new Canon 500D in video mode
I just tried out my wife's new 500D in video mode. The footage is clean, so the codec is much better than the D90's, but there is frustratingly little control possible over the aperture. Even the exposure lock function doesn't really work all the time, because the aperture, shutter and ISO change when you adjust the focal length of a zoom lens.
In bright sunlight, I was getting apertures of f22 and f16, so tried opening it up by adding ND filters. This worked up to a point, but I could not get amything wider than f5.6, even with a 50mm f1.4 lens. If I added more ND beyond this point, the camera would slow the shutter to 1/20s, and increase ISO to 1600 rather than open the lens any further. I think this must be using the proprietary Canon CrippleVideoMode algorithm. So my conclusion is that for anybody interested prinarily in shallow DOF shooting, this camera is no solution at all. Unless some kind soul can tell me about the special function key setting I missed that allows you to adjust the aperture directly and then lock it. Richard |
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Thanks for the info Richard.
When are they gonna give us what we want? |
Certainly not before the 5D Mk2 is decrippled and that's probably not before the Panasonic GH1 is widely available in the markets.
Wacharapong |
With the 50MM 1.4 you should be able to force the camera into 1.4 by simply putting
your hand over the lens to block the light and allow the lens to open up to 1.4 then lockdown the exposure by hitting the * button... after you half press the shutter button of course |
I myself am a d90 owner living in hope of either a firmware update for this existing camera (rumoured) or the d400 to have manual controls.
Personally I cant see the d90 getting an upgrade of that nature. at best a slightly higher bitrate could be involved. |
Hmm, I'm not sure I could see a difference between the Singapore footage and what I can get out of a Vixia series camera.
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well this it. these cameras offer us nothing if they dont offer shallow dof and good lowlight performance. Even now at the moment its hard to get shallow dof outside on a bright day without getting too high a shutter speed (randomly). ND filters are a must.
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Errrhm, wouldn't that just give me a very over-exposed shot when I remove my hand and let the camera see the sunlit scene? And I don't know about half pressing the shutter button, it doesn't seem to be active in video mode. Richard |
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I posted a D90 video at the time, Nikon D90 at Singapore Riverside on Vimeo but this does not include the worst of the footage that I edited out. I will check if I still have it. BTW I thought that the D90 video had very natural colours and I really loved the image that you could get from it in controlled conditions. There are a few workarounds needed to get the most from the D90, and I would probably have been prepared to live with these for the sake of the image if it wasn't for all the artifacts on fine details. Richard |
Here's the rest of the footage I shot with the 500D.
Canon 500D in Singapore - Part 2 on Vimeo Richard |
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I just looked at Part 1 and I liked its looks better without the filter. On the downloaded video, the only CMOS flutter that was significant, was on a sharp pan. Those who watch it on Vimeo directly, should realize that much of what may be mistaken for sensor artifacts, is actually the result of Vimeo's heavy compression. Have you used the 1920 X 1080 @20 FPS? Would the purpose of this be mainly to gather footage for vid-caps? |
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Richard |
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