ProVideo Coalition.com: Stunning Good Looks by Art Adams

The Canon 5D was built as a response to a request by Associated Press and Reuters, who were trying to cut costs by having one person shoot both stills and video of an event. They mandated that the 5D’s movie mode be fully automatic, as they didn’t want to scare still photographers off of using it, and they dictated a frame rate of 30 fps for web streaming.

Once it became clear that the motion picture community wanted to use this new tool for professional production work, Canon released an update that offered a manual exposure mode. There are third party hacks that offer zebras and other exposure tools, but I’ve not had the opportunity to try them yet.

Like RED, there are cries amongst some in the production community that this is the only camera you’ll ever need to create phenomenal money-making projects. Well… maybe. While it’s possible to create art with virtually any tool, professional production tools require the virtues of reliability, predictability and telemetry: cameras have to work, they have to work the same way all the time, and they have to tell you what they’re doing. That last part is where the 5D falls short.

The 5D creates excellent HD images for a small, cheap camera. The price, more than any other factor, is what’s driving 5D-mania right now: for US$2,600 you can buy a camera body that will deliver full 1920x1080 HD using a single 35mm-sized sensor. And the sensor is actually slightly bigger than a 35mm film frame, which means that motion picture lenses would vignette if they were mounted on this camera.

It’s very sensitive under low light, making it ideal for natural light cinematography. It’s inexpensive, making it a great crash camera. It fits into an established line of accessories, making it cost effective for those who already own Canon gear.

While the camera doesn’t offer any critical exposure telemetry (zebras, histograms) in movie mode, the LCD is accurate enough to judge coarse exposure and contrast. It’s necessary to roll through the F-stops in order to see if a highlight is clipping, but what you see is darned close to what you’ll get.

If you need a small HD camera with 35mm depth of field that doesn’t attract a lot of attention, this may be the camera for you.

Following focus. Canon DSLR lenses are designed for action photography, which relies heavily on autofocus. Autofocus is not so good for motion picture photography, and it’s not enabled in movie mode anyway. You can focus before rolling, but once the camera is recording it will not try to adjust focus for you.

And you can’t adjust it very easily yourself. The manual focus ring on a Canon autofocus lens is not attached mechanically to anything. It relays data to a servo, making it nearly impossible to retain physical focus marks. Also, the lens focus markings themselves are small and very close together, making it impossible to reliably hit a mark twice.

The same is somewhat true of manual focus still lenses. They were never designed to be focused by tape measure, so the markings are rough estimates and not reliable at all. The markings are also packed so close together that being off by less than a millimeter can result in a completely soft shot.

It’s nearly impossible to see critical focus on the camera’s low-res LCD screen. There is a zoom function that does show image detail pixel for pixel, but you can’t use that while rolling. And besides, by the time you see that the shot is out of focus it’s too late.

Zacuto has solved a lot of the ergonomic problems of handholding the 5D for long periods of time, but their sunshade solution for the LCD is far from perfect. It is mounted using Velcro and tends to slip, and it’s hard to tell whether the black frame line that you’re looking at is the edge of the LCD or the inside of the sunshade that is now blocking part of the image. The sunshade magnification is also too high, which is great for judging focus but not so good for being able to see the entire frame at once. You have to scan the frame constantly to see all of it, and it’s easy to miss the tiny record indicator at the top right edge of the frame.

The camera records 8-bit variable bit rate H.264. H.264 is an excellent codec, but 8-bit color reduces how much the data can be massaged in post before banding occurs. I found that this camera’s footage requires some color correction because its eight stops of latitude forced me to protect highlights more than I wanted to. It’s necessary to use UDMA CF cards to ensure that the camera can write data fast enough to avoid severe bit rate-constrained compression artifacts. The camera also likes being held level, as too many diagonal lines may cause additional compression artifacts.

The camera shoots at 30 fps, not 29.97. Make sure your sound person knows this if you’re shooting double-system sound.

Before using a matte box and filters with this camera be sure you’ve acquired or manufactured donuts for every lens you plan to use. Still lenses are much smaller than film lenses and most of the pre-made cine donuts don’t work satisfactorily, resulting in a lot of wasted time and paper tape.

This camera makes great images, but imaging power alone does not a great camera make. A truly usable production camera must conform somewhat to the process of filmmaking, and this camera isn’t quite there yet. Which is not a surprise, as it was never really meant for professional filmmaking.

For the price it can’t be beat, and the pictures speak for themselves. But this isn’t really a follow-critical-focus set-critical-exposure great-exposure-latitude camera. Within its limits it works extremely, but don’t expect to shoot your next full feature on it. At least not easily.

Art Adams is a DP who believes that the person behind the camera makes more difference than the camera itself. His website is at www.artadams.net.

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One correction, RedCine is indeed available for build 20. You are no longer limited to RedAlert

Posted by Geoff Bailey on 08/28 at 08:52 AM

An excellent and fair article. Thanks.

Posted by leeberger on 08/28 at 03:03 PM

Art, are you sure you’ve really captured the idea how to work with a CMOS camera and the raw footages? Let me be provocative. If one can’t get more dynamics out from Red One than 9 stops, one does not know how to use the tool.

So, let’s sort this our and start from the fundamentals. As Art says the ‘gamma is a straight line down into the murk of noise’. This is not a drawback but instead the key feature. Consequently the next line from Art: ‘still, setting a light meter between 160-250 seems to work for most people, depending on taste and comfort with noise’ is about driving a car backwards.

Why? Well, as said the gamme curve is a straight line, which in more precise terms is to say that the data recording the amount of light is directly proportional the light on the sensor. The practical advantage is, as long as one is below clipping it does not matter whether one overexposures in the traditional sense or not. For, one can always revert back by scaling in post. Notice, this is true ONLY for the raw image.

But, there’s also a definite advantage in shooting to the right. The point is, every additional stop of light increases the bit depth and the dynamics. Exposuring one stop below the maximum on the right implies one employes only a half of the available tones. Two stops below means only one quarter of the available tones are recorded. As the post systems have always more bits available than what the camera can store, the camera is the critical part of the chain ans one should always try to maximize the amount of tones recorded. Maximizing tones imply also the maximum distance from noise which is what is called dynamics.

The practical workflow is this. Set the exposure using the raw metering. This means that the image on the LCD/EVF is typically too bright. But, to get an idea how the image will appear in post, don’t touch the exposure but instead dial the ISO setting downwards. The ISO setting is then recorded to metadata and when the R3D raw files are opened in REDCINE/REDALERT, this ISO number appears as the default value. Obviously, if needed the value can be changed at will without any sideeffects, thanks to the linearity of the sensor.

It should be now clear that color grading raw files will likely take more time than processing something like RGB images. But, for a good reason: dynamics is maximized. Once the gamma curve is hardwared to the recorded file all these nice features are lost.

So, once more, the ISO setting is only for viewing. It’s silly to first set the ISO value and then make the exposure to depend on the ISO value that is there only for previewing. Better to forget neutral grays and all the traditional issues and focus on the highlights. Everything else can be handled in post. And when doing so nothing is lost but instead quite the opposite: everything is gained.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/29 at 11:28 AM

I’m wondering/puzzled as to whether Larry is expecting a direct response from the person he refers to in the third-person. Or whether he invites readers to respond.

Posted by wsmith on 08/31 at 10:20 PM

Yes, it was indeed bit difficult to formulate the comment for on one hand would like be generate a cultivated discussion among the readers of this nice forum that benefits everybody. On the other hand this and the previous text by Art raises the question whether he criticizes Red One because he tries to fit the metrics of filmcameras to a modern digital camera having a CMOS sensor.

The obvious risk is that the comments blow out of hands and the discussion forcuses on people instead of techincal issues. Of course it would be nice if Art among other made comments. Especially so, as he show some strong words and opinions in his article so one may perhaps expect he is prepared to defense his view if needed. Still would like to stress out that no intention to hurt anybody’s feelings. It’s all about technical issues that deserve to be clarified.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/01 at 11:09 AM

Art,
Great article having worked a lot with Red I usually find the sensitivity to be right around 175 in Raw. Thanks for cutting through the hype that is Red Digital and bringing some great answers. DPs, learn your cameras and work within those limitations to make great images! I agree 10000% with software bugs, workflows etc… and I would ad to that build quality for accessories as well..ugh!!
Matt Jeppsens rant from the point of a weary AC, comes from a shoot where we saw a lot of these problems crop up.

Posted by Kendal Miller on 09/01 at 01:31 PM

Larry,

You’re describing exposing to the right, which is a valid way to work with this camera, but not the only way. Under controlled lighting circumstances, using a light meter (and rating the camera at a certain ISO) is a more desirable way to work for many DPs. (And recent revelations about color shifts under different exposure conditions is a very valid reason to work this way.)

And don’t take Art to task for his ‘9 stops’ figure—in another article (about build 20—‘Build 20 Torture Tests’ at http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/story/red_build_20_torture_tests/) Art describes how he arrives at the 9 stop figure (9.5 under daylight, if I recall correctly). It’s quantitative, and it’s good.

When it comes to latitude, the only subjective part is where you think the image is ‘lost to noise.’ If you tolerate noise better than most, you may think the camera has as many as 11 stops (that’s the most you should claim, though—Red released response curves for the sensor that show 11 as the theoretical maximum).

Personally, I like super-clean images, and I don’t mind 9 stops of latitude. It’s more than I would get out of any other camera I would buy, by a decent margin. (And frankly, the only time I’ve been unhappy with my Red is when it’s been starved for light, and the image gets noisy.)

Cheers,

Ryan

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/22 at 01:11 PM

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THE CANON 5D