The Picture Online

I was shooting in Hermosa Beach this evening, and after the sun set decided to push the ISO speeds on the 5D Mk II to see just how far you could really go and still get good results. My methodology is much the same as Michael Reichmann: I am interested in the specifications, but only concerned about real-world results.

I have learned to expect great quality at ISO 800 on the 5DII. Yes, you can see some small amount of noise compared to ISO 100, but not much. I used to feel the same way about ISO 400 on the original 5D. Of course I always try to shoot at ISO 100, but if there is not enough light,  400 or now 800 is no big deal.

This shot of The Strand (105mm handheld, 1/25 sec. @ f/4) gives an idea of the 5DII’s capabilities - click on the photo to see a slightly larger version. This is my typical low light workflow: capture in Lightroom, straighten and slightly crop, process in Photoshop with Noise Ninja to reduce noise  and brighten the shadows (which increases noise somewhat) —  except I’m shooting at ISO 6400, whereas on the original 5D or 40D I would be at ISO 1600 or 3200.

To me, this is a very usable image for print or web. There is a bit of noise in the sky (top) and the strand (bottom), but nothing excessive.

The 5DII has two things going for it in the low-light arena: one, that it is actually a stop or two cleaner than the original 5D; two, the image is so much larger than before, so that reducing the image size for actual use further reduces the noise.

The only issue I see is the quality of the chroma noise. There is basically no chroma noise below ISO 800 and small but increasing amounts as you increase the ISO speed. At 6400 it gets to be quite noticeable in the shadows,  but Noise Ninja is able to adequately smooth it out.

This shot of people hanging out on the pier was shot at ISO 3200 with no noise processing applied. In the larger image, you can see noise in the sky but it is almost all luminance noise — which to my eye resembles film grain — and much more acceptable than chroma noise. (On Flickr you might be seeing more of their JPEG compression than my camera noise…)

Above ISO 6400, the chroma noise increases and gets larger in size — and is not completely removed by Noise Ninja. Other noise reduction methods might work better, but I have always been happy with Noise Ninja’s results and never felt the need to venture any further.

This shot of apartment stairs was shot at ISO 12800. The walls were brightened but the chroma noise is still visible in the larger version even after Noise Ninja processing. It’s a muddy mess, usable in a pinch but not desirable.

So it’s the chroma noise that makes ISO 12800 and 25600 less than acceptable. I suppose there might be some other software plugin that will take care of these two fastest speeds, but for now I’m considering them off-limits to anything important.

Nonetheless, regular use of the ISO 800-6400 range is opening new possibilities for images that weren’t really practical before. And that’s great!

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Equipment, Photography, Techniques

Still frame showing narrow depth of field

After shooting the interiors at the HAX training center last Friday (see previous post), I was asked to come back Sunday and shoot video of their basketball combine for middle schoolers. This was a two day event, where the HAX coaches worked with the kids and tested their athletic abilities, much the same as when college athletes prepare to turn pro.

I spent quite a bit of time with digital video in the early days of Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro, but not much recently and always more as an editor than cameraman. So I was confident of my ability to put together a little promo piece for the client, less so of my ability to capture good images.

I grabbed the strongest reading glasses I could find, along with my wife’s Canon HV-30 HDV camcorder as a backup, since I wasn’t sure how well the manual focus on the 5DII would work in a fast-moving sports environment. The HV-30 is a well regarded small HDV camcorder, not quite the XL2 or other pro model, but I know pro video people that speak highly of it.

You can see the finished result here (QuickTime is required)

Things that I learned:

- Focus, focus, focus!
I spent most of my brainpower trying to keep things in focus. That said, I found that soft-focus is much more forgivable in video. When the subject is moving, as long as they appear sharp some of the time it was somewhat acceptable. I was able to get things get things in focus eventually and then was able edit out the soft parts. 

- The 5DII shoots 1080p format, while the HV-30 shoots 1080i (like almost all HDV cameras). 
What this means is that the video camera has the typical interlaced scan lines that we are used to when watching television, while the 5DII does not and looks more like a film at a theatre or moving photographs. The 5D looked much better than the HV-30 in general. You can easily tell which is which in my video: the HV-30 is darker and has much more room echo.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the 5DII shoots 30 frames/second rather than the US video standard of 29.97 fps. This means there will be some time discrepancies in your video process, especially if your output format is broadcast or DVD. The difference between 30 and 29.97 frames per second works out to 1 frame every 30 seconds or so.  It’s not a big deal, but shots over thirty seconds will drift out of sync with other video sources.

- Image Stabilized lenses work well when you’re trying to keep the image steady.
However, slow pans or other movement do not benefit from IS. Actually I seemed to detect a bit of extra jerkiness, as it appeared that the IS was repeatedly trying to stabilize the image.

- Short focal length lenses work well when handheld, otherwise keep the camera on a tripod.
I had good success using the 16-35mm f/2.8 L lens as well as the 24-105 f/4 IS L at 24mm; less with the 70-200mm f/2.8 IS. 

- No “Jello” with the 5DII
Unlike reports of the Nikon D90, I did not experience any jello movement at all.

- The h.264 video plays great right on the desktop, less so inside of Final Cut Pro.
Unlike standard HDV footage, 5DII video on Final Cut Pro’s timeline would not play without rendering. After some discussion on the LA Final Cut Pro User Group forum it seems the consensus is to transcode (re-compress) the 5D footage using the Apple ProRes 422 codec which is available in Final Cut Pro 6. I’ll try that next time and see how it goes.

The verdict?

As many pundits have been saying, the 5DII is a great video camera, one completely unlike anything on the market with the exception of the Red One. I would be very confident to take the 5DII on a video shoot and come out with unique, spectacular footage. It is not a “drop-in” replacement for other video cameras though, it has unique abilities and requires a unique approach for best results.

Equipment, Photography, Techniques

Standing at the top of a ladder 1/50 sec. @ f/5.6 at ISO 1600 became a realistic possibility with the 5D Mk II

I’ve been shooting with Canon’s new 5D MkII for six days now and I’ve had a number of experiences which I will be sharing in the next few days. (Don’t worry, I’ll move onto other subjects soon :-)

On Friday, I was asked to shoot interiors at the new HAX basketball club in Hawthorne. I’ve shot sports there a number of times but now they are just about finished with their construction and are ready to open to the public as a full-blown health club. 

I dragged all my lights over there and expected to light up each room with flashes, but I immediately ran into an increasingly common problem: a mix of different lighting colors.

It used to be that you were balancing against warm incandescent lights (aka Plain Old Light Bulbs), which have a beautiful coloring to them. But now everyone has gone “green” (literally) and replaced their incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lighting — which is great because it saves a lot of energy — but default interior lighting has now become this awful greenish-magentaish color, which varies from room to room and bulb to bulb, none of it anywhere close to daylight,  incandescent (tungsten) or even the standard old green fluorescent color.  Adding daylight-colored electronic flash just makes everything worse — color balancing gels or changing the camera color balance just changes how bad the light is, it never makes it any good.

I suppose if I had the entire Lee Filter Collection in my bag I could have found a happy medium, but I tried another solution: shoot using only ambient light. This way all the light was the same - ugly - color, but at least I could white balance for that specific color. The problem was that there wasn’t much light, so I would need to crank up the ISO speed and that would mean lots of noise. But the improved picture quality of the new Canon 5D MkII was able to solve that problem for me. I cranked the ISO speed to 1600 and shot away.

In this shot, I needed to get all the exercise machines and the basketball court in reasonable focus; a good image on the TV sets was also important. That meant I needed to shoot slow to capture the video and stop down the lens for more depth of field, which left me at the top of a ladder trying to hold the camera steady and not fall.

The results were quite surprising. Noise Ninja was not really necessary, most of the noise was luminance (black, like film grain) not chroma (colored noise like a TV). Plus the big bonus was I could get in and out of the shoot much faster!

Equipment, Photography, Techniques

10 minutes after I left the camera store...

I know many photographers who shoot with the Canon 5D and are very interested in the Mark II which started shipping this month, especially after all the excitement whipped up by Vincent Laforet. I placed a deposit at Samy’s in September, and picked up my unit last night!

A little background… I shoot many things but primarily landscapes which are sold at art shows and online as large prints. For the past few years therefore, I have been obsessed with pixel count to make images that will print well at 24″ x 36″ and larger. I coveted the 1DS, but neither my arms nor my wallet were large enough for such a beast. I thought, “if Canon would put the 1DS sensor in a 20D body and sell it for less than $5000, I would buy it…” In 2005 Canon did exactly that with the 5D, and since they did as I asked I felt obligated to buy it :-)

And as most of you know, it’s quite a camera! I have been in love with my 5D for the past three years, but as time passed I looked enviously at the larger sensors coming out in the 1Ds — and dropping prices of medium format cameras also started to make them look attractive… “If Canon would put a 20+ Megapixel sensor, live view and a larger screen in the MkII, I would buy it…” I was actually disappointed that the 1Ds MkIII came out at only 21Mpx because this implied that the replacement for the 5D would be smaller…

But my fears were unfounded, the 5D MkII is indeed 21 Megapixels, creating images that are 5616 x 3744 pixels — at 300 dpi that is 18.72″ x 12.48″; at 150 dpi which is the limit for sharp ink jet prints, the MkII images are 37.5″ x 25″ — PERFECT for my needs. Laforet says it looks at least as good as the 1Ds MkIII, and the specs imply that the MkII is a little better than the most expensive model.

There are many incremental improvements to the 5D, but when I took it out of the box and turned it on I immediately felt right at home. A couple of Custom Function tweaks and everything was just where I was expecting it - with one exception. The new hi-res screen is beautiful and Canon finally has a decent font for the menus. The new menu system is the same as the 40D/50D/MkIII and much faster to get around on. The functions on the top panel buttons have been rearranged, but the new arrangement makes more sense to me and so while it is different, it’s better.

The only big user experience issue is the Delete Button — it is exactly where I expect the Play button to be at the bottom left corner of the rear panel. I am frequently confronted with “Cancel … Erase” when I just want to look at an image. Fortunately the Delete button has no function when the camera is not already displaying an image so I haven’t deleted anything yet and my thumb seems to have already learned to grip the camera a little higher than before.

Hard to make grand pronouncements about image quality after only 12 hours, but I can say this: the images are beautiful! I’m not sure I will go as far as the Canon people and say the noise is two stops better, but it’s easily one stop better. The standard speeds go up to ISO 6400 and I wouldn’t have any hesitation to use any of them if necessary, just as I would use 3200 on the 5D to shoot concerts, events and on the street. ISO 800 is the new 400, definitely.

As far as the extended speeds of ISO 12800 and 25600, I would regard them as emergency only (funny that 800 used to be for emergencies only, eh?) Lots of chroma noise that doesn’t clean up well even with Noise Ninja. But Jupiter and a crescent moon, handheld at 1/100@f/4? Just writing that is exciting — but after the intoxication wears out, 1/20@f/4 at ISO 6400 (with IS) is a much saner choice. And didn’t we used to worry about noise at ISO 3200? These links are all processed with Lightroom –> Photoshop and Noise Ninja, so they represent a best-case noise scenario.

I loved the Live View feature of the 40D, but the autofocus was so convoluted that it wasn’t worth much off of a tripod. Now at least you get contrast-detection autofocus, so the 5D MkII autofocuses like your point-and-shoot. In other words, slowly. But definitely an improvement when the camera is over your head in a crowd.

Which brings me to the most buzz-worthy feature: VIDEO!

To me this is big, not for what it is but for what it represents. This is video unlike anything your DVCAM or HDV camera can produce: cinematic in scope, fabulous in no light (see previous paragraphs), with all the narrow-focus creative possibilities that the lenses in your bag bring to the table. If you’re already shooting video you need this camera.

But remember that just like in big-time movies, you or your assistant need to be a focus-puller — super thin depth of field on a moving subject (that’s what makes the 5DII “cinematic”) requires extraordinary care with focus. Manual focus. The Live View contrast detect auto focus does work - when you press the focus button - but the image jumps while it’s focusing so you don’t really want to do this in the middle of a shot. I’m gonna get me some high powered reading glasses to get my eye an inch off that LCD screen, or else run a larger monitor off the built-in HDMI port to focus on.

But as a photographer, all this video buzz is missing the point:

The 5D MkII is an exemplary still camera, a wonderful evolutionary step from the original 5D that does the same thing bigger and better. With the same autofocus system as the original 5D and only a slightly improved frame rate (3.9 fps), the Mk II is not responsive enough for serious sports shooters, although more casual sports shooters like myself will be happy with the performance. But for almost anyone else, this is a great camera: fairly small and affordable from a Pro standpoint; great performance in most any situation that doesn’t include race cars or hockey pucks; big, sharp and clean images. And video is the icing on the cake.

Equipment, Photography