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Author Topic: The 5DMk2 Video Furore  (Read 1527 times)

Steve Gordon

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The 5DMk2 Video Furore
« on: December 05, 2008, 08:32:11 pm »

Many of us who saw the great videos shot with the 5D2 on the preproduction cameras (including Michael's) were looking forward to the promise of "selectable" DoF by selecting apertures and then filming with this camera. Both Vincent Laforet and Rob Galbraith both stated this was possible.

Now the camera has landed there are a lot of disappointed users (including me) who have found there is no simple way of setting aperture to a chosen value. The camera does eveything on auto (ISO, aperture, shutter). The only control is exp compensation and AE lock.

Workarounds are being posted, including using manual aperture alternative lenses, taping pins to block aperture info transmission and even twisting the lens to break the pin contacts!

Laforet still believes that he was able to choose aperture when he shot Reverie (based on his blog comments). Chuck Westphal says he's wrong.

So maybe the preproduction 5D2 had different firmware that did allow manual aperture selection. The other luminary who posted great video with a preproduction model was Michael! So maybe he can enlighten us?

The lack of aperture selection is a major blow to many who saw the selectable DoF as a creative breakthrough in videography with a stills camera.
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jjj

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The 5DMk2 Video Furore
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2008, 11:30:27 am »

The reason Lafloret was able to shoot wide open is that he shot at night. If he'd done a day shoot, he may have had a far less positve response.
Plus when shooting video you do not have the ability to choose aperture to suit as easily as you do when doing stills, where if you want to shoot wide open you use a faster shutter speed. Moving images are shot at low shutter speeds, so if you want wide apertures in daylight you need lots of ND filters even if shooting at 100ISO. Some video kit has ND options built in for this reason.
Chopping and changing ISOs is not always a good thing either, as you often want to maintain consistentency of look to footage.
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