The ML zebras are AWESOME, BTW.

We shot a 15 minute short film back before we had manual control and zebras on the 5D2. Even though we were good at tricking the camera to get the settings we wanted, our exposure wasn't nearly as consistent as we wanted. This is a problem as skin tones start getting pushed up or down the S and gamma curves. It took a ton of grading to get things to match.

Fast forward to August when we shot a six minute film in 48 hours. By setting highlights at 0xf000 and faces at 0xb000 using ML zebras, we only had to adjust five clips to get everything to match. (We underexposed a few shots, but never overexposed.) Had we wanted to do more creative grading, we had all the latitude that we could ever get out of the 5D2 to work with.

And back on the original topic, we used a juicedLink preamp and Boostaroo headphone amp along with the fixed gain and monitoring features of Magic Lantern. We didn't clip a single syllable, yet kept everything hot enough that there was no need for noise reduction - even when viewed in a large theater. It was leagues better than what we captured with our 15-minute short, recording into a Microtrack II.

Even without 24p, the 5D2 wins over the 7D for video because of Magic Lantern. Once Magic Lantern is ported, the 7D will be *very* potent. And when (if?) the 5D2 gets 24p, order in the universe will have been restored. :)