Definitely not. In fact we did early tests comparing Zeiss Primes vs Nikon primes using the P&S mini35 setup on the Canon XL and found no difference in image quality. In fact the 85mm 1.4 for about $900 is built about as well and feels as good manually as the Zeiss 85mm we tested with.

I'm sure the same will be true of Canon glass.

In all fairness to Zeiss glass, that test is a bit moot when stepping to HD resolutions, even with the increase in sensor size.

Why is it moot? I Don't get your point.

GLASS
I believe that Jed was saying it was moot because if you were doing xl-1/s/2 then you were seeing the result in Standard Def so it was only 1/4 the resolution of HD resolution. If you look at it on an HD sensor the Nikon may not hold up as well as the zeiss lenses. The other thing to consider is that with the 5d2 you're not recording a piece of ground glass (that may hide the imperfections in a lens) you're recording straight to a sensor which may not be as forgiving.

Regardless though it seems silly to have a discussion over which lenses you "can" and "can't" use for a camera, most people I know who work will use whatever lenses they can get their hands on that will get the job done regardless of what anyone types (or hypes) on the internet. It's like the DP's who swear by Cooke lenses and won't use Zeiss master primes, they're all tools.

DOF
If it helps I could have sworn that I read that the sensor masks down to 16:9 resolution by greying out the area that won't be recorded to the card. I guess it serves as kind of a "safe zone" again, no one will know for sure until the camera come out. So it seems like you are using the full sensor from left to right but have some masking on the top and bottom, which I believe preserves the "35mm DOF"

ROLLING SHUTTER
Also I saw some of the rolling shutter "issues." Seriously? A guy shakes the camera like it's an earthquake and the image gets distorted? And 4000 people who will never shoot a movie in there life hop on the internet and complain about how that's unacceptable? What are you shooting where that kind of operating is expected? Earthquake 3? I mean come on, why would you even point out that if you're not very good at operating a camera that you shouldn't use this one? Seems like more of a "idiot resistant" feature then an issue. Show me the image getting screwed up during normal or even extreme (but not ridiculous) operation and I'll care a lot more. (or slow my pans and tilts down!)

F900/Varicam killer?
Seriously anyone that is proposing that this will Cannabalize the market of a varicam or f900 has not used one of these cameras, believe it or not when you buy a 100k camera you're getting more then a sensor, If they add multiple frame rates, an HD-SDI output, Y PR PB support, inter operability with a professional battery system, or a fiber optic system, then MAYBE MAYBE there's a small concern but come on, how many people do you know that bought an f900 to shoot something that needed 35mm DOF?

Glass
An XL2 with its tiny sensors would only use the center of the image circle. It actually needs much higher res glass than the mkII. When you guys talk about Zeiss, you mean their dslr lenses, right? The zeiss 85 is certainly not provably superior to the Nikon or Canon 85s. It has a somewhat different look. If you talking about the very expensive Zeiss cine lenses, I expect these would be somewhat sharper at the corners.

30p
The way Canon works, the software and hardware in the 5DII is capable of doing different frame rates. But the 5DII only does 30p so that a higher end dslr can be differentiated with more frame rates. They are not likely to make a firmware change for 24/25p.

Rolling Shutter
Looks good to me. Canon's done some work here.

High end competition
It's not about the 5DII, its about this technology going into high-end products. It seems to me Canon will be a new player in this area. The 5DII sensor isn't even a video specific design. What will a video specific cmos design look like? That would make me nervous if I was a high-end video equipment producer.
Remember that the 5DII sensor is designed for bayer processing. Video CMOS pulls all three color off the sensor - no interpolation. (Red: 12M/3 colors = 4M)

Don when they put the lens on a mini 35 adapter it's using the full lens (not just the center) when they just use like the ef adapter though you're absolutely right, but I don't think that's the test JIM and JED were talking about.

Nikon primes on Canon 5d Mark 2 / hd video mode
 

Hi, i was wondering if nikon's primes would work well (as well as L series zoom..) using the 5d m2 video mode ? i already have a 5d with 24-105 L and 70-200 L series but before that, i was an addict of my old unbreakable Nikon Fm2 + a set of old nikon primes (no autofocus ones) - Still have them, sleeping, but ready to rebirth.

I've seen a few adaptators (nikon to canon ring) that seems to keep the usuals electronics fonctions (light meter, auto focusing ?). For my use, focus will be manual
with redrock follow focus so i don't mind autofocus but i mind a little light meter (could be usefull even if i use an independant light meter) last and most important : Price...and old nikon's primes are really great and quite cheap. Would it work in vidéo 1080 P with the 5d mark 2 ? i'm not talking about "style" here but more about final image result.
I know no one have been doing test yet about this, but is there a particular reason why the video mode would make impossible the use of nikon lens ?

THKS - AG

Don, I don't follow you here. The Red sensor is indeed a Bayer sensor. So it uses a color mask. The demosaicing/debayering process used on Red footage has to interpolate color from adjacent pixels.

It's a mysterium to me.

WINNER: DVinfo.net pun prize of the day!

So how does the math work on these cameras?

the 12mp Red sensor only needs about 8 mp for a 4K image. The 5DII apparently uses a full size 16:9 crop of a 21 mp sensor. That ~6 photosites per output pixel. Or perhaps they read alternate lines and it's ~3 photosites per output pixel.

Red has the future possibility of using all the phorosites for 2K, instead of a crop. This change could/should reduce noise.

I don't believe the lower noise DSLRs are using "classic" bayer algorithms anymore. I think when constructing a pixel the algorithms look at more surrounding sata to determine if a value is noisy.

You should see this: October 19, 2008 on Vimeo

Where's the PAL flicker some have mentioned??
 

In response to "You should see this: October 19, 2008 on Vimeo"

comment: That footage looks really beautiful!

question: This was filmed in the UK, and a few posters have mentioned that the 50hz lighting in PAL land would flicker when shot with 30P. I didn't see any of that in the praticals such as the street lights. I've never used NTSC in PAL land or vice versa so i really have no experience with light flickering.

So my question is where is the flicker???

If there's no flicker, this camera is fine for us living in PAL land! Soon i'll be shooting a lot of nighttime scenes for a TV show here in PAL land (china) and the thought of using HDV with its nighttime noise makes me cringe and could be a deal breaker when it comes to finding a distributor to sell the show!

A PS question: Film camera operates at 24 frames per sec and they use practicals all the time to supplement film lights, don't they? Say for example a household table lamp in a living room setup. I know they might replace the bulb in the fixtures with a higher wattage but still are they not running at a normal 60/50hz - wouldn't we see the flicker all the time in motion pictures? Do the gennys they use run at 24/48hz? AND if so, does the genny run all the power to a location, even to the practicals?

I really hope the answer is that it DOESN'T matter!!

perplexed
mike

I liked the images themselves but if I saw one more rack-focus I might have pitched the monitor off the desk. I'm not really sure why camera tests have to appear like music videos these days--the idea is to show off the imagery, so what's the point of quick cutting? Sorry to be negative here but I want to see what the camera can do and was frustrated and distracted by the way this was shot and edited.

The all-mighty power of the rack focus. At least they aren't showing you crash zooms.

At least it was mostly shot on a tripod. I have looked at so much HMC 150 footage recently that was hand held and of the family/pets I got motion sickness.

Charles, I think this link actually IS a music video the vimeo poster just forgot to encode the audio. (He mentions it further down the page) However I could only sit through about 3 minutes before I felt like I was looking at really well shot vacation footage, and scrubbed through to the end.

I think this thing is going to be the closest I get to what I ask for in my signature so I can't wait for it to be released to us plebeians!

Yeah, I saw the bit about the music. I'm all for making camera tests more watcheable--I made a short film to demo the EX1 and Redrock M2 that was hopefully as entertaining as it was demonstrative--but this became more about the cutting and the rack focuses and less about seeing what the camera could do. My feeling would have been to pick 1/3 of the better shots and just let them play.

It's hard to tell much about the camera with this video. Every shot is a rack focus and just as soon as the focus goes onto the main subject of the frame... the shot is cut. I would have loved to have seen longer, in focus shots as the low light once again looks great!

the main problem in PAL countries is not the 50hz flicker, which may or may not appear depending on the light conditions, well all we know about murphy's laws.

the real problem in PAL, is that 30p cannot be converted to 25p (or 24p) in a professional way. 30p footage cannot be used for PAL TV, HD or SD, and cannot be used for even create PAL DVD.

so in PAL contries , if canon won't relaease a 25p firmware forget to use the 5DII for anything else than home videos.

Is it just me, or is the latitude absolutely rubbish on the 5DII? All the test clips I've seen so far have crushed blacks and blown highlights that smack of a phone camera. Brilliant DOF, etc etc etc. Clarity is great. But I'm getting a bit nervous about what I've seen so far. (and I have recently sold my existing camera to replace it with a 5D2 or HVX, and now the $AUD has dropped so far the HVX has dissapeared from my budget constraints!)

Oliver I don't know exactly what you're talking about in the few clips that I've seen the exposure lattitude has been on par or better then most HD Cameras I've worked with. It may not reflect the true abilities of the still portion of the camera but it looks about right to me (especially with the web encoding thats been done) as far as the video clips.

I do hope you're basing these conclusion on observation of the camera's output and not on footage crushed out of all recognition for web streaming Oliver.

Of course you are, you wouldn't have sold your current kit to buy a 30p camera for a 25p county unless you'd made careful analysis of the image and audio quality and deemed them up to scratch.

If at all possible, avoid being an early adopter.

tom.

I fully agree. 25p is (24p might be) mandatory.

30p to PAL 50i
 

You can convert 30p to PAL... Just keep it interlaced (50i). Looks perfectly smooth if you do...

Thomas, funnily that's the first time I've heard anyone say that. What software/hardware would you use to convert? I would have thought getting an interlaced 30p to 50i was pretty difficult.

It's not just you. I've noticed the same thing in the original camera .MOV files. I hope that it can be remedied with different in-camera processing settings. It has the same sensor as the 1Ds Mark III, and I know the dynamic range on that camera is at least 13 stops when downsampled to 1080p, so ISO 1600 should have at least 9 usable stops. But if the 5D Mark II doesn't sample every pixel, I can see how it would lose latitude fast.

What bothers me much more than the poor dynamic range, though, is the aliasing (jaggies, moire). My only hope there is that Gaussian blur and resampling to 720p will remove the artifacts (that will help with the compression artifacts and noise, too).

30p to PAL 50i
 

I prefer After Effects to convert 30p to 50i. Compressor can do this as well, but you must up the preset conversion settings to best (it defaults to good), which is slow unless you have a fast machine. After Effects is fast, and looks very smooth.

When shooting, I personally prefer 30p over 24p/25p. However, Canon should include all 3.

I can't imagine it not being able to do this, especially if sold in PAL countries.

Thomas, using AE or Compressor is supposed to give variable results for fast motion for 30p to 50i. Are you saying this is not true? have you got any samples online to see?

Also the 5DmkII is only 30p in all countries, this has been verified by Canon

Best

Dan

30p to 50i
 

I recently converted one of my video projects from 30p to 50i using AE... It worked out great for me... Even fast motion looked identical to the 30p source, when viewed on a native PAL DVD player/PAL TV. I don't have any online samples. Be aware that any online samples would be 30p or 25p playback... You wouldn't see the 50i output, unless viewed on a PAL TV or Monitor. When I distribute for web playback, I always keep it 30p. All computers (worldwide) will playback 30p video files, as well as NTSC 30p DVDs (all regions). You only need to convert to 50i if distributing on PAL DVDs or for PAL Broadcast, where it will be viewed on a PAL TV.

The reason 30p converts to PAL 50i, is that you're actually adding frames (fields)...

30p (30 pictures/frames per second) - PAL 50i (50 pictures/fields per second).


*Canon sure made a mistake by not offer 25p PAL option...*

30p to 50i sidenote
 

You really only need to convert to 50i if it's going to be broadcast in PAL countries.

Most PAL DVD players will convert NTSC all region 30p to 50i output nicely for Playback on PAL TVs... It's also safer that way, so that when viewed on computers, you don't run the risk of you 30p to 50i DVD being viewed as de-interlaced 25p.

after converting 30p to 24p or 25p or 50i, just use virtualdub and check the thing frame by frame. For me this is unacceptable. An certainly you video must be exceptional to be accepted for broadcasting.

DVD players can convert on the fly 30p to 50i, but expect some speed change and ghosting on every thing moving every 4 or 5 frames.

As said, for home videos it could be ok, but I don't think it is worth the effort to shoot anything serious, taking care of all the difficult things when shooting professionally, to end with a 30p video stream.

I author straight-to web, so it's a bit of a non-issue for me. I am basing my opinion on the raw files I have downloaded and fiddled with, and they seem to really show up a lack of dynamic range. As much as I hate being an early adopter, I had an opportunity to sell my old kit, and wanted something new, so it's no big deal. But at the same time, I was curious as to other peoples views on the issue.

What frustrates me is that many of the videos have been produced in near darkness, and are of pretty rough quality, production wise, so it's hard to establish!

However, if these issues are indeed real ones, then it IS my own fault for considering being an early adopter! It's just a pity my backup choices have almost doubled in price because of the plummeting dollar. Something I had not considered!

Daniel, thats what I thought too. Most DSLR sensors have very good DR in comparison to what video people are used to, so I'm sure many assume its the same deal for video out of a FF camera sensor.

Dynamic range doesn't really look too bad in this video:

Bora Lane; Moving photography on Vimeo

The interior of the car while moving is pretty noisy, but I'm assuming that was at a pretty high ISO. I don't see any jello though.

Note: You can download the original .wmv file in the bottom right hand corner. Works on my Playstation 3. Really amazing picture quality.

Saw this link in Engadget.com

Pretty amazing stuff:

Canon's 5D Mark II: The World's First Forbidden HD Video, Finally Official!! : Akihabara News .com

Geez, the clean 35mm 1080P footage is just killing me. I've just bought a D90 simply because of the DOF control and excellent colors, plus the 24fps versus 30fps dilemma, and I'm not complaining about my purchase but I know it could look much better. Still, I needed something over my HV20 and the D90 was the best option right now and it's working out great for what I want. Yet on a technical sidenote, I wish it was more on par with the 5D Mark II's resolution and sharpness.

Here is a link to the Tokyo video at vimeo:

Tokyo Reality (Canon 5D MarkII) on Vimeo

You can download the original .mov there.

Hmm.. regarding that "Tokyo Reality" video... quite distracting rolling shutter "effect" noticable there imho... and very "videoey" colors and exposure issues - also it's very noticeable that the contrast is really really high in video mode (crushed blacks/whites).
I guess this video does really good in showcasing many of the (known) weaknesses of the cam...

Especially the rolling shutter was sometimes so bad that I was reminded of videos taken with a mobile phone :-/

I didn't notice any rolling shutter problems but that lens really breathes on the focus shifts at the end.

Apparently this cam wont be the choice for those who intend to take fast moving trains all the time.
I think the only situation when rolling shutter shall make videographers worry is when a photographer uses flash (typical case is a wedding - where the photographer is an "enemy" anyways).
I dont know whether a "normal" (non rolling shutter looks) light explosion of a flashlight is any better on a clip than a rolling shutter artifact.... Both look bad and screw up the clip. So for weddings I try to cut these off as much as possible and replace with other footage, plus I try to make the photographer understand that taking "I do" makes sense only on video but totally unnecessary to capture that very moment on a still picture. 5-6 seconds later will do and no one could tell it was not the very moment of the commitment :)
Just imagine how one's face looks when saying the "o" from "I do".
Seriously, does any customer want to see that? :)