DigitalRev were kindly donated a Canon 7D to see how much punishment that little camera could take. The 7D has a magnesium alloy body, so it’s much more capable of handling inclement weather — but what if it were frozen in a block of ice, or set on fire? Could it still take photos? Check out the video below to find out. More »
This is the very last video I did at NAB just before the show closed, and Dennis Wood of Cinevate showed off all of their exciting products, including a complete cine kit for the FS100 that bolts to the camera in a similar way as the Zacuto FS100 rig. He also gave a walk-through of their Axis jib, which is designed to be mobile and simple to assemble. If timelapse is your thing, and you’ve already got a Cinevate slider, they are partnering with DitoGear to add timelapse functionality. More »
We all know that LEDs are the next big movement in lighting technology — or are they? Zacuto is introducing a one-of-a-kind light panel that uses a patented micro-plasma technology not unlike what is found in a plasma television — which has phosphors that glow when energy is introduced. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but the bottom line is that this panel is softer, and has a greater lumen rating than any other 1-foot-by-1-foot panel on the market today. In the embedded video below, Steve Weiss from Zacuto gives us an introduction of the panel, as well as a walk-through of their Recoil rig, Tornado Follow Focus, and FS100 rig. More »
Exposure is one of the most important aspects of shooting with DSLRs. If you’re new to shooting with digital cameras, it can be a bit overwhelming to fully understand all of the terminology and the options for controlling the exposure of the image. Film is pretty straightforward, where the film speed (or ISO, ASA, etc.) does not change. Shooting pictures is a bit more complicated, as the film speed can change, so you’ve got aperture, shutter speed, and ISO as three different settings to affect exposure. Shooting video is a bit different, as the shutter speed of DSLRs will typically not go below 1/30 of a second. We’ve got two videos explaining exposure and control, with the first being a beginner’s guide to overall exposure, and the second explaining what happens as you stop down your lens. More »
What do you get when you map footage from your DSLR onto volumetric data from a Kinect? How about strange, exciting, sweetness! A very enterprising fellow by the name of James George has developed the RGBDToolkit, a workflow that allows you to marry the two tools with some very intriguing results. You shoot through a DSLR attached to a Kinect, and after calibrating both devices to a checkerboard, you can start creating some incredible imagery. But don’t take my word for it, check these videos out: More »
Zeiss recently added a 15mm T/2.9 and a 135mm T/2.1 to their CP.2 line. Now they’ve decided to bring back the Super Speed name and are coming out with 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm T/1.5 lenses. It seems that the 50mm and the 85mm are the same design as the old CP.1 lenses, except they’ve opened them up to be faster – but the 35mm is supposedly a new design. Zeiss is also introducing a new line of zooms that will accompany their CP.2 line, and the first of these is the CP.Z 70-200mm T/2.9. I talked with Richard Schleuning of Zeiss at this year’s NAB about all of their new products. More »
Atomos Unveils the Ninja 2 External Recorder with 800 X 480 Resolution Screen and HDMI Pass-through
At the recent NAB show, Atomos, the popular external recorder company who made a splash with the Ninja, introduced an updated version called the Ninja 2. Along with the new 3.0 version of their operating system, Atomos has made metadata a priority, much like the new Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Tagging clips is an essential part of the new OS, and I had a chance to talk with Matt Ivey from Atomos about the Ninja 2 as well as other products, including the very handy Connect HD-SDI and HDMI pass-through converters. More »
The Battle of the Preamps: 5D Mark III vs. D800 Audio Recording
Audio recording internally to DSLRs has been mediocre at best. It’s great for scratch audio when you’re doing dual-system sound, but for the most part, it’s a real pain. I’ve been testing the 5D Mark III and the D800, but one of the tests I wasn’t able to do as thoroughly as I wanted was to test the internal audio recording of both cameras with a proper microphone. I know that many out there would ask why you’d ever plug directly into the DSLR without some other external preamp box, but sometimes (like at NAB), having the least amount of equipment that can fail is best. I met Dave Dugdale at NAB, and in this video he takes the time to test out both the Nikon D800 and the Canon 5D Mark III for the quality of their internal audio recordings. More »
Canon recently announced a firmware update for the Canon 5D Mark III, and that led the way for the great folks at Magic Lantern to begin porting their hack. Already a big hit on the Mark II and other Canon cameras, Magic Lantern could open up specific features many believe Canon should have included in the first place. Chuck Westfall has said that the 5D Mark III and the 1D X might never get a full, clean HDMI, mainly because Canon (obviously) puts more money and attention into the video features on their expensive video-centric Cinema EOS line (though he also says they are always listening to consumers). Most of all, they want to keep the two product lines separate, and possibly the only hope for this feature (and others like it) is for something like Magic Lantern to unlock the hidden power of the camera. More »
That strange light issue I reported on not too long ago seems to have been resolved by Canon. Basically, while taking still photographs in very dark situations, the top LCD backlight would cause the meter in the Mark III to give a false reading, and the resulting exposure would therefore be incorrect. It looks like they are quietly fixing the issue on newer cameras, after they stopped shipments for a short period of time. If you are one of the lucky few who currently owns a 5D Mark III, then Canon has issued a response. More »
Canon had its big NAB screening on Sunday night, showing off both its 4K DSLR, the EOS 1D-C, and the C500. As part of the presentation they screened “The Ticket”, a short film written/directed by Po Chan, lensed by Shane Hurlbut, and shot on the EOS 1D-C. Filmed and displayed in 4K, Hurlbut showed just what the camera can do, and now we too can see what it looks like by way of his blog (albeit through the limitations of Vimeo). Hurlbut goes on to share some interesting behind the scenes tidbits, and praise that might just entice you into giving this camera a whirl: More »
SmallHD is one of the younger display companies at NAB, but that doesn’t mean their products are low-quality. They are introducing a beautiful 1280 x 800 7″ screen that takes advantage of OLED technology to produce the richest colors you’ve ever seen on a monitor. They’ve got two versions that cost exactly the same, $2,700, but the other monitor uses a super-bright LCD to make viewing in daytime much simpler. I had a talk with Dale Backus from SmallHD, and he introduced both monitors and the Port Protector in the video below. More »
Many people have been reporting an issue with the 5D Mark III that Canon has now finally addressed. It seems that when the top LCD backlight is turned on in a dark environment, it’s possible that the camera’s automatic exposure will be affected and the resulting photos will not look correct. For video, this is a non-issue, but the fact that Canon is possibly going to fix or replace 5D bodies out there is a pretty big deal. They won’t go so far as to call it a recall, but it seems that essentially all cameras that have been released up to this point may suffer from the issue. More »
Audio remains an underdeveloped feature on most DSLRs — DSLR shooters must resort to independent recorders or pre-amp devices plugged into their cameras. However, with each new model we see (small) steps in the right direction. We have yet to see a DSLR (even at the high end) that provides direct XLR inputs, but we do now have some basic control over gain levels along with headphone monitoring. While providing a comparison of the the 5DmkIII and D800‘s audio features, juicedLink’s Robert Rozak presents his latest pre-amp device, the RM333, and how it builds off of these new features: More »
So you’ve been looking for a zoom rocker on your DSLR? This is one solution (but it’s PL only and expensive). While the zoom lenses for Canon cameras (or any DSLR for that matter) do not have proper teeth for a zoom control to grip to, VizTools has come up with a solution called the HandiZoom. After adding a gear to each lens, it gives you complete control of any zoom, and allows variable zooming with the attached zoom rocker controller. More »
Canon has dropped its bomb — the EOS-1D C . The world’s first 4K video shooting DSLR. Equipped with a full-frame 24mm X 36mm CMOS sensor that offers an APS-H sized area for video capture, and recording 8-bit 4:2:2 Motion JPEG 4K video to CF cards at 24fps, this camera packs a punch. Both in terms of its features — and the $15,000 price tag: More »
5D Mark III/D800 Hands-On Part 4: Mark II vs. Mark III vs. D800 - Candlelight
Well it’s taking a bit longer to get these up than I’d hoped, but I think the evidence in this one is the most obvious of any test I’ve seen so far. This time the Canon 5D Mark II has been thrown into the mix, in addition to the 5D Mark III and the Nikon D800. We were in a room with large windows well into the night, and so there are a couple streetlights providing very basic illumination at the higher ISOs. Other than that the only light is the candle right in front of our model Sasha. More »
5D Mark III/D800 Hands-On Part 3: ISO Range Test
During pre-production for the narrative film that I am shooting as a companion piece to the 5D Mark III and D800 test, which is now on part 3, we decided to see the entire ISO range of both cameras and see how well they handled under and overexposure. I wanted to see how the internal codecs would stand up to this extreme test, so both cameras were set to the variable bitrate 28mbps codecs in the camera. The lenses were kept the same – the best of the best from both Canon and Nikon, the 70-200mm f/2.8, with the Canon being the newer version of that lens. More »
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