Sharing a rather ramshackle Canon 5D Mark III test for my DVinfo friends (blocked everywhere else, including Vimeo!). Just a quick run around town with my very obliging and gracious friend Angela to test a newborn 5D3.

Tested on the spur of the moment with no support available, hence handheld. Specifically, I wanted to see how the footage held up to an over the top, rough and ready grade (shots are clearly not intended to match - I just wanted to push the footage about). Disclaimer: I'm not a colourist.

Lenses: Zeiss ZE 25/2 & 50/2
ISO range: 100-1000
Profile: sharpness 3 (range 0-7), Contrast -4, Saturation -2
Codec: All-I 1920x1080@25p
CC: FCPX colourboard (imported native footage to timeline, rendered/output to ProRes 422, Compressed for Vimeo to H264@18000kbps)

http://vimeo.com/38910505

The technical/feature differences are well documented, so I'll stick to offering a few image quality impressions... first the good:
* Moire has (as advertised) been well and truly dealt with (this was the reason I gave up my 5d2/7d for the Gh2). I couldn't find any to speak of, great! This alone wins me over.
* aliasing is still apparent, but well suppressed, as are all image artifacts. A cleaner image than the 5d2 all round.
* high ISO is, as advertised, astonishing. The 2 stop advantage over the 5d2 sounds about right. ISO3200 is perfectly usable (personally I never strayed above 1250 on the 5d2)
* appreciably less jello - I think if I'd shot this video handheld with the 5d2 it would have been very messy, rather than merely amateur :-)

The not so good (as expected):
* dynamic range is no better than the 5d2 in video mode (even at the lowest contrast setting, blacks are still crushed and whites blown out).
* about the same resolution/detail as the 5d2... I have a Gh2 and XF300 which both stomp all over the 5d3 in resolving power.

Overall though, the lack of moire, banding and other artifacts meant the footage stood up much better in the edit suite. It's no C300 but for 95% of what I do the extra dynamic range and detail of the C300 won't make a difference (where the hole in my pocket would).

One note: with the 5d2 I always turned sharpening to minimum to reduce moire. When I tried this with the 5d3 (level 0) footage was a tad too soft. Sharpening at 2 to 3 seems to be the sweet spot. Above this digital nasties creep in.

A few frame grabs so you can get an idea of resolution at 1080:

Great! Thanks, Josh -- much appreciated. My 5D3 arrived at my dealer yesterday, but I've been too busy with DVi to pick it up! Hopefully tomorrow... I'm pretty anxious to get my hands on it. Meanwhile, sure like what you've put together here.

Enjoy your Mk3, Chris... when you finally manage to unwrap it! :)

Some more shots from today, this time with tripod. Very similar image to 5d2, sans-moire :-)

http://vimeo.com/38959947

I think it looks sharper, at least the ability to have the in camera sharpening turned on without introducing artefacts makes it look sharper.

Regardless of actual resolution pixel peeping, its a beautiful looking image.

Thanks for posting Josh! I think your video is the first MKIII video that I thought looked better than a MKII. Nice looking footage.

But, just when I was going positive about the MKIII, I watched the next video you have on Vimeo with the GH2 being recorded with the PIX 220. Now that is some detail!! Makes me realize how good the GH2 is.

I did not know one could use a PIX 220 with the GH2. I do not want to derail your thread but could you shed some light on this? Maybe in a PM?

Thanks again.

Thanks guys,

Tim my thoughts on the Gh2 + Pix combo are mid-way down this thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/panasonic-lumix-gf-gh-series/504133-external-recorder-test-1-1-firmware-25p.html

To be honest, right now I'm in two minds about which way to go (I don't own a Pix yet, it was a demo unit). Love the detail of the the Gh2 + Pix220 (fine texture is really something at 1080p) but mini-HDMI is a rather treacherous connection to have to rely on, and the 5d3 does indeed make pretty pictures.

Here's a little moire test. You can just see a smidgen of moire in the first shot, but I really had to push the 5d3 to make this happen. The 5d2 would have had a panic attack with this shirt!

http://vimeo.com/38969940

And a full res frame grab:

One note: with the 5d2 I always turned sharpening to minimum to reduce moire. When I tried this with the 5d3 (level 0) footage was a tad too soft. Sharpening at 2 to 3 seems to be the sweet spot. Above this digital nasties creep in.I think that this is why people are complaining that the 5D3 footage they are seeing is soft. It's because they are immediately dialling down sharpness like they do on the 5D2. Just assuming that all the settings will be the same is wrong. I bet people will still be sticking to the old voodoo ISO160/320/640 etc too. It's a new camera & we need to evaluate it all over again.

I think so too Nigel...
and this test from Josh show me a picture I absolutely happy to work with...

Excellent stuff Josh and extremely useful for people like me trying to work out if the 5DMkIII should be on my buy list. Thank you for your efforts.

Looks to me that the old 5D "magic" is still there for sure. No problem with the soft look either - lots of sharp detail in those shots. Phew, thank goodness for that!!! It's been a puzzling few days viewing some of the other early footage that's appeared around the web looking soft.

Nigel is right of course, new camera model, whole bunch of new settings that need to be worked out to get the best out of it. Maybe you owners should start a thread about settings?

Looks great! Dark, short beards always look terrible on the 5D2. Looks great on the 5D3.

One reason this doesn't look soft is that it's not posted right next a 5D2 shot. Aliasing makes things look falsely sharp. Since real audiences don't view films side by side with multiple cameras, the stand-alone look is what matters.

Thanks Andy/Markus,

Yes Jon, my thoughts are the 5d2 resolves no more real detail, but the aliasing sure makes it look sharper.

Here's a couple of quick (actual size) screen grabs of a usb stick on my desk. The soft one is with the 5d3 at sharpening and contrast both at 0 (where I would usually set them on the 5d2).

The sharper image is with contrast two notches up and sharpening at 3 (of 7). Big difference! So you can dial in sharpness much more to taste with the 5d3... or shoot soft and crank it up in post.

And before bedtime... a couple of quick night shots (mounted on a bag, hence lopsided). The first scene is ISO 1600, the second is 3200 and a touch over-exposed.

I didn't push it any higher because personally I have no need for greater than 3200 (these shots at f2 make the street look brighter than it is - these are dimly lit venues), and frankly, I wasn't expecting it to be so good. I'm not really a high ISO freak, but it's nice to know high ISO shooting is viable if needed.

http://vimeo.com/38981132

To further back up what Josh wrote about the camera making it seem lighter than it is, look at this video at about 1m 15s - where you see how dark it really is where this guy was filming - and then a few seconds later to see what the 5DMkIII can do with the ISO pumped up. Very impressive!

My guess is that the military and intelligence agencies will be ordering a few for covert filming operations...;-)

Canon 5D Mark III raw footage - YouTube

These are the first 5dmkiii samples that are actually in focus and/or the camera not constantly whipped around. Low and behold, gee, what do you know? The camera's image has some resolution.

Thanks for these really useful tests.

Thank you Andy for the link to that Raw video clip, it really shows what the Mk3 is capable of.

It is amazing isn't it, along with excellent examples posted by Josh - Now I'm 90% sure I'll end up buying a 5DMkIII.

Just want to see what else Canon (and others) may have up their sleeves at NAB before I push the button, especially as I don't urgent NEED yet another new camera (but would like to add extra capability this year).

Now all I have to do is keep my business credit card locked away in the Safe until mid-April....that's going to be tough now!!!!

Thanks Josh.

It is a tough choice. I have GH2s and a 5DMKII. I only use the MKII for still work. So I could stay put or sell them all to go for two 5DMKIIIs.

To be honest, Canon not including HDMI output on the MKIII is a pause for me. If they had included this I would not hesitate.

Canon not including HDMI output on the MKIII is a pause for me.

Just to avoid any confusion, actually there is indeed an HDMI output on the
Canon 5D Mk. III -- but the output has overlays which cannot be turned off.
That's the issue. To say that Canon didn't include HDMI output is an
inaccurate statement. They did include it. It's just not clean.

Sorry, my writing was meant to be in context regarding the PIX external recorder.

This brings up a question. Yes, the 5DMKIII has HDMI output with screen characters. Can one record this output to an external recorder at all of the different and proper frame rates?

For example, the GH2 can only output a 1080i signal for external recording and the frame rate is 60 fps not 59.94 or 29.97.

It would be interesting to see if the 5DMKIII could output 720p60 or 1080p24/30 for recording and be recognized as industry standard frame rates?

Is so, then maybe a little tweak could remove the screen overlays and we would have true clean HDMI output for recording.

For those that are interested Philip Bloom has now posted his own first impressions of the 5DMkIII on his website.

It looks like it's resolving more detail than we might think.
The problem is that the sharpening algorithm in the camera sucks.
I would rather keep the detail setting at 0 and do your sharpening in post.
Check out the following example created from posted images...

The first one is the unsharpened version.
The middle one shows photoshop unsharp mask.
The bottom one in-camera sharpening.

Hi again Josh (or any other owners). Moving away from picture performance for minute, I was wondering if you could comment on the audio side, specifically the preamps in the 5DMkIII.

Are they less noisy than previous Canon DSLRs? Yes I know it's not pro audio with XLRs etc.... but heck even my prosumer TM900 camcorder has better sound preamps than most Canon DSLRs (if my 7D is typical in this regard).

While we are waiting for a full review from Chris...here is a recent short review of the latest Canon 5D Mark III:

Canon EOS 5D Mark III Review: The Best DSLR For Shooting Video | Gizmodo Australia (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/03/canon-eos-5d-mark-iii-review-the-best-dslr-for-shooting-video/)

Hi again Josh (or any other owners). Moving away from picture performance for minute, I was wondering if you could comment on the audio side, specifically the preamps in the 5DMkIII.

Are they less noisy than previous Canon DSLRs? Yes I know it's not pro audio with XLRs etc.... but heck even my prosumer TM900 camcorder has better sound preamps than most Canon DSLRs (if my 7D is typical in this regard).

Andy, what most people are doing for "real" audio is using an external recorder such as a Zoom H4n, and just using the camera's audio for reference. I use Plural Eyes to manage the audio sync. Works 99% of the time and gives me perfect sync.

Yes I know. That's what I do too. But it would be good to at least have something a little BETTER than the terrible hissy preamps that Canon DSLRs have had up until now. I use a Rode Videomic Pro for non-critical audio capture on my 7D with the 20dB boost switched on. That helps a bit and at least gives another audio option that might be useable in a pinch and something hopefully good enough for family type stuff.

Sure, it's not XLR pro audio so for anything corporate or if the client is paying I have double system sound with various Rode and Sennheisser mics, (lavs and others) plugged into either my EX3 and/or Fostex FR2-LE. I find the Fostex much better than my Zooms, BTW.

My son has the FR-2LE. It's definitely quieter than the H4n or the DR100. But then again, so is the 5D2 with Magic Lantern and a juicedLink...

When I had the H4N I always used double system sound because the pass-through audio to the camera wasn't very good. Then the Zoom died and I replaced it with a Marantz PMD 661, which has real line outputs rather than just the headphone jack. I set the camera to match the -12db tone from the recorder and double record. For normal interviews I find the camera sound to be very good. I have actually intercut camera sound with that from the Marantz and nobody noticed any difference (it's there but not very much). I'm not sure why the sound is so much better than with the Zoom, but the line outputs and preamps on the recorder are the only thing that's changed. The Marantz is bigger and heavier than the Zoom but still has a 1/4"-20 socket. It uses 4 AA batteries, costs about $600.

Even though the camera audio from using the Marantz is good, I always double record since there's no way to monitor what the camera is getting. That's one nice thing about the 5DIII.

Some pretty clean city night shots at high ISO in this video out of the 5DMkIII (with 35mm Samyang F1.4).

5D Mark III High ISO Test - YouTube