Regarding Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR Workflow

Syndicate just posted some more projects shoot on 5D, a music video for Fever Ray directed by Johan Renck at RAF and 3 commercials for Silja Line directed Joakim Eliasson at Film De Liberte.

The proof is in the pudding!

Björn Benckert who did the grading comments the material: "5D with it's high light sensivity allows film makers to go with extreem low light. This does in fact give a very even lit material, adjustments to even out the colors between the different shots in the grading process is not as needed as it is for regular film. Basically it's just to apply a look and render. That alone is a huge time saver especially for music videos with a lot of edits. When using the D5 in low ASA settings in combinaiton with a low F-stop the camera produces a an extremly clean image with qualites that other existing cameras, no mather price price range, just can't match at this date. Also we now we have no problem working in or around the 30fps issue. We have ways to handle both the rolling shutter and gamma errors" (20090905)

The digital revolution is attacking the film industry with consumer still cameras that in some aspects deliver a far better picture quality than any celluloid film camera ever could provide.

Still, the 3000USD snapshooter does not have it all, but it has one thing that beats old film and that is light sensitivity. The 5D goes as far as up to 24000 ASA, grainy film goes to 500ASA and RED ONE only to about 200ASA. This means that the 5D only needs about 1/6th of the light compared to film. This does not only cut your lighting budget down to 1/6 it also opens up endless of possibilities. For instance, shooting in a driving car at night is no problem. It looks great!

Using a candle to light the whole studio or shooting "night for day" also looks great. All with a camera that cost less than a few rolls of film, so yes, there must be some drawbacks and there is, but for many occasions those things can be bypassed.

HDV has 25 mbit/s compressed MPEG2. The 5D delivers 40 mbit/s MPEG4. The H.264 codec used in the 5D is in some conditions regarded roughly 50% better than MPEG2. When you add the bandwidth in the 5D that is nearly twice the bandwidth of HDV you get video footage with less compression artifacts. Also the bigger depth of field gives images that are easier to compress. Now 5D is a much better camera so this comparison is only relevant when looking at the amount of data and the way it is processed. The CMOS chip in the D5 beats every HDV camera on the market since it's bigger and more sensitive.

So what is the deal?

Well a few things to consider when shooting with the D5:

#1. It only shoots 30 frames per second.
#2. It has a quite hard H246 compression.
#3. The lenses have very short focus scales.
#4. There is no viewfinder.
#5. It gives the source quicktime files a gamma punch so it looks like the blacks and peaks are cut of.
#6. The quicktime files are not only 30fps but they do not play well in Final Cut Pro.
...and probably a lot more more.

Our solutions to help you trough

#1. The 30 frames per second issue is no big deal. When shooting in Europe you need to make sure all your lighting is "flicker free". A 50Hz kino will flicker. We worked out good methods to make the playback in 25fps. Everything is then played out in 17% slow motion. It might sound weird but it does not come across like a slow motion. We believe the slowness only looks good. The same goes for the audio. We stretch it to fit the 25fps playback and give the sound a pitch and that works well also. For all our online clients we provide the 30-25 fps conversion for free. We also render normally PAL sized files suitable for offline in any wanted format with timecode/filename in picture.

#2. This is something to consider, The camera is not suited for chroma key or any type of productions when a clean signal is key. In those cases the usually the RED ONE is a way better option.

#3. The regular SLR lenses are built to shoot with auto- or semi-auto focus. This does not work so well for film production since the focus ring has a very short travel. People have built solutions for this like on the picture above. It is a kit from RedRock that is specifically made for the new Canon D5 Mark II DSLR. It does not only give the focus puller a fair chance to do his work it also makes it possible to work with regular filters.

#4. The screen in the back is not so good for filming. To use a small HDMI monitor helps a lot. There a are several small monitors suitable on the market. One such monitor is the Marshall V-LCD70P-HDMI that costs about $1000.

#5. When we render your 25fps source files we make sure you get the full color spectra of the image. The normal setting cuts of both in the low and highlights, but we make sure that everything that was captured is brought into both the offline and online files with no clipping.

#6. The H246 codec in HD does have playback problems on most Mac computers. There are updates for Quicktime available to solve this but it still gets kind of sluggish when editing in 1920x1080. So we, as the great providers we are, will give all Syndicate online clients a 720x576 offline copy completely free of charge.

Any now if you are thinking of shooting with a D5 and have any thoughts regarding the post or the camera itself, feel free to give us a call.

/The Syndicate Team