RAW Video DSLR Comparison: Canon 50D vs. Canon 5D Mark II
It is absolutely incredible how far the Magic Lantern RAW video hack has come in such a short amount of time. Not only is it getting more stable every day, but they've managed to get a camera that never shot video at all -- the Canon 50D -- giving us beautiful RAW video. If you've been looking for a cheaper used camera to play around with RAW video (or you happen to have one of these sitting around), the Canon 50D and the full-frame Canon 5D Mark II are both great options (and both are from 2008), but how do they compare against each other?
Julian over on the Magic Lantern forum has been posting some of his video tests with the 50D, here is a new comparison with the Mark II, with some notes from Julian about the test:
1. Flickering in 50D footage is caused by turning off exposure simulation in camera
2. Same 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor on both camera's. Changed distance to object with 50D to compensate for cropfactor.
3. The 5D Mark II was set at iso 6400 for f/16 and 100 for f/2.8, 50D should have used about the same values, but it was calculating them.
4. The first shots (5D and 5DII) both are brightened + 1 stop in ACR. No oder edits, only tried to match white balance.Settings:
Canon EOS 50D @ 1592x720p (max width)
Canon EOS 5D Mark II @ 1880x840p (max width)DNG's processed in ACR. No sharpening, no luma noise reduction (color 25, default setting).
Exported as JPG, imported in Premiere as Image Sequence.First shots show original crops. After that the same shots upsized to 1920p and the same shots with Sharpen filter added (value 20).
I actually noticed a bit more moire in the black on the chair, but it seems like the 50D would intercut very well with the 5D Mark II based on this test. It seems to be a bit of trial and error to get the 50D recording correctly and the files importing correctly in post, but if you've got one around, it's a heck of a still to now be able to record high-quality RAW video. While I'm sure 50Ds will be going up in price over the next few days/weeks, there should be plenty of Mark IIs around at reasonable prices.
If you missed them, here are his original videos (the anamorphic one has some stuttering based on post conversion, it looked fine in the camera):
Another sample from the 50D:
You can find some sample DNGs in the link below from the 50D if you'd like to see the quality for yourself (instead of watching compressed on Vimeo).
How many of you were lucky enough to snag a used 50D on eBay -- or maybe you already owned one? What do you think of the RAW quality so far?
Links:
