I would hope that this forum would stay with the substance of what is posted, rather than getting into critiques of style or whether one is "talking down" to people.

Personally, I wish that the 5D MKII had manual control also, but that was not Canon's intent in marketing and selling this DSLR. Unfortunately, I beleive that it is very wishful thinking that Canon will provide a firmware upgrade to provide full manual control and it is even more delusional to think that even the large army of hackers will be able to do so. Even the modest amount of public discourse with Canon staff on the topic of upgrading the firmware to add manual control, has only produced evidence that Canon is at best, disinterested in the idea.

A similar situation occurred when Canon introduced the groundbreaking HV-20 consumer HDV camcorder. The HV-20 produced excellent video for the price and with a little bit of tinkering (blinding it with bright light, using the exposure lock, etc.), one could coerce it into a "semi-manual" mode. Now, tons of HV-20s were sold worldwide and users started clamoring for firmware hacks and also for Canon to upgrade the firmware to full manual. But did Canon do so? Of course not, because it would have undercut their more expensive prosumer camcorder lines. The HV-20 has been transformed into the HV-30 (with 1080/30p) and now the HV-40 (with native 1080/24p). But at no time did Canon hint at adding full manual control. Further, hackers, to date, have only been able to change the firmware version of the camera (to something nonsensical), despite the lure of the challenge and various pots of money that were raised on the Internet as incentives.

However, I do suspect that Canon may produce a "Euro" version of the 5D MKII that will shoot in 25p, as that is an obvious oversight, from both a technical and marketing standpoint. Canon may also produce both higher and lower level models with similar HD video. But more likely, they will eventually produce a full frame camcorder that uses interchangeable Canon glass. But until then, everyone will have to work around the camera's limitations. It's a DSLR that incidentally shoots very good HD video.

Absolutely! Don't get me wrong. Manual control is my #1 request to Canon, and I asked this forcefully (and mostly respectably) at CES.

You're right. Not all settings are obtainable, and that's a shame.

By "they are obtainable", I meant that "repeatable settings are obtainable."

Specifically, I was responding to your earlier statement that
>"they cannot even keep a consistent shutter speed from shot to shot or maintain an exposure from shot to shot"

To summarize,
1) You CAN get consistent settings from shot to shot, so the camera is viable; however,
2) the current implementation drives us to Nikon lenses,
3) the gyrations that we go through to make it work are unprofessional and annoying,
4) our creative choices are overly limited, even with the annoying gyrations. (For instance, I would personally choose 1/80 for normal use, if I could, but that's a topic for another day...)

There's another issue beyond manual control, which is that the actual shutter speed doesn't match what is displayed. (As I've shown, 1/40 and 1/50 are actually about 1/45, and 1/60, 1/80 and 1/100 are actually about 1/80.) Personally, I'm okay with that. These choices are probably based on sensor properties, bandwidth, clock speeds and other limitations. I don't reasonably expect Canon to change the actual available shutter speeds with a firmware update.

And again I apologize, as this thread is about Dan's video. Hopefully this will be a temporary detour, rather than a hijack, as the discussion continues here:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-eos...ompromise.html

Hijack away, I share all of the frustrations about manual control. I hope Canon, Nikon, Sony and Panasonic all look at this forum and take note, that way we will finally get the solutions we crave.

Dan

I've just posted this in Vimeo as well, again I'm interested in which version people think is better quality. News video shot on 5DmkII - The Economic crisis hits China on Vimeo

Dan

You guys are forgetting one thing. These companies do not care about us. They only care about how their product offerings affect their bottom line. If they could, they'll just produce products of minimum evolutionary quality and get by. I mean, just look at Nikon for all the years prior to D3 they've had with their DSLRs with inferior sensors. Thank goodness for competition.

Don't bet on getting all tehse features enabled via firmware.. they'll offer another model with the 5D2's sensor that's geared towards videographers and charge like $6000 for it.. Just you watch

That the 5D MarkII drives us toward Nikon lenses DOES affect their bottom line.

Beautifully done
 

Absolutely brilliantly done within the constraints, both informative and artistic, you could feel what the interviewees were feeling; and the shooter seemed to keep a reasonably respectful distance instead of barging into the crowd

Totally pro, with feeling.

Definitely the Vimeo! Great work.