KILLER feature on 5D2
 

Everybody has been talking about 24p... Here's what I want so see...

1) I've read that the 5D2 only scans every 3rd line on the sensor for video. Why not give us a "digital zoom" setting to read every 2nd line or even every consecutive line (with appropriate crop factors). The zoom on this camera would be HUGE! It would turn my 24-105 lens into a 96-416 lens with NO resolution loss and the same great low-light ability (since the camera currently ignores the unused lines on the sensor). My 200 mm lens would be a 800 mm video lens! Wow! Of course, this would only work for video...

2) OR... Can't wait for Canon to start interpolating the unused lines on the sensor for even better low-light ability. This thing would be like "night vision" then... My 4.0L lens would work just as well as by 1.2L...

These two features alone would make me upgrade to a 5D Mark III...

Wouldn't you be running into a lack of processing power to do this? Also could the current codec handle it?

The first part should be easy enough. Nikon DSLRs have had a crop feature to only use the centre part of the frame for a long time. There is little reason why this shouldn't work for video in the future.

Dan

There would be issues when you wanted anything other than a close-up of your subject. Shooting wide shots indoors would be next to impossible - even with a fisheye lens.

Codec doesn't have anything to do with it. As for processing power, I'd guess the 5D doesn't have it (not talking about the 2x crop, just the use of all sensors on the chip simultaneously for greater sensitivity). This is the type of thing I could see going into the 1Ds mkIV, adding a third DIGIC chip dedicated specifically to processing the full output of the sensor to a variety of sizes/resolutions.

Well, if you want to shoot wide you just use the full-frame setting. This would be like having a digital 2x extender - you wouldn't use a physical extender with a wide angle lens if you wanted to shoot wide angle.

Red does windowing for less than 4K resolutions, that's why almost no one uses them because they lose the S35 DoF. And of course viper has a special pixel management that lets you shoot even 2.35 without loosing much resolution(it has 3X9.3 megapixels though). I guess all these will be on the alleged FF pro camcorder from Canon expected sometime next year. I wish it will be CCD but I know I will not be heard.