EDIT: Next batch will go on sale Tuesday 22nd May at 11am Eastern USA time and 9PM Eastern USA Time! Sorry these are in so short supply but demand is huge and each one is handmade. Kessler Crane are looking for new factories to help make more but quality is paramount. The add to cart option goes live at the Kessler Site here at the above times.

Also check out these excellent new  Kessler Crane products! The low profile ball head is an excellent addition to the Pocket Dolly!

Also to make all your cameras of all sizes completely locked down on your heads I cannot recommend enough the  fantastic new quick release plates which adhere to the Arca standard size. ROCK SOLID!

The new quick release plate system

The new Kessler low profile ball head

Low profile ball head on slider caddy

ball head with new multi angle plate

Philip Bloom Signature Series Pocket Dolly Overview from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Kessler Crane Philip Bloom Pocket Dolly Review from Chris Weatherly on Vimeo.

The 3 foot version

Honestly, I find this hard to believe myself, but I actually have had a piece of gear made to my specifications and being sold with my name on it! Blimey! I am a very humble guy and am utterly flattered that this has been made! I cannot thank Eric Kessler enough! Although doesn’t a Philip Bloom Pocket Dolly sound a bit wrong and kind of blow up? Not that I could imagine anyone EVER wanting one of those (apart from my cats?!)

So…finally after much teasing, the “Philip Bloom Signature Edition” Pocket Dolly is out for sale, both in 2 foot and 3 foot versions…and before you ask, yes I can write and that is my actual signature not some font (which a lovely lady friend said she liked the dolly but didn’t like the font! )

With the advent of DSLRs shooting video, sliders have become an essential part of any filmmaker’s kit. The ability to do small dolly moves can make your shot so much more cinematic.

I have been using various sliders for almost two years and none of them ever fulfilled my needs completely. Too heavy, not smooth enough etc…

The Kessler Crane Cineslider has been by far the greatest slider I have ever used with two downsides for me. The size and weight. I fly a lot and it is simply too big without its own case, and it needs support on either end ideally or a heavy duty tripod. I often use lightweight tripods and wanted the design of the Cineslider combined with the weight of the Kessler Crane Pocket Dolly. The Pocket Dolly V2 is a superb dolly but I personally missed the features of the Cineslider.

With a 16mm Bolex on it!!

The 2 Foot version

This is the best piece of kit I have ever used and I am incredibly proud for it be the first piece of gear to ever bear my name!

It is completely compatible with the Elektra Drive and Oracle motorised system. Simply remove the drag control and fit the motor on exactly as you would do with the Cineslider.

This slider is SERIOUSLY smooth, I call it a “one take slider”, you only need to do the shot again if you cock up, not the gear sticking on you!

It comes as a kit only with the outrigger feet, lovely case, dolly 2 foot or 3 foot and the flat head tripod adaptor. Both the 3 foot and 2 foot are $995 intro price, then it’s $1,095 after the first 12 have gone…I LOVE this dolly. Yes it is more money than the Pocket Dolly V2 but it is essentially a lightweight Cineslider with all the perks of that model and then some, you get the outrigger feet and head mount too. The dolly is also tested for completely smoothness to a 100 feet using a laser for pinpoint accuracy.

Measuring tape for use with elektra drive and oracle motorized system

2 nights in Mallory Square from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Shot on the Canon 5D MK II to test out the Kessler Crane Pocket Jib and the new special Philip Bloom Pocket Dolly.

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Filmed over two evenings at Mallory Square in Key West, Florida

EDIT: I have now done my full video review and I have changed my opinion on some of what I have written below. Watch the video and see what I have changed opinion wise and do check out the footage!!

The reaction from some quarters to the mk3 has been astonishing. Some rants have been so out of perspective it’s almost chucklesome. A devoted DSLR video community has built up over the past 3 and a half years and followings to certain cameras is reminiscent of MAC vs PC…but we must not forget the most important thing. These are just cameras! You are the most important part!

I will be doing some tweaks to this review (as always) but will be out of contact completely from the 31st March to the 8th of April so I won’t be able to answer any questions during this period.

Canon 5Dmk3 video review from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

The MkII as we all know changed the whole industry enormously. The progressive thinkers amongst us say it was for the better, the more stuck in the mud ones who wanted the industry to never move forward said it was a bad thing. Democratisation of filmmaking and gear for me IS a good thing, as it gives everyone a chance to create rather than only the elite who can afford the gear. Yes, we do end up with a lot of crap, but we also end up with whole lot of great new work that would never have existed had it not been for this revolution. If just 1 out of 100 new shooters is creating said great new work, then that is one more talented individual who has been discovered.

The DSLR video market has been interesting to watch evolve, but it’s been mostly frustrating. We have had incremental improvements in features from Canon, but zero improvement in image quality since day one. Nikon have been incredibly slow to act, despite coming out with the first DSLR with video, the D90. The D7000 was the first half-capable DSLR from them to shoot video, but that has been it! The D800 and D4 I have yet to try. Hopefully soon, but I am hearing incredibly mixed reports.

Panasonic and their consumer “DSLR,” the mirror-less GH2 has been an odd one. Out of the box it’s a nice camera. Nothing incredible. It has taken very talented hackers and programmers to release the potential of its excellent (albeit smaller than we would want) sensor. The detail from it at the high bit-rate of 170mb/s has been astonishing as you can see in my Christmas shootout.

Sony have been very lacklustre. I like the picture out of the mirror-less NEX5N and shot this little piece with it and I love the image, but it has many issues. No audio in, terrible rolling shutter artefacts and low bit rate. I also have the NEX-7, a nicer camera to use but the image quality is not much better, perhaps even inferior? I have some footage that has needed editing for about 2 months now and my review is WELL overdue. I do promise to get it up soon, but it too suffers terrible rolling shutter issues and the low light sensitivity is worse than the 5N due to the increased MP count. I bought and sold the A77. I loved the viewfinder, hated everything else about it. Even though all the Sonys have 50p at 1080p, the bit-rate is halved when you turn that into slow motion, meaning a miserly 14mb/s or less, which falls apart very easily in post. I also could not get an adaptor to use my Nikon lenses with that camera that didn’t have glass in it (softening my lenses) which meant having to buy just Alpha/ Minolta lenses. No thanks.

Large sensor camcorders have come along, first the nice but flawed AF100 (an update must be due soon!). Then the rather excellent but chunky F3, under-performing in camera but with S-Log and a 444 recorder it’s right up there with the best cameras out there. There’s the very impressive image-wise FS100 from Sony again, a pain in the arse to shoot with as there are no ND filters, a poorly placed LCD and a myriad of buttons pretty much all in the wrong places…BUT very impressive never the less, lovely detail and image with 28mb/s 1080p 50fps overcrank. Much better than their DSLRs.

The Canon C300 is the king of the crop for me out of these, not taking into account it’s almost 2.5x more than the FS100. It’s a joy to use, shoots wonderful footage, and has great build quality. It’s just priced out of a lot of people’s budgets. Especially current DSLR shooters.

So along comes the MkIII finally. It’s been 3 and a half years since the release of the MkII and oh does the DSLR video market DESPERATELY need its champion back and better than ever…the question is “is it any better, and if so how much better?”

I received it in Auckland at a Canon sponsored event I am holding about the C300. Canon New Zealand were kind enough to grab me the first one that landed in the country, so I bought it from them and started shooting as soon as I could.

I have yet to edit anything together, as the stuff I have shot so far has been pretty bitty. Mostly of high detailed shots with a few low light ones. Much, much more needs to be shot before I can form a really solid opinion. But I can certainly give you my first impressions.

Thanks to Sarah Estela for her photos here!

LOOK!! Headphone plugged in whilst recording sound!!

Let’s start with the good stuff. Always good to be positive first…right?

Sound is MASSIVELY improved. We now have a headphone jack. The ability to monitor audio WHILST recording is basic but essential, and this is the first DSLR on sale to do this. I recorded lots of ambient sound with the excellent new Rode Stereo Video Mic Pro. You can adjust levels WHILST recording, and there are meters on the screen. Sound recording in camera is now a reality. Are the pre-amps any better? Hard to tell with the limited sound recording I have done, to be honest. But the systems works well. I will show all this in action in the full review.

No obvious moire or aliasing that I can see. I have not shot a lot of 720p 50p stuff, but from what I have seen it looks a lot better than the 7D equivalent. Great to have it in a full-frame body. I need to fully test moire and aliasing on more man-made things than the nature I have shot. But no coloured moire on water or on other previous culprits have appeared.

Video mode is easy to get to now and there are lots more options, including an i-frame recording format which gives us up to around 90 mb/s compression. Way better than before.

Stills mode is massively improved but that is not the reason I bought the camera. It’s all about the video quality for this review, but wow the stills function improvement is HUGE.

Build quality is just superb. It feels like a solid camera, and so far it has got rather wet due to the New Zealand weather and it is still working just fine!

Low light is ENORMOUSLY improved. I have not gone all the way to 12,800…it’s noisy but usable if absolutely needed. More importantly 3200 is pretty damn nice… the mk2 compared to this is just plain ugly!. We can’t go up as high as an FS100 or C300, both of which look pretty damn good considering the absurdly high ISOs at that level…but this is a big improvement…

No drop in resolution when you hit record on the camera. Very useful for monitoring, but not clean….more on this shortly.

General functionality in video mode seems much better, and we now have clip spanning meaning we can record clips up to a length of 29 minutes and 59 seconds (the limit imposed by the EU for tax reasons to keep duty from being applied to it, as 30 minutes or more would mean it is classified as a video camera meaning more tax). We now finally have a proper over-heating warning on the camera which the MkII didn’t have. Noise would seep into the image when the camera overheated without letting us know!

The not so good stuff

Resolution, as in detail of the image, looks maybe a tiny bit better but that could be purely psychological as I want…no, need it to be!! My good friend and fellow mk3 owner James Miller has posted his thoughts on this and says the Mk3 looks softer than the Mk2! I need to do more testing and side by side to check this out. James, like myself owns an FS100 which is WAY sharper, and he has shot with the C300 which makes the mk3 look like standard definition in comparison. It’s not standard definition at all, and there are reports of about 800 lines being resolved on this camera…but when you use a high end camera like the C300, it’s hard to look at the mk3 resolution and like it. Once you have tasted Hendricks gin it’s hard to drink Beefeater…Gin drinkers will get my analogy!

For me, resolution was the thing I wanted to really see an improvement with. I shoot a lot of deep depth of field high detailed shots. Yes the moire and aliasing is gone it seems, and this is wonderful, but the detail is rather muddy on high detail shots. There are loads of slightly graded frame grabs below this section for you to have a look at. Heavily compressed though, as the internet here in NZ is slower than a snail on a day off. Once I get my video cut, you will get a better sense. That will be next week as I have work getting in the way! PLEASE CHECK MY EDIT BELOW AS TO REVISED THOUGHTS ON RESOLUTION…

Rolling shutter artefacts seem barely improved. Still clearly visible. A disappointment for sure.

No clean HDMI output. Both the Nikon D800 and D4 have this. Yes, using an external HDMI recorder, especially one connected via the god-awful mini HDMI connector is not ideal (I would rather have a fantastic internal codec) but I want it and this camera needs it. Obviously with the C300 Canon has a market to protect, but these cameras are so starkly different that I don’t see a conflict. Canon….please update firmware to give us this…don’t let Nikon have the upper hand here!

For the some reason, they have moved the punch in button for focus check from top right to the left hand side. Odd and impractical. It doesn’t work whilst recording still, so no confidence check there.

The Sony NEX 5N, 7 and A77 offer peaking to help us get focus whilst recording. None of that fancy stuff here! A real shame. A Zacuto EVF will help you here.

This camera needs a screen that flips out. Look at this photo below as this shows how I had to shoot today. Silly! From what I gather it is to do with the weather proofing of the camera.

Lots of NLEs are struggling with the new codec…this will be addressed with time though.

So that’s it for now. Loads for me to look at and digest. Disappointing in a few areas, very pleasing in others. A bit of a mixed bag really. The problems is that the mk2 blew us away. In 3 and a half years our expectations have been raised enormously. We have been dreaming of things, of improvements…things that won’t make us better shooters BUT will make our life easier. After all, the full frame image for me is still a thing of incomparable beauty that even the C300 cannot replicate!

I will be shooting some more over the next few days with my proper review up after that. I may change my opinion on some of the above…I may not! First impressions are important, but any camera takes time to get to know how to get the best out of it.

In the meantime, is the camera worth the upgrade from the MkII? Well the positives are pretty positive, the sound and lack of moire and aliasing are huge. The big question is really the resolution. I will know more once I have done my side by sides. If you want to order one, then I am always grateful for any purchases made through any of my affiliates. This site is very expensive to run and every little helps! So, thanks! The blog is not my day job. Shooting is, and this takes up almost as much time!

EDIT: After doing some experimenting do some work on it in post. Bit of grading and post sharpening the footage is coming to life beautifully. Detail that is not there before is coming out….thankfully! I am still shooting footage and testing camera out. I will update this review in a few days…

Check out the before and after below and another shot with sharpness added back in post…works a treat!

Straight out of camera

Graded and sharpened in post

With sharpness in post added

BELOW ARE SOME FRAME GRABS…some minor colour work to make them sexier…compressed though!

My assistant on many of my shoots and a great cameraman in his own right, James Miller, has taken drastic measures to increase the disappointing sharpness results that he has found with his new Canon 5d mk3. I have sharpened in post with dramatic improvements, and I am much happier now I can see the mk3 footage sing…is this a better solution? No…it invalidates your warranty and is rather tricky but its results are fascinating…just not for me! I do not advocate doing this! I would call this Magic Lantern for the mk3 without the magic!

UPDATE: Video day 2

Description from Vimeo:

Popped down to Brighton, on the UK’s South coast today to shoot some footage with the 5DMK3. This camera has had one of the 2 OLPF removed.

Graded footage, no sharpening in camera or in post.
The images & stills from today suffered from heat rising on the ground and gives a shimmer, this is not aliasing.

Can’t remember how the pre mod looked now so you will have to judge.

—-

Here is James with more:

Well it’s a little crazy really, opening up a brand new camera and ripping the insides out, but this is something I was wondering about for a while now. Going all the way back to when the Canon 5DMK2 came into production. But with the MK2 due to the way video image was created, line skipping etc, removal of the OPLF (Optical Low Pass Filter) or Anti Alias filter was a pointless exercise, well at least on the video front.

Some photographers prefer cameras without these filters or a camera that counter-acts the filters like the Nikon D800E. This has always led me to pixel peep various cameras over the years.

The filters are there to stop the high frequency detail reaching the sensor and making it, in the end, produce aliasing artefacts, that also cause the dreaded moire.
There are horizontal and vertical filters on the Canon together with an IR cut filter (that aqua colour one). They are made from lithium niobate and crystalline quartz and come in different thickness and layers depending on the application.

One US company that will remove or replace these filters is: MAXMAX  http://www.maxmax.com

One of the two OLPF removed

I knew that the sensor had gapless microlenses and did not suffer from the same line skipping of the older MK2, so after the initial disappointment of the softer than expected image I set about this daunting task.

It takes about 15mins to get to the sensor block once you know your way round. After removing the back case you set about removing the circuit board. A circuit board with about fifteen fiddly connections.

View once the rear cover is removed

Once removed, a small metal plate is all that is stopping you from accessing the sensor mount.

The sensor mount is a 3 point, sprung and screwed in aid to level the sensor flange distance. Removing three screws will release the sensor assembly from the body. Then I uncoupled the filter from its clip over mount from the sensor. The filter is also the anti dust system that vibrates when you turn the camera off, this will no longer function.

Sensor block and mount

You really need to replace the OLPF with a piece of optical glass of the same thickness to maintain the optical balanced path. As I did not have a replacement piece of glass, for now I screwed down the sensor to its smallest flange distance to try and achieve infinity focus.

So if this all didn’t work out and the image was an aliasing mess, I would put it all back together, probably with the help of a Canon engineer. I figured that a shutter assembly service/ replace would have to remove the sensor so to recalibrate the flange distance can’t be any more cost than this.

Canon 5Dmk3 Sensor Unit

Sensor unit removed showing shutter curtain

First results on Vimeo:

Canon 5Dmk3 OLPF removal, first results

Frame grab after removal

Before removal

After removal

Note images taken at different times. Contrast and light dramatically different on each shot.

Draw backs, If you don’t get the sensor inline and level set your image may suffer. This may result in poor AF performance, however the micro focus adjustment in the camera on Canon lenses really helps here. Dust, there is no self cleaning after the removal.

What is the aliasing like now? Well I was prepared for a terrible mess, but I was really happy with the first few tests. I can’t really hardly spot any problems of Aliasing and thus Moire. And also I think the RAW still images have benefited from this also.

I need to test more, and advice would be not to touch your lovely new Canon, as it will invalidate the warranty. But if you are feeling brave I would suggest contacting a company like MAXMAX who will advise you.

Based on Neutral preset zero sharpness, | -2 contrast, | -2 Sats

Quick next day update (1):

I have stripped the camera again to adjust the back focus, shame you have to take the main circuit board all the way to get to just one of the adjustment screws. That makes this the 4th time I have had to remove those wires!!

The camera is now fully back together instead of bits of gaffer tape. I can now get infinity focus a result, as I though I would need an additional piece of glass to maintain the focus.

Even the AF seems to function, I’ll test that later.

Off out to shoot now. I’ll post some more video later.

Hard Boiled Sweets is a British gangster movie set in the Essex town of Southend a mixture of Elmore Leonard  and film Noir…but set in England. I watched the finished film yesterday and it was a brilliant, entertaining movie. The added cool thing is this was shot entirely on a Canon 5DmkII and it looks fantastic.

I have speaking to director David LG Hughes for quite some time about the project and I was asked to be DP for it. A very flattering offer but due to my overseas work commitments for the scheduled shoot and my limited experience in drama work at that point, my main field being documentary I was not able to do it…but he got the excellent Sara Deane to lens it for him. It really is a beautiful looking film.

David, Sara and colourist Gavin have kindly written some words for me about the film, their influences, the shoot, dealing with the DSLR limitations and of course post.

The film opens at the Empire Leicester Square on March 9th and will play for the rest of the month. It debuts on blu ray the following month. If you want to see a terrific british film on the big screen then get down there and if you have never seen a 5DmkII movie on the big screen now is your chance, as Red Tails doesn’t look like it is getting a release outside of the US!

PHILIP BLOOM (PB) IS IN BOLD BLACK

WRITER/DIRECTOR DAVID LG HUGHES (DLGH) IS IN NORMAL BLACK

DoP SARA DEANE (SD) IS IN RED

POST PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR GAVIN BURRIDGE (GB) IS IN BLUE

PB: When you made the short film was it always the plan to make a feature based upon it?

DLGH: Absolutely. Just not this feature. After I made the short, A GIRL AND A GUN it got picked up by iTunes and did really well. It made the top ten of all the download charts – US, UK, Germany, wherever it was released. The sales agent for A GIRL AND A GUN told me it was one of the top 5 selling shorts worldwide on iTunes. So with that in the bank I thought I’d write a big budget blockbuster that would cost $50 million dollars to make. And guess what? No one was interested in reading a $50 million dollar project by a guy who’d made one short, let alone funding it! So I stuck that script in a drawer and came up with something way cheaper. And that was HARD BOILED SWEETS.

PB: How long and how hard was it to get to the point where you could make the feature? 

DLGH: Starting wasn’t so hard. I had 2 great actors in A GIRL AND A GUN – Ian Hart and Paul Freeman. Plus the producer, Margaret Matheson, who has a legendary CV. She has been my unofficial mentor since the short film. Everything that’s happened is down to the kindness that those 3 people have shown me. They have brilliant reputations and names within the industry. And they stood by my side and said we’re making HARD BOILED SWEETS with Dave. A lot of people have worked really hard and given so much to the film. But Ian, Paul and Margaret came onboard first. And without them I’d still dreaming about making a movie.

PB: The cast were great. How did you attract such a talented group, especially established names like the legendary Paul Freeman (Belloq in Raiders of the lost ark) and the genius Ian Hart? 

DLGH: Well, Ian and Paul were both in the short, A GIRL AND A GUN. And we got Ian first. Because my buddy and composer Tom E Morrison’s kids went to school with Ian’s at the time. And Tom is this incredible guy. He just makes things happen. So he said let me take your script to the school gate and give it to Ian. Which he did. And I thought we’d never hear from him. Because I’m naturally pessimistic! But 2 days later my phone goes and it’s Ian telling me he’s in. And from there Margaret asked a casting agent for a favor and he got the script to Paul, who thought it was a blast and came onboard.

And after the short – where we all got on great – we stayed in touch. Stayed pals. So I could send them scripts for feedback which was so valuable. Getting brilliant actors to give you feed back, amazing. I learnt so much. Improved so much.

Then I came up with HARD BOILED SWEETS and showed them first and they said yes. And then we got a wonderful casting director called Jane Anderson onboard and she brought together the rest of the cast. And of course it was a film with Ian Hart and Paul Freeman, executive produced by Margaret Matheson. So it meant something rather than by a guy who’s made one short and is clueless.

In fact, the whole structure of the movie came from my desire to work with great actors. We had no money. So I knew I couldn’t expect to get two or three really good actors to give me a month. So I wrote this large ensemble piece hoping I could get lots of great actors to give me a week, or a few days. And it worked out.

Scot Williams

Sara Deane

PB: Shooting…why did you choose the 5DmkII?

DLGH: The idea to shoot on the 5D was originally mine – I take full responsibility, because it wasn’t always easy for the DoP Sara Deane to work with. You know, I saw the Vincent Laforet’s ‘Revererie’ and was just blown away. And then I started to internet research the camera like mad. And I found your site, and I bought your F Stop Academy tutorial. Pretty much everything I learnt came from your site and tutorials, And I actually went out and bought the camera and 3 lenses, and that’s what we shot on.

Originally I thought I could teach myself to shoot it. So I’d direct, stick one of those zoom microphones on there and record sound too. Easy, right? And then I came to my senses and found Sara Deane.

And this is really where Sara needs to come in…

SD: I came on board the project 2 weeks before shooting so by then the decision had already been made to shoot on a 5D. I think Dave had seen a short film shot in the US using all available light and he was really impressed with the camera. I guess within our budget limitations shooting on the 5d made everything possible – in terms of that I think it really is a revolutionary camera – a few years ago buying a camera of the equivalent value you’d get something like a Z1 and I just don’t think you could /should shoot a feature on that, unless that’s the style you’re after! I had just shot another feature in Northumberland “Verity’s Summer” on the 5D so I was already pretty aware of its limitations – small latitude which is more like shooting on reversal really – you have to be bang on with the exposure especially in high contrast scenes because you just can’t bring it back and the image does fall apart quite quickly in the grade if your not careful, moire – even on things like hair sometimes! Rolling shutter – meaning fast pans/tracks and energetic hand held are out. That was part of the reason for using a lot of slow developing tracking shots but also we wanted to pull the viewer into the story and that kind of camera movement does suck you in. Also we wanted the world the characters inhabited to be quite heightened and stylised so we were after something slick – no hand held kitchen sink style.

There were also obviously some great things about the camera -  lovely shallow depth of field, it’s small, meaning you can use lightweight sticks and accessories and it’s great for rigging in small places – we put it in a fridge, and a drawer whilst we were shooting and did a lot of overhead shots which were very fast to do as its such a lightweight camera it was very simple for Kevin Foy our fantastic grip to do a goal post rig. On the one hand its great for car rigs as it is so small you can use a 3 way limpet mount and get it in loads of places easily and quickly, but the massive downside is the vibration problems and wobble you get that just can’t really be fixed in post.

We shot using Canon L series zooms which I think are great for the price – they are still super sharp  at 2.8 and they match each other well. Obviously there are lots of other older lenses out there that flare nicely and have a nice soft quality but it can be tricky to find a nice matching set and the L series were what we had! The main problem with these are the lack of accurate markings and I like quite shallow depth of field so I was extremely lucky to have an amazing focus puller Adam Conlon that could actually do it and manage not to throw me or the camera out the window when his marks went out of line on those lenses!

The other big annoyance shooting with the 5D was the monitoring situation – when we turned over the aspect ratio goes out of whack as the camera drops down to 480p and you loose all image for quite a few seconds, we were shooting 2.35:1 so trying to mark up the monitor was a massive pain so in the end I think we might have stoppped using it. Also it meant Dave had to lean over my shoulder to be able to see anything – pretty annoying for him!

There are a lot of different locations in the script which helps to create a nice pace to the story and was great to help create a really rich and varied atmosphere. I mostly used hard and directional lighting often creating pools of light for people to step into and I was perfectly happy for the light to be unmotivated as we wanted to create this heightened and stylised world; it was more about it being stylish and bringing out the characters.

We had quite a few different gaffers over the period of the shoot and we were lucky to have a really hard working team. Panalux and Panavision were amazingly helpful supplying the lighting gear and camera accessories. We didn’t have a genny so were mostly working with lamps up to 2.5K HMI’s but we had all the lights we needed for the job which really made the stylised look we were after possible. Mostly we had 2-3 sparks, a gaffer, focus puller, grip and a dit.

PB: It has a very slick style which I loved. What were your influences and how did you decide upon this? 

DLGH: Well, going in my thought was this is not going to look like any other low budget English film. So hand held camera was banned. Naturalistic lighting was banned. I was hoping we could make the film look like the abandoned love child of David Lynch and Michael Mann, if they’d had a dirty weekend in a cheap Southend hotel. And one of them had been a woman…

But really, I just wanted to make a film noir. A modern film noir. A movie like ‘The Grifters’ or ‘Out of Sight’ or anything by those two guys – Lynch and Mann. Their work epitomizes what I love about how cinema can look. I’m not saying we achieved it. But it was definitely the aim.

SD: When Dave and I first met and talked about HARD BOILED SWEETS the references he gave me for the look of the film were “Narc”(grittier) “The Grifters” (Glossier) and “Out of Sight” (somewhere between the two and perfect in every way for us).

‘Out of Sight’ creates a lovely rich colourful world with stylised unmotivated lighting and we wanted to bring some noirish elements to that. As HARD BOILED SWEETS has quite a few characters with different stories running simultaneously until the climax we thought it would be a great idea to give each different story its own feeling and colour palette so Shrewd Eddie ‘The Gobstopper’ (Paul Freeman) lives in the moonlight,  Freddie ‘The Fruit Bon Bon’ (Rene Zagger) the London policeman  has a grittier urban sodium streetlit world and Gerry ‘The Chocolate Lime’ (Adrian Bower) the pimp, lives in a seedy tobacco brown and Porsche ‘The Sherbert Lemon’ (Ty Glazier) beauty has a softer cleaner colour palette. Leroy ‘The Acid Drop’ (Danni Sapani) is meant to be an extremely scary character and so we wanted to enhance that by putting hardly any light in his eyes and keeping him in shadow so you really can’t tell what he’s thinking. ‘The Glacier Mint’ (Scot Williams) is from a flourescent greenish world – bringing with him the institutionalised feel of prison.

DLGH: And Sara loved my references. So we were on the same page from day one. And then Gavin Burridge – the post production supervisor – has this unbelievable background in high end post production. Gavin know how I like slick. And he spent 4 months grading to make sure we got the most out of the images.

SD: Grading wise we had a fantastic colourist, Gavin Burridge who spent literally weeks grading and doing sky replacements to turn Southend into a sunny blue skied seaside town. He also did an amazing job fixing the skies for the night time pier sequence when we were shooting through the night and all of the fairground lights in the distance went out and the sun came up. He also added a lovely film grain effect to the grade that just softens and gives more texture to the HD look

Sara Deane

Rene Zagger and Scot Williams

Rene Zagger and Sara Dean

Paul Freeman

Paul Freeman

The legendary Paul Freeman

Margaret Matheson & David LG Hughes

Laura Greenwood and Ty Glaser

Colourist Gavin Burridge

GB: Having had a long term working relationship with Dave Hughes going back to A GIRL AND A GUN, Dave kindly asked us if I would like to get involved in HARD BOILED SWEETS, which was a no brainer.

Dave and I spoke very early on in the process and having already edited and posted quite a few Canon 5D mkII productions from commercials,  promos and channel idents we looked at how we could get the most out of the footage Dave was about to shoot.

We decided to look at a comparison between the H.264 and re encoding the material to pro res 4444. Now we know that this is a bit of a up conversion but after taking the footage into autodesk smoke and put on a bit of a grade and doing a comparison the difference was clear to see.

Dave then went to work re encoding the Canon files into pro rez 4444 files taking all the meta data across, so if we did miss something we could go back to the original H.264 footage if needed.

We then took the whole FCP project onto our mac/raid system. This gave us the benefit of having both the offline and online on the same fiber attached raid.

Having then exported an XML file from FCP we then transferred this to our Autodesk smoke system.

This then gave us a seamless work flow from offline to online keeping the meta data in tack, making our life very easy when any editor changes happened.

The footage was hard ingested onto the raid using Autodesk internal DPX file formate which would give us total flexibility, as we used a couple of Autodesk Flare seats to help with VFX’s and matting work.

Dave and I had at this point already chatted at great length as to the look he would like.

Feature film and still ref were invaluable in this process as they gave me a real understanding to the kind of look and feel Dave wanted.

Dave continued to edit away as we started to break down each scene and start to decide what was needed.

We chose the option of Autodesk smoke because we found it to be the best option for our workflow. Unfortunately we never had the option of Autodesk Lustre at that time, but this will be added to the pipeline on Dave’s next film.

I knew we would like to separate and isolate as much as possible on each shot, so having some great vfx and roto artist on board enabled us to have total control over the grade.

Using the Canon 5D mkII, we found that once looking at the footage on our in house ezio cg232W in depth we found quite a bit of digital noise. This is where having Andy Howard on hand for our colour management came invaluable

We took the decision to set up a flame batch pipeline in Smoke on mac even though this not installed on the smoke mac version.

Instead we used the modular keyer as batch. This gave us the flexibility to introduce de noise at the very beginning of each shot then grade on top of this using our imported roto work to isolate.

We also introduced some grading techniques on top of this using logic ops, this gave us the use of various blending functions to create a look Dave was after whether this was in the the shadows or the mid range or in the high lights.

Along with this in this same batch we took the decision to re-introduce some film noise at the back end which we sampled from one of David’s favourite movies.

Using this batch style pipeline also gave us the flexibility to stabilize , replace vfx’s and re edit whenever needed.

Using the 5D mkII footage had it’s problems, which as long as everyone is aware of in the beginning isn’t a problem because everyone know what they are working with.

After spending several months grading ( longer then usual for a feature, but with no studio breathing down our necks) we got what we needed.

Elizabeth Berrington

Director David LG Hughes

David the director with Sara the DP

DLGH: I think this is a great time to add one of the best compliments the film has been given. When you deliver a film to a studio – as you’ll know, Philip – the movie has to go though QCing (Quality Control check). Basically some techno-whizz watches and studies every frame to check that everything is perfect. That everything that should be in focus is, that all the colours are legal, etc. etc. Well, the QCer for HARD BOILED SWEETS actually asked Gavin what film stock the movie had been shot on!

PB: Have you done a 35mm print? If so how does it look?

DLGH: No, but we’ve seen it projected from HDCam on to a cinema screen, and it looked amazing. Universal are having DCP’s made for the theatrical release – that’s what will be projected on to a cinema screen. And we’ll see that for the first time on March 9th at Leicester Square with everyone else when the film opens. Sara, Gavin and I (and a load of the cast and crew) are going to the evening screening at the Empire to watch the film with a paying audience for the first time. We can’t wait.

PB: Looking at the finished movie how happy are you and would you use the 5dMkII again?

Yes, absolutely. But it would depend on the project. I want to do an action movie next, and the rolling shutter doesn’t lend itself to that.  But I think it’s a brilliant tool, when you embrace it fully.

Technically I’m thrilled and creatively I had final cut, so take full responsibility!

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Finally!!

The first narrative feature that I have ever worked on. Lucasfilm’s “Red Tails” trailer was released on line today. I was the re shoot second unit  DSLR DP on it using Canon DSLRs and also camera C for the reshoots on the 1st unit. Check out my blog post about it here!

It was a fantastic experience, overwhelming at times. So looking forward to seeing the finished movie. Got my own movies to DP soon this year. Two of them including the sure to be Zombie masterpiece “Invasion of the note quite dead!”

It looks like a lot of fun and a fair few of my shots are in the trailer! Bet you can’t spot them! I’m not going to give exact timecodes. Just let you sit and wonder! (Clue…2nd unit means action shots)

Enjoy!!

Also check my short film “Legends” at the bottom of this post, which helped me land the gig and of course my Skywalker Ranch blog post which was the film that I shot in a day at cut the next morning and played on the big screen to George Lucas, Rich McCallum and Quentin Tarantino (!) that convinced Lucasfilm that Red Tails could use DSLRs!

Oh…do download the 1080 HD version and stick it up on your biggest screen. LOOKS AMAZING!

Behind the Scenes on Lucasfilm’s Red Tails with the Canon DSLRs from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Legends HD from Philip Bloom on Vimeo. Shot on EX3 and Letus Ultimate

Oh and if you are wondering about my imdb credit. That will be down to union rules am afraid…oh well!!

I have been using Nikon DSLRs longer than I have Canon ones. I shot my first DSLR video with the rather poor video function of the Nikon D90. I have bought the D3s for its (still not beaten) low light video function, the D7000 and D5100 and been disappointed each and every time. But I am very optimistic this time.

I know I am late to the party in writing this blog post, but work has gotten in the way. I have been shooting in Dubai for the past ten days and had very little free time. So it’s catch up time. I won’t go into all the things it does, especially with stills. I am interested in video and below is what excites me. I am hoping to get some time with the camera in the next two weeks so I can report back on if it’s good or not. I have also not had any time with the new Canon 1DX which also looks interesting. Love to try that too!

It’s the first full frame DSLR with full HD video from Nikon AND it also can crop in video mode to 1.5x or 2.7x. If this is implemented without image artifacts, this could be incredibly useful. Given us three different focal lengths off of one prime. Very useful for fast doco shooting that I do.

This is what excites me…

We are promised next to none of that nasty moire and aliasing we all hate from DSLR video.

A HEADPHONE JACK! I know, basic, but this is the first time there is such a crazy science fiction feature on a DSLR! Finally we can monitor the audio we record. Basic, but HUGE!

Clean 8 Bit 422 out of the HDMI. No more H.264 nastiness if we don’t want it. Couple it with an AJA KiPRO mini, Atomos Samurai and away you go. A first for a DSLR. BUT I understand you cannot record on the CF cards at the same time. One or the other.

Incredible low light performance due to the reasonable MP count. This should be better than the D3s which was usable at 50,000 ISO!

So I have not shot with it or seen it yet, hopefully I will very soon. As soon as I do I will report back. Below is Dan Chung’s video of Nikon’s James Banfield going through the camera and an official D4 video from Nikon which looks terrific!

Shooting on the 5DmkII for LUCASFILM

“Which camera should I buy?” I get asked this the most. Apart from which lenses should I buy. There is a lot of confusion amongst potential buyers as to which camera to buy. Not just from the Canon line, that is the Rebel T2i/ 55D, 7D, 5DmkII and 1DmkIV but also the GH1, GH2 and the various Nikons.

It’s almost impossible for me to recommend which model camera to buy because they all have their plusses and minuses and many of those are subjective, down to personal opinion. What may be important to me may not be important to you. Even when context is provided such as they are mostly shooting music videos, events, documentaries, movies etc then I still cannot answer.

What I am going to do in this blog post is list what I believe are the pros and cons of each camera.Take that info and then decide for yourself what is the most important for you. For example some people love the look of the 5DmkII over the others whilst others find the shallow depth of field too much…

I am in the fortunate position of owning most of the cameras in this post so I feel quite qualified to give my opinion on this topic…but to be honest any one of these will give you great results, it’s not all about the camera…that is just a tool…but obviously some of the features of one will appeal to you more than others.

Here is a sensor chart showing you the different sizes available in the market. I will be referring to this a few times in the blog.

Nikon D3s

First off let us go over the non Canon options as that’s easier.  I have to say unless you have an huge array of G series Nikon lenses (if you have manual aperture Nikon lenses then your lenses will work will the Canons using a simple adaptor like the Fotodiox Pro) then forget the D90, D5000 and D300s as they don’t offer full manual control in video mode making them a huge pain in the backside to shoot with. The only Nikon that offers full manual control is the D3s. To get the full manual mode you need to be in tripod live view mode rather than hand held live view mode.

What do I think of the D3s? It is an incredible stills camera and a so-so video camera. It has a full frame sensor, one of only two cameras in this blog to have that. The thing that made me buy it was the absolutely incredible low light performance as highlighted in the Zacuto Shootout. It was this alone that made me buy it. In my low light test I shot at 25,000 ISO and got incredibly clean pictures due to a brilliant NR chip in there for video. This makes it outperform all the Canon DSLRs by a huge margin in low light. It’s just a shame that it is not as impressive in general use. All the Nikons are 720p 24p only too. That is not a huge dealbreaker but it’s a limitation. As is the old fashioned MJPEG recording format and 5 minute clip length. The HDMI live out seems to be slower than 24p when you hit record.

I bought this camera as a low light tool to supplement my Canon DSLRs, not to shoot whole projects on. For some of my documentary work low light will be extreme and this camera will shine. I will be able to shoot in very low light without having to shoot wide open with crazy shallow DOF. To think I could shoot in candlelight at F4 and it will look gorgeous…That’s epic for me. Shooting wide open is great but sometimes you don’t want that crazy shallow DOF, you want to control it. This camera will give you that option. You can stop right down and with the incredible high ISO you can shoot in not much light and still get exposure!

Sound wise it has a crappy built in mic like most of the cameras here but you can put an external mic in, but there is limited control of the audio with no meters, but the ability to set 4 levels of sensitivity but more importantly no way to monitor it.

So that’s the Nikon D3s. A great stills camera with a killer low light video ability. Shame the rest is not great.

PROS: Full frame, INCREDIBLE low light in video

CONS: Expensive, 720p only, 24p only, 5 minute clips, MJPEG recording format, poor monitor out, no audio control.

Nikon D5100

Nikon’s answer to the T2i is a disappointment. Their first camera to feature full HD 25p but no manual controls. Simply a huge problem and unless fixed should be avoided.

Nikon D7000

The first full HD Nikon to feature full manual controls.

I like the image, very pleasing and low light is good. It has semi manual audio, HD HDMI (but not clean) out whilst recording (but also turns off the LCD like the Canons), it records full HD but only in 24p mode. For 30p and 25p it’s 720p only and there is no 50p or 60p. There also seems to be an issue that I cannot figure out. Where is the exposure meter in live view?

UPDATE: I tried shooting with it but the lack of meter is frustrating me too much, which is a shame as I think the image is really nice, good in low light. But until that meter is displayed it’s too annoying to shoot with. Why would they miss such a basic thing? Also the inability to change F-Stop after rolling is just plain dumb. I use older Nikon lenses so am ok with that, although I do have two newer ones and they have this issue.

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Pansonic GH1

The Panasonic GH1 I have had since April 2009. It’s not a DSLR as it has no mirror but is often bunched up in the term Video DSLRs as it is a still camera with a video function too. We really should not get hung up on names for these cameras.

What do I think of the GH1? Well I love the small size. Love the EVF, moveable LCD, ability to take so many different types of lenses due to the lack of mirror and of course the price. Downside is the 1080p bit rate if a bit stingy meaning it breaks ups quite easily when trying to grade it. The 720p mode seems to hold up better but it’s such a shame that the 1080p is lacking. The 720p mode is 50p or 60p depending on where you buy the camera.

The camera comes in different flavours depending on where you buy it. In the EU it is 25p in 1080p mode (embedded in a 1080i stream) and 50p in 720p mode, so great for slow motion. Record time is limited to 29.59 minutes for EU tax reasons. If it could record 30 minutes or more it would be classified as a video camera and therefore have higher tax. Other PAL countries get this camera also in 25p but with the record time limitation. The US gets it in 24p (again embedded in a 60i stream) and 60p in 720p mode with no record time limitations. All the Canon cameras shoot in either 24p, 25p or 30p. They are non regional specific. A big downer on these cameras.

It has the best built in mic on all of the cameras and it’s stereo, although again we have no headphone jack. NONE of the cameras in this test have a headphone jack! If you plug in a monitor it switches off when you hit record. A big downer really! That needs to be fixed in the GH2.

Negatives aside. It’s a great little camera. The stock lens has the most impressive auto focus I have ever seen on a video camera as it tracks people’s faces and with a large sensor like in this camera (four thirds) it makes a huge difference. This makes it ideal for steadicam work as you can let the focus do it’s thing. Normally I say DO NOT USE AUTO FOCUS on any video camera. Manual will always be the way to operate a camera for me until it can read my mind and know what I want to be in focus! The image out of the camera is also pretty damn good. Of course what I want is a GH2 with better bit rate and proper monitor out, a headphone jack and controllable audio levels. A lot of this camera is already very good, it just needs a bump up in specs…

Low light is not brilliant. I find 1600 ISO way too noisy. Even 800 is not great.

PROS: Cheap, light, small, 50p/60p mode in 720p, full HD, nice stereo mic, EVF, articulated LCD, great lens mount, some Panasonic lenses have amazing auto focus ability. No overheating

CONS: Weak AVCHD code, no HDMI out when recording, low light average performance, poor audio options again, recording limitations in EU,  geographically locked recording formats, 24p and 24p wrapped in 60i and 50i.

EDIT: With the third party hacked firmware by Tester 13 we can get native 24p and 25p and motion jpeg full hd in very high bit rate and much improved AVCHD. It’s a massive leap up but it’s still 3rd party and not officially supported. Read more about it here…The major issue is all new GH1s CANNOT be hacked as they have the latest firmware which is not hacked. SO BE CAREFUL if you go this route.

Panasonic GH2

I am very impressed with this update to the GH1. It is a big step up from the GH1 although there are a couple of key features missing.

There is finally a native 24p full HD mode  (called cinema mode) which records in the very acceptable 24mb/s. Unfortunately it is only 24p not 25p which as a European shooter I need for broadcast here. There is no 25p mode. There is a 50p mode in 720p which means you can simply drop every other frame so you can achieve 25p but this is not ideal. I REALLY hope this can be addressed with a firmware update.

HDMI is clean out, no graphics but I have not done any testing with the Nanoflash yet. Reports so far say the quality is lower than the recorded. I cannot confirm or deny yet.

Articulating screen is great and the EVF is improved over the GH1 so is very usable. It has a built in slow down to 80% mode (effectively giving you what 30p would be if you conformed to 24p) and a built in speed up motion of two steps that can give you effectively a basic undercranking.

The M43 sensor gives you around a 1.9x crop of a full frame due to it being a native 16×9 sensor

Audio meters can be displayed on the screen whilst recording. Sounds basic but so lacking from DSLRs. Still no headphone jack. You also have manual control over the audio, well a number of steps you can set it at. The built in stereo mic is not horrible. Check out the cooking piece below…all the sound other than sync was done with it.

Low light is a world away from the GH1 which had nasty lines come up at ISO 800. I have shot 3200 ISO and it is totally acceptable. A HUGE STEP UP.

It has an excellent feature called 1:1 sampling. It samples the centre of the sensor in which equates to 1920×1080 and records that meaning NO moire or aliasing and gives you a nice extra boost on your lenses with no loss in quality.

It takes any lenses with the right adaptor, even S16 with the 1:1 sampling. A big plus this.

Image quality is superb with very little moire and aliasing. Rolling shutter seems the same as the GH1. Some users are reporting it worse but I have not done a side by side comparison.

So all in all a big improvement over the Gh1 but PLEASE we NEEED 25p!!!!! If 25p is irrelevant to you this is simply one of the best “DSLRs” on the market for shooting video. The stills mode is pretty good too!

EDIT: Another firmware hack has made this a fantastic option. 25p, no recording time and high bitrate makes this a much more attractive camera.

PROS: Great image, great 24p mode. Minimal moire and rolling shutter, live HDMI out and clean! Manual audio with live meters, articulating screen, improved EVF. No recording limit in non EU versions. 1:1 mode is awesome, good touch screen. Internal stereo mic not too bad. Has the best auto focus video system out there!

CONS: 25p where are you? Rolling shutter is not improved. 29 minutes 59 seconds max recording per clip in EU version

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Home Cooking…avec le GH2! from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

GH2: Movember Gala Party from Philip Bloom on Vimeo. Completely ungraded, showing great low light.

Canon Rebel T2i/ 550d

The new kid on the block and a damn impressive one too. I have left the 500D/ T1i out of this. Even though I own it, but due to the odd 20FPS 1080p mode, 720p 30p only mode but mainly (and this is reason why 3 Nikons aren’t reviewed) the lack of manual control. This baby ups the game and is the first consumer DSLR that Canon have made with full HD and full manual control. It’s killer. With an image of almost comparable quality to the pro 7D it has taken the market by storm and rightly so.

With an APS-C chip in it which is a 1.6x crop of a full frame it has a bigger sensor than the GH1 but smaller than the D3s. It takes all the EF lenses designed for full frame cameras as well as the special EF-S lenses which are designed for this sized chip. These lenses are generally cheaper than their full frame versions so you can save money that way. Only downside is EF-S lenses cannot be used on full frame camera if you come to upgrade cameras at some point. The major investment with any of these camera is the glass, not the body. So always keep that in mind when buying lenses.

It has the same crappy audio options, as in no control and no headphone jack. But does have the full range of recording options. 24p, 25p and 30p in full HD and 50p and 60p in 720p mode. Meaning you get shoot great slow motion with this baby.

I am a big fan of this camera as it has brought the power of DSLR filmmaking to the mass market. Some people see this as a bad thing, in that by making the cameras so affordable there will a flood of people on the market selling themselves as cameramen. It’s only a tool, like any camera. What we will have is people discovering or even re-discovering a love of video due to this large sensor.

Things I don’t like about this camera? Well it’s a consumer camera and is therefore missing a lot of what I love in the PRO bodies. It uses SDHC cards, they are cheap are small but I hate their flimsiness. I much prefer CF cards, but that’s just me! I miss the top LCD. We have no display on this camera other than the main LCD. Not a deal breaker but a shame not to have it. Also missing is the second dial on the back of the body which means aperture and shutter speed are controlled by the same dial, via pressing a button in at the same time. I don’t like this at all. The build quality is pretty good, but when compared to the pro line, in particular the 7D it comes across as bit cheap, but then again it is! It uses different batteries to the 7D and 5Dmkii, but they are cheaper…HDMI out sucks too….it’s 1080i letterboxed image live out which drops to 480p when you hit record. You do get full 16×9 playback though.

Like all the Canon cameras the most you can record at a time is about 12 minutes. If you point at something that does not move much you can get it up to 14 minutes or so. The LCD is surprisingly the best of the bunch of all the Canon DSLRs. Highest resolution.

There is much debate over how good the video is of this camera compared to the 7D. Very damn close. I haven’t seen any specific side by sides, only that in my limited use of the T2i it just seems to be not quite as good as the 7D and am not sure why…it’s close. But just not quite as good…I would love someone to show me what it is that is different!

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PROS: Cracking image in video mode, very cheap, smaller than the pro line, full list of video modes to record in, nice big APS-C sensor, great LCD screen

CONS: Not weatherproofed like the pro line, missing top LCD screen, missing second dial, poor HDMI out, no audio control, no headphone jack, no intermediate ISOs, no ability to dial in your white balance like the pro line, 12 minute record limit.

Canon T3i/600D

This camera is effectively a replacement for the T2i and certainly improves on a number of features of the camera. Video wise I see little difference between this and the T2i but I haven’t shot anywhere near enough with the camera to categorically say this…

It has all the same features and frame rates as the T2i…New features include the articulating screen of the 60D which is a massive plus, it makes shooting on a tripod SO much easier and for ground shots too…other improvements at manual audio like the 60D and 5DmkII but it’s not well implemented being within a menu and not being adjustable whilst recording or displaying meters or a headphone jack.

A nice new feature is the 3x digital crop…ignore the rest of it, it goes from 3x to 10x…anything over 3x is a digital zoom and looks like poo…the 3x isn’t perfect. It isn’t super sharp but it’s a neat feature. I don’t think it’s as well implemented as the GH2 version.

It’s a really good camera, but I do recommend the 60D over it still due to better build quality, better AF for stills, more ISOs and if you look hard enough it’s not much more than the T3i!

Canon 60D

I have to admit I love this camera. It’s almost my favourite of the Canons. The image out of the 5Dmk2 is still my favourite but this camera is a dream to use. Why? That articulating screen makes life so much easier and is the best quality LCD so far from Canon.

Picture quality seems identical to the 7D, some users have reported improved low light sensitivity but I cannot confirm this yet. I have shot some low light stuff with it but I need to do a side by side to see. There is no improvement in moire, aliasing or rolling shutter over the others…

It has manual audio levels like the 5DmkII, but still buried away in the menus and does not display whilst recording or can be changed whilst recording. A bit frustrating but better than being stuck with AGC.

It’s odd as it is a bit of the 550D and a bit of the 7D. It is plastic like the 550D not magnesium alloy body  like the 7D BUT feels a lot more substantial and rugged than the 550d. It has the missing features of the 550D/ T2i, fully selectable ISOs, manual white balance, 2 dials for shutter and aperture and a top LCD screen for info. It takes 7D/ 5Dmk2 batteries but takes SDHC cards. So it really is a bit of both.

A number of people have done some long shooting tests on the 60D and have found it is not prone to overheating like the other Canons.

The HDMI HD signal drops to SD when you hit record like the 550D and the 5Dmk2. A shame, if this did not happen this would be my recommendation of camera for most people, over the 7D and T2i/ 550D. If HDMI HD out does not bother you and you don’t want or need full frame this is the camera to get. This is also the camera to get rather than the T2i/ 550D. Save your money. The extra features are worth the bit extra in cash. I promise you!

PROS: lovely video, articulating screen is awesome, all the frame rates including 50p 60p. Appears to not have the same overheating issues as the T2i, 7D and 5Dmk2

CONS: HDMI live out whilst recording is SD, no improvement in picture issues, SHDC rather than compact flash

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Canon 7D

The first Canon camera to embrace the video feature as it has a switch to set it in video mode or stills mode!

It’s got the same sized chip in it as the 550D/ T2i albeit in a MUCH more robust package. The 7D is a beast. It’s completely weathersealed. I have left this camera outside for 4 days in snow and rain doing timelapses and it has come through without a glitch. This is for me what sets it apart from it’s cheaper brother. The build quality is simply superb.

Video feature wise it’s the same…24p, 25p, 30p in 1080p mode and 50p 60p in 720p mode. It can also rattle off about 8 or 9 pictures a second in stills mode. Very impressive. It has the same audio limitations that we run into again and again. No manual audio controls and no headphone jack.

The image out of it is superb. It’s sensor is almost the same sized as the sensor in 35mm movie cameras meaning with a mod or two it can take proper cinema lenses. A massive plus in the indie movie world and of course in the big movie world! I have used it with Cinema lenses three times now and it’s simply incredible!

The live HDMI out is the best of the cameras so far. Still letterboxed 1080i but it stays like this even when you hit record. This is a big deal and something you must consider when looking at the different cameras to buy. Getting critical focus when the image drops to SD when you hit record is very very hard!

Some people say it overheats a lot, something people say happens with their 550D too. But I have not experienced this much. Although I do live in a bloody cold country! I did experience it when I was doing very long interviews for 2 hours or so of non stop recording, but even then it was just a warning light. It never switched off.

Low light ability seems to be about the same as the T2i but not a patch on the D3s

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PROS: Superb weatherproofing, stunning image, good in low light, switch for video mode, HD monitoring even when recording, Nice LCD screen, great price.

CONS: Not as good as the other pro Canon line in low light, not full frame, crappy audio options AGAIN, 12 minute record limit

Canon 5DmkII

This was the one that started it all and is still for me the camera with the nicest image. That comes down to it’s full frame goodness and full HD. The 5DmkII is absolutely unique in the video world as it is the only video camera in the world, currently, that shoots video in full HD with a sensor as big as this. The sensor is 864mmNow this does cause us some issues. Some people find that the full frame sensor makes it harder to get focus, as the larger the sensor the more shallow the depth of field. For me, I always say if it’s too shallow then stop down! It has great low light, better than the 7d but nowhere near as good as the D3s, so you can easily stop down and up the ISO to compensate…It’s aesthetically unique and that is what attracts so many filmmakers to it, including me, there is nothing else out there like this. The 7D has better options…the 5Dmkii has no 720p mode, has the same crappy hit record and drop to SD mode HDMI out, no dedicated video button. It does have manual audio levels which have been pointlessly hidden away in a menu that you can only set before you hit record and give you no audio levels on the LCD at all so there is still no way of knowing if you have are recording sound or not.

It’s highly unlikely we will ever see this camera get 50p and 60p. I simply think it cannot take it…It would overheat too much…talking of overheating, this camera has no warning light telling you it is overheating. What can happen, and I stress CAN, is the image can degrade the more heated up it gets. Then it will just switch off.

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PROS: My favourite image out of them all, full frame beauty, manual audio levels, very good in low light, great build quality, you can get this camera for not that much more than the 7D if you shop around, did I say incredible full frame image godliness?

CONS: HDMI live out sucks, manual audio buried away in menus, no 720p mode, no overheating warning, DOF too shallow for some (although as I say just stop down!), 12 minute record limit, not as good weatherproofing as other pro Canon cameras, probably the most susceptible to rolling shutter issues of the pro Canons.

Canon 1DmkIV

The big daddy of the Canon line. This is first and foremost a stills sports shooters camera. The video is hidden away and is obviously secondary BUT must not be overlooked as it betters the other Canon cameras in it’s low light ability. It has a strange sized APS-H chip which is a 1.3x crop. This is a bit annoying for wide angles as there are no lenses made for this chip size so you will lose some length on the wide end.

The low light as I said is very powerful, again, not a patch on the DS3 but very impressive anyway. 3200 ISO is pretty clean, 6400 ISO is usable with a bit of post cleaning up.

It has the same video options as the 7D so we do have 720p 50p and 60p and we also have the same HD monitoring out even when recording. Audio of course still sucks with no manual audio level and of course no headphone jack.

The camera is built like a tank. It makes the build quality of the 7D look like the T2i and that is saying something. This is one camera that can probably take some serious knocks and keep on going. It takes both CF cards and those flimsy SDHC cards. It also takes it’s own special batteries which make it last a lot longer in video mode. The batteries in the 7D and 5DmkII get eaten up very fast!

PROS: Incredible build quality, beautiful image, superb low light, great long life batteries, probably the best of the bunch for least rolling shutter issues.

CONS: Awkward 1.3x crop, heavy, expensive, crappy audio, 12 minute time limit.

Canon 5DmkIII

Updated post to come shortly.

In conclusion…

Is that helpful? I hope so. As I said, there is no one clear favourite…I prefer the full frame image out of the 5DmkII for sure, but the HDMI out is killing me, on a professional set it is just a big problem. Also it doesn’t have the 720p mode that all the other Canon cameras have. Although the 720p mode is not great due to the hideous aliasing and moire that it can bring up if not careful.

The 7D is probably the best all rounder. Has all the video rates your want, HDMI HD monitoring and is a great price. Many prefer the aesthetics of the 7D over the 5DmkII, me I don’t but it simply comes down to personal preference. It has best build quality for the money, great image…but I just prefer the 5DmkII image…it probably ticks more boxes than the rest. Please don’t put weatherproofing as not that important. Being from the video world where nothing is weatherproofed, it’s so exciting to use these cameras in appalling conditions and not worry about them!

Of course one thing that also holds people back is the worry that a replacement will come out for one of these making their camera obsolete. Well, that is a danger with everything in life! That is why your main investment is in the glass, not the body. Your lenses will last 20 years! For pro users your bodies will change every 2/3 years. That’s the market!

Sony will soon jump on the bandwagon with the Alpha range. Be very interested to see what they are bringing to the table. I have heard a couple of interesting rumours. I wonder if they are true? The Sony NEX 5 and 3 are coming out soon and are very cute but lack manual controls in video mode and are only 30p…

Whichever camera you chose, don’t forget…it’s only a tool! The most important thing is what you do with it!

Next blog up is lenses…

Here are some pieces of work I have done with each camera:

Movember: Team Bloom ‘Tache from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

NIKON D3S

Watch on iphone/ ipad

GH1

Watch on iphone/ ipad

55D/ T2i

Watch on iphone/ ipad

5DmkII

Watch on iphone/ipad

7D

Watch on iphone/ ipad

1D MKIV

Watch on iphone/ ipad

EDIT: PART 1 is now live! I decided to break it down into two parts as it’s too damn long! I will start editing part 2 tomorrow, it will be up within the week hopefully. 

I would like to have included the Scarlet but as I didn’t know anyone in the UK with one and the unfortunate behaviour of the minority who feel it’s OK to be as nasty as possible, it is not included. Sorry! Am sure the next Zacuto shootout will include it!

Huge thanks to Paul Joy of PaulJoy.com, Suresh Kara of Documovie.co.uk, Joel Conder of JoelConder.com and Suresh Kara.

Also thanks to Nick Millen of Canon UK for supplying the C300 for my full review which you can see here. 

Remember this shootout and it’s results are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Real world, unscientific, lots of variables. Never base a camera purchase on things like this. Research in loads of places and try and get your hands on one!

Kind of hypocritical to say this as this whole shootout is about it, remember pixel peeping will make you go blind and give you hairy palms!! Shoot with the camera you have/can afford! There is a lot more to filmmaking than pixel peeping!

I have not been paid to do this, it was done because I wanted to see this and I am sure you did too. If you want to thank me for all the hard work I have done in making this then please consider donating to the “Make a wish” foundation who grant magical wishes to children with life threatening diseases. Such a wonderful charity, even more so at this time of year. This is the UK one but feel free to donate to your local one!

Picture profiles used:

Sony NEX5N, Flat PP

AF100 RANGE PP

C300 C-LOG

GH2 Driftwood Hack nostalgia and dialed down

5Dmk2 Marvels Advance

7D Marvels Advance

FS100 G-LOG A

F3 AB-RANGE

F3 S-Log

Nikon D7000 Flat

So interesting results from Part 1. Bang for buck the clear winner was the Gh2 with the Driftwood hack but this is purely on resolution. The F3/ C300 are damn close to each other and the FS100 not far behind. Part 2 moves onto skin tones and low light where the camcorders come into their own. I also take a look at how well each of the internal codecs hold up to colour correction and grading.

Orignal Post:

Tomorrow for shits and giggles myself, Paul Joy, Joel Condor, Sarah Estela and Suresh Kara will be pitting various cameras against each other in yet another one of my “legendary” real world shootouts!

The reason this has come about is Canon UK have kindly loaned me a pre-production C300 for a week. I will be doing a full on review and taking it over to France to Mont St Michel to shoot with it there. Just one of my beauty pieces. But a great challenge, as much of it will be at night so let’s see how good this low light is! There will be an accompanying on-camera and written review!

In the meantime I wanted to get this done as I myself want to see this, and I am sure many of you will too!

So what cameras will we be using tomorrow? Here they are!

Why these cameras? Well they are mine so it’s easy for starters.

C300 of course as it’s the catalyst for this test, F3 (with and without Slog) as this is the best camera in its class, the FS100 as it’s the budget F3, the AF101. DSLR wise, the 7D for a change rather than the 5DmkII as it has a similar size sensor to Super 35mm, the Gh2 with AVCinta Driftwood hack and the NEX5N. I had to draw the line at which cameras to do with just a short winter’s day to do it in. The 7D may not be the best low light Canon DSLR (that is the 1Dmkiv) or be full frame (5dmk2) but it generally represents the quality of the Canons pretty well!

EDIT:

For the resolution test I used the 7D, GH2, NEX5N, D7000, FS100, AF101, F3, C300

For the skin tones test I used the 5Dmk2, 7D, GH2, AF101, NEX5N, D7000, FS100, F3, C300

For the low light I used the 5Dmk2, 7D. Gh2, NEX5N, FS100, AF101, F3, C300 (we forgot to do the D7000! Sorry!)

So this will be an evolving post, so do check back especially if you are on RSS as it doesn’t update!

Two frame grabs from the C300 below, one from the hacked GH2

The outdoor shots we had on C-Log gamma curve but the not the most neutral profile. This was accidental but it still looks good. For the shots after that it was on C-Log but cinema locked which gives it a flatter image. Sharpness and resolution where not affected.

C300

Gh2 Driftwood Hack 70mb/s

Skintone test…which camera is which?! Please ignore the web compression of the JPEG…just look at the skin tones…Lens was a Nikon 80-200mm F2.8

Remember these are NOT graded. Once graded, I could make them match pretty damn close…Which ones do you prefer and can you guess which is which?!

EDIT: Someone in the comments got in right!

Sony NEX5N, Flat PP

AF100 AB-RANGE PP

C300 C-LOG

GH2 Driftwood Hack nostalgia and dialed down

5Dmk2 Marvels Advance

7D Marvels Advance

FS100 G-LOG A

F3 AB-RANGE

F3 S-Log

Nikon D7000 Flat

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

Number 7

Number 8

Number 9

Number 10

EDIT: Fantastic news. The finished movie won Best Documentary and Mass impact award at the Boston Film Festival. A massive boost for the film. I couldn’t be happier. Well done Ruaridh Arrow the Director!

EDIT: It’s also just won Best Documentary at Raindance!!

2 years ago in Boston I shot the bulk of a documentary on Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gene Sharp. This film is now finished and premiering at the 27th Boston Film Festival on the 18th of September then will be part of the Raindance Festival in London on the 2nd and 3rd of October.

Blog from May 29th 2009. This was shot in my first month of owning a Canon 5DmkII, so I wasn’t using it for the bulk of the filming. I was still using my EX3 and Letus Ultimate.

From wikipedia:

Gene Sharp (born 21 January 1928) is known for his extensive writings on nonviolent struggle: he has been called both the “Machiavelli of nonviolence” and the “Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare.”^[1]

Sharp is a political scientist, professor emeritus, and founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organization which studies and promotes the use of nonviolent action in conflicts around the world.

Working with producer/ director Ruaridh Arrow, I am making a documentary on current Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Gene Sharp.

I have to plead ignorance and didn’t know of his work until I was approached for this gig, and he is an amazing man to be around, very kind, zen like and incredibly intelligent. A fascinating man whose life should have been documented well before now.

I wanted to share with you some black and white screen grabs from the Canon 5dmk2. Most of it is being shot on the EX1 and Letus, especially all the talking heads. But the more stylized shots and the other B-roll is being done on the 5dmk2 which is very new to me. It gives me the freedom to take down my lights, use available light and work REALLY fast, knocking of shots really quickly. It’s a great combo, I just wouldn’t do the whole thing on the 5dmk2 mainly due to the sound and recording length limitations. Oh and the 30p….which of course means I need to convert all my lovely footage to 25p, most likely in compressor.

Anyway, below here are some frame grabs from the footage in black and white from the 5dmk2. Love that image!

I have one and a half days of filming before I go home…it’s been great. It’s also been wonderful meeting so many people I just know over the internet at my first ever “Meet up”

Big old day in the camera world, I don’t think I have seen so much thigh rubbing by so many camera geeks and the twitter feed has been hilarious (not forgetting a badly timed new version of AVID announced today!) Canon disappointed many by not releasing a kick-ass printer …instead we have their much anticipated S35 camcorder. The C300. We also have a concept 4k video shooting DSLR and the new version of the RED Scarlet! Phew.

So what do we have? First off…The C300. It’s a lovely looking camera. I like small cameras. Easy to travel with, easily pimped up to configurations you want. The idea of a brain for a camera is becoming more and more common although this is not quite that.

Here it is above with one of the smashing new lenses (these new lenses look amazing…more on those soon)

So what do we get. Well…internal 422 Canon XF 50mb/s codec. A flat log setting in there too by the way. 4k sensor but only captures 1080p. Capable of overcrank BUT only at 720p. Also only 8 Bit SDI out. Both rather disappointing to be honest. I really had hoped for 1080p 60p as both the FS100 and AF100 have it (although the F3 is also 720p) There is a PL version or an EF version. I don’t know if you can switch mounts. Be great if you could.

Now the key thing for me is how is it to operate and what are the images like. I have not touched it or shot with it so these thoughts are PURELY on specs and price.

First off let’s talk about the market. We have the DSLR crowd who have invested heavily in EOS lenses. We have users who have upgraded to get better audio and less image users to the more expensive but still relatively affordable FS100 or AF100 and then we have the F3 which is priced much higher around $13k with some good and some not so good specs.

Canon have put the list price of the C300 at a whopping $20k. Now of course this is *list* so it will be cheaper. They are going for the F3 and higher market and I can see why…although they have never had a camera in this price bracket before or at this level so it’s bold as hell. Personally I want to see a camcorder at the price bracket of the FS100 as so many DSLR shooters would be SO tempted by a $5000 EF touting S35 camcorder that takes their lenses even at the cost of a lower codec. That is where the DSLR market wants to step up to next. Not a $20k camera. Of course that is NOT what they are going for. Just saying. For me I feel this is a market they should be going hard at.

Oh, it ships in Jan 2012.

I will add to this later. But in meantime these are my summary thoughts…so far. Nice looking cameras. Nice on board codec, great for docs. Takes EF lenses without waiting for a never to ever come out Birger adaptor (although I heard no AF support? Surely not true!) Too much money. Sorry, I think it is. Especially with the competition out there. BUT I cannot wait to shoot on it and I may be convinced! Oh and one other highlight. Vince was looking super slick at the press event. I need the number of your hairdresser sir! Will go well with my mo!!

Check out the Mr. LaForet directed video, shot by  Polly Morgan “Mobius”

Mobius – 1080p HQ from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

Mobius :: Behind The Scenes from Blake Whitman on Vimeo.

Canon took a leaf out of the Apple book and did a one final…oh we have a new DSLR 4k video shooting concept camera we are working on….Now that is very interesting as is full frame…BUT for it record 4k it goes to a 1dmkiv style APS-H crop. But still pretty good. Read more here. The thing is the word “concept” always means don’t expect it soon!!!

RED also chose today to bring us the Scarlet X. As expected they have dumped the 2/3″ chip as “not being good enough in today’s market” and are now using Epic chips which were not passed for use in the Epic (not sure if this is correct as their site is down and getting this off of twitter. Will correct when I have more info!).

So Jim Jannard has given us these interesting specs and it’s shipping dates (this is key as this camera has been coming for quite some time now, my grandfather told me stories about it when I was a nipper and sat on his knee!)

So this is what we have as far as I can tell…5k at 12fps max, 4k at 30fps max, 3k at 48fps max, 2k at 60ps max, 1k or 120fps max. Interesting…Resolution is good, although substantially capped…it HAS to be otherwise it would be an EPIC! One thing you must realise it that only the 4k will give you the field of view of your lenses. 2k and 1k are just window crops of the sensor. So you 60fps will be a very “zoomed” in image. That is going to be a big pain. Changing the field of view to overcrank is not great to be honest. It’s not the drop in resolution that bothers me it’s if you shoot at 4k which you will to get the S35 aesthetic then if you want to do a slow motion of same shot you simply can’t without backing away, changing lens or simply dealing with it being tighter…

So that is what it is….essentially a scaled back RED Epic (which I own). Same weight (heavy), same accessories (pricey), consumes less power. Two versions a Canon mount version that DOES work with autofocus on EF lenses and a Ti PL version. It does something my Epic cannot currently do, playback in camera. Prices are as follows. Just under $10k basic. Full kit for under $14k. Not sure what that means. I expect you get the SSD module and most likely a touch screen LCD. Canon mount ships 17th November and PL mount (which costs $1500 more)

Oh…the Scarlet- X shoots RAW.

As it’s the same chip as the Epic there is no way it will be as good as the Canon C300 in low light but it will be upgradable to the new Dragon chip in 2012 which will promise better low light sensitivity.

Now it is cheaper than the C300. Is it better? Dunno. Not shot with either. It’s essentially an EPIC light. I love my Epic but have had hideous reliability issues with it. Will RED carry on with having BETA firmware in the Scarlet or will they make it more stable. At the lower price point they are going to ship more so it will need to be. I expect the C300 will be super reliable straight out of the starting block…but one is 1080p internal 50mb’s codec and the other is RAW and shoots 4k…I was never a big believer in the need for 4k and more but owning an EPIC has opened my eyes to the amazing possibilities and flexibility it offers you. Shame it needs a lot of computer processing power to deal with the files unless you but the expensive, but essential RED ROCKET card. Not only do you have re-framing resolution but 4k is future proofing. Like when I shot HD for SD projects a few years back….

This is a super powerful camera and the most affordable 4k/5k camera ever. It is a big deal and looks to be a bargain. Just remember that you do need to buy stuff for it and the workflow is a whole different beast!!

Yes I have reservations as an Epic owner who has had two very bad experiences.You can read about the nightmares we had on HOST here.

Also is it just me or I am that is disappointed that we no longer have the Scarlet, per se? We have a “dumbed down” Epic. Same body, same sensor, heavily reduced features. I wanted a smaller, lighter Scarlet that we were promised 3 years ago, then 2 years ago then 1 year ago?  Instead we have this. Not that this is bad. It’s great! Just a shame the 3 year+ wait yields us nothing what we were promised. This camera will be hugely useful to many. It’s just not the Scarlet. It’s the Epic light.

Honestly, I love the look of the new Canon and the concept camera interests me a lot as I love full frame but that price point is high and people ARE going to be tempted by the Scarlet X price point…I believe the camera goes on sale TODAY!

The Canon seems clearly to be designed for broadcast use, friendly HD codec, easy post production pipeline, reliable manufacturer. It will be approved for full acquisition. The Scarlet is for indie filmmakers and commercials etc…ironic as Canon are aiming for the cinema crowd and i just don’t see it BUT  they will get it but broadcasters will lap this up!!

Oh…one last thing…does all these cameras coming out mean you cannot shoot on your 60D, 5Dmkii, 7D, Gh2? NONSENSE…They are just tools. Expensive ones. Me? I shoot with the right camera for the right job and sometimes that may just be a $500 stills camera!! Trust me…owning one of these new cameras is not going to suddenly going to make your work better! Use what you have!!

Oh and by the way. I ordered a Scarlet.