Canon Comments on 5D Enhancements, Kind Of...

[Daniel Lipats]

The 5D Mark II rigs in Canon's booth are not configured for the soccer mom and birthday parties. To me it's obvious they are prepared for a production environment.

But fair enough. Maybe you are right :)

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Ray Bell

Overall
The only thing that using a Nikon lens gives you is manual control of the aperture....


.......A Canon lens is easy to control the aperture manually by using a simple varible ND filter...

......Also, by using a Canon lens you gain the extra sensitivity of the focus sensors, the
ability of auto focus in both still mode and the single hit auto focus in video mode and
the auto aperture adjustments when you want to go all auto......

Ray:

1 Manual control of aperature is everything in the depth of field game. That is what this camera is all about. That why we have gone the Nikon route.

2. I may be wrong about this, but it was my understanding that aperature setting on the Canon lenses was selected automatically based on lens focal length, when shooting in video mode. What you see as settings in live view, is not what you will get when you actually start video. Can someone confirm this ? Assuming use of NDs can provide a calibratable result, do you really want to stack extra glass in front of your fine lenses.

3. Use of auto focus for video is not even recommended by Canon. My understanding is that it is to slow to react.

4. I am not sure not sure what the evidence is about get better images with your Canon lenses.

[Tom Roper]

This is kind of an obvious workaround, but for a Canon lens to lock the aperture at any desired setting, set the aperture and while holding in the depth of field preview button, press the lens release button and rotate the lens about 1 mm counter clockwise to unseat the electrical contacts. The lens won't fall out.

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

Chris, the readout you're referring to that doesn't read correctly is the one on the color LCD screen?

I think the only way I was able see a readout at all (in movie mode) was pressing the * button (exposure lock) from the live view screen, and it displayed a shutter speed and iso. The aperture I already knew because it was locked.

Yes, that display, by half pressing down the shutter button.

As far as aperature locking, this just isn't so with the auto Canon lenses, as I understand it. If you are using a manual lense (like Nikons), you can lock aperature at the ring, of course. As I have understood the testing, the Canon auto lens aperature is set by camera when camera capture starts rolling. Its based on some information fed to camera some of it relating to focal length. You don't lock it. That is why we have gone to Nikon lenses with adapters, we take that control away from the Canon. We are then stuck with the other variables left as we shoot, which we can lock with the "*" button, and those are predictable by the test results shown.

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

This is kind of an obvious workaround, but for a Canon lens to lock the aperture at any desired setting, set the aperture and while holding in the depth of field preview button, press the lens release button and rotate the lens about 1 mm counter clockwise to unseat the electrical contacts. The lens won't fall out.

This will also lock out all the other auto features, and deactivate stalization and autofocus, right ?

[Ray Bell]

An easy test for DOF on a Canon lens is to just put your hand over the front of the lens,
take an exposure reading ( half press) then hit the * button to lock it down...

the Canon lens will be wide open....maximum DOF on the lens

done it many many times... same way with a ND filter...

Nothing wrong with putting a filter in front of a lens.... and lots of folks do it with a matt
box too....

Chris, your a HV20 shooter.... that one has a ND built in...

[Jay Bloomfield]

Red Rock has done it was a product called Live Lens:

NAB 2009 Video - Redrock Micro at FreshDV

It's steeply priced at $495 US, but it's also upgradable.

[Peer Landa]

Originally Posted by Jay Bloomfield

Red Rock has done it was a product called Live Lens:
NAB 2009 Video - Redrock Micro at FreshDV It's steeply priced at $495 US, but it's also upgradable.

But that thing is built for their DOF converter. Bet it would be near impossible to hack it for the MKII.

-- peer

[Tom Roper]

For video, auto focus only worked (for me) in Live-View by pressing the AF button. If the Quick option was selected, it flipped down the mirror and and did a one time autofocus using the regular DSLR autofocus system. If the Live view focus mode was enabled, pressing the AF button would focus from the 35mm sensor using contrast or face detection. But either way, it was not a continuous autofocus, nor would you want that, too noisy. I haven't tried stabilization to know how well it works with video. I regarded the interest in the 5DMkII to be mainly with people wanting another way to achieve the look they get with Letus and Brevis adapters. Those people shoot from tripods and focus manually.

[Jay Bloomfield]

Originally Posted by Peer Landa

But that thing is built for their DOF converter. Bet it would be near impossible to hack it for the MKII.

-- peer

But it does point out to me one flaw in present approach to hacking the 5D2. The hackers are attempting to disassemble the firmware code and then trying to rewrite it. The Red Rock Live Lens most probably was designed, by trying to understand the input and output signals to and from the Canon EF lenses, as a black box. I doubt that Canon gave Red Rock any information as to how the lens interacts with the camera processor, so Red Rock must have hacked the signals.

If the signals were all analog, that would be easy. But if some or all of the signals were digital, it might have taken a while to figure out. But this approach seems a lot more elegant than trying to understand and alter with the camera's firmware. Any EOS DSLR that accepts EF lenses must "talk" to all automatic Canon lenses the same way.

[Peer Landa]

Originally Posted by Jay Bloomfield

But this approach seems a lot more elegant than trying to understand and alter with the camera's firmware.

Then, perhaps this is even more elegant: conurus :: View topic - Possible to create a lens controller/override?

-- peer

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Jay Bloomfield

But it does point out to me one flaw in present approach to hacking the 5D2. The hackers are attempting to disassemble the firmware code and then trying to rewrite it. The Red Rock Live Lens most probably was designed, by trying to understand the input and output signals to and from the Canon EF lenses, as a black box. I doubt that Canon gave Red Rock any information as to how the lens interacts with the camera processor, so Red Rock must have hacked the signals.

If so then Red Rock are not the only company to do so. Sigma, Tamron & any other 3rd-party lens manufacturer must also have figured out the camera/lens I/O signals. Alternatively Canon may license the interface.

[Matt Jeppsen]

Hey all, thanks for the linkage. Wanted to quickly note that we've had some unexpected server issues at FreshDV due to intense NAB video traffic load. We've been working round-the-clock to resolve the issues, and as of this morning are fully back online. E-mail or PM me if you have further problems accessing our video coverage. Apologies for the downtime, and we now return you to your regularly-scheduled discussion...