Canon's new EOS 5D Mark 2 digital SLR camera stands on the precipice of a new digital imaging era. It's an amazing 21.1 megapixel dSRL, no question. But Yarnmaker is interested in the world first that it offers: a 35mm sized CMOS sensor, compatible with existing Canon 35mm lenses, that can capture full motion 1920 x 1080 Progressive video. All this in a dSLR body with a price tag far below the optically inferior fixed-lens "prosumer" HD cameras.

Using a dSLR to shoot low budget cinema may seem unconventional, even unprofessional at first. But remember, there have been several commercially successful releases shot on a Standard Definition DV source such as 28 Days Later. So why not shoot on something better ... if it is better?

There has been a lot of hype on the 5D Mark 2's potential use for low budget, but still sexy Cinematography. This has been backed up by some early, well shot footage from Vincent Laforet. But how realistic is the dream to use the EOS 5D Mark 2 as a serious Cinematography tool? Can it meet the needs of a professional Cinematographer under time constraints? Can it realistically be used by budding directors for low budget feature films, short films, film clips, or TVCs?

At the time of writing with firmware version 1.07, the answer is "not really". Or at least, "not without some pain and patience". The hardware is capable of covering 90% of your cinematography needs. But the camera's firmware is where you will be let down. Repeatedly.

Before the software - lenses and CMOS

Up the front, you have Canon's ample product range of 35mm prime, telephoto and tilt shift lenses to choose from, and a few aftermarket ones. Some of these go down to F1.2. This vast and impressive product array is more than suitable for cinematography, with a few minor caveats.

Firstly, the lenses are missing a lens ring gear for a follow focus. Fortunately, this is easily solved with aftermarket products allowing to you attach a removable outer ring gear that a follow focus will mesh with. Production rails, baseplates, matteboxes, follow focus, and even steadycam mounts are already available from companies like RedRock Micro.

A second caveat is that the lenses are not clearly labelled with distance markers. You'll need to look through a small window above the lens to see feet and meters reading. But the camera does have a "film plane" mark drawn on it, so your First AC will know where to measure from.

Thirdly, if you need to change your aperture during a take (such as moving from indoors to outdoors), then forget it! Understandably, the official Canon lenses are modern stills lenses, so they do not have a free moving aperture control as a normal motion picture lens would. Instead, each third-of-a-stop is "notched" and selected electronically. This means sudden and obvious changes in image brightness as the camera switches between stops. Fine between takes, unusable during a take.

For the price you're paying, these are small and mostly solvable issues.

On the up side, the lenses resolve onto a 35mm CMOS sensor, bringing with it the 35mm film style depth of field that you would expect. Of course, CMOS ain't no film, but up on the front end at least the camera and the pro stills lenses are hard to fault for productions that need to maximise their bang for very few bucks.

The disappointments start flowing after the CMOS has exposed the image.

Frames per second

The EOS 5D Mark 2 is permanently fixed to the US & Japanese TV standard of 30 Frames Per Second. Whilst this is perfect if you're shooting for US television, everyone else misses out. If you're shooting for cinema or Blu-ray, you will want 24 FPS. If you're courting a European, Australian or New Zealand TV market, you will want 25 FPS. The camera has no option other than 30 FPS.

The fixed frame rate is the first of several obvious clangers, because the 5D Mark 2 ships to the European and Oceanic markets with the US frame rate. Supporters of the EOS's 30 FPS-only decision (and there are a few, God bless the Internet) often cite that professional edit software will allow you to resample the footage to the correct frame rate, and they're right ... if you don't care about the clarity of your images. In some software, if you resample to 25 FPS, not a single frame will be a sharp, true frame. Each frame will be a blurry mixture of itself and either one before or after it. The tech-savy folk at cinema5D.com report new generation resampling software can eliminate the old fashioned frame blur with "pixel motion", but this can be at the expense of weird artifacts. Either way, that's no way for your images to start their life.

Another obvious issue is that countries who's power is 50Hz and not 60Hz (Europe, Australia, New Zealand, etc) will have trouble with visible flicker on tungsten lit scenes.

The good news is that introducing a user-set option to reduce the framerate to 25 and 24 FPS (and associated shutter speeds) would be an exceptionally easy firmware upgrade for Canon. A Canon Australia technician also confirmed to me early in January 2009 that something was "in the works," but I will believe it when I see it.

For the time being, the official word is 30 FPS. Nothing slower, and certainly nothing faster (and I think it would be unreasonable to expect faster).

Shutter speed

Canon's own literature reports the camera will shoot from 1/30th to 1/125th (presumably chosen because it is the closest native speed to half of 1/60th). However, in what will become the 5D Mk 2's trademark, the camera operator cannot select which shutter speed to use. The camera makes the decision for you. In my outdoor tests to date, I have not seen any evidence of the camera using anything other than around 1/60th when using a 3 Stop ND, which is fine for most applications. However, I have seen the camera register as low as 1/30th indoors and not budge from there. This would be disasterous for any moving object.

At 1/60th, moderately moving subjects do not appear to suffer from any obvious slow shutter issues or the dreaded "wobbly jelly" images that were previously common with dSLR video. The shutter seemingly sat steadfast at around 1/60th (equivelent to 180 degrees at 30 FPS in film terms) and the CMOS sensor appears fast enough to read the entire image without obvious bends.

However, a video posted by Pango clearly shows wobbly images on a very fast moving fan blade, complete with shutter speeds. (Interestingly, Pango is able to execute some control over his camera through the use of an adapted non-EOS lens with a special chip. See this video for more information on how he does it.)

Aperture

Aperture control is crucial for any creative visual venture and this is where the EOS 5D Mark 2 really falls apart. In video mode, the camera choses its own Aperture whilst shooting. Full stop. You can't use a light meter and dial in your own Stop. For example, you can't choose to shoot silhouettes unless the camera decides it wants to shoot the scene that way.

All is not completely lost however - using the Exposure dial on the back of the camera kicks off an exposure compensation for up to +/- 2 stops in 1/3 stop increments. So as long as the camera is only off on its exposure by no more than 2 stops, you may get the image you seek.

Alarmingly however, this adjustment isn't just a neat aperture control. The camera appears to favour altering the ISO first, followed by the aperture, then the shutter speed, to achieve the equivalent stop adjustment. It really is a basket case. Further, not all stops appear to be available - the camera uses the minimum, maximum, and maybe two additional stops in between.

I have read guesses from users that the camera will honour an Aperture priority mode, allowing you to nominate your aperture. From my tests, this is incorrect and with those tests goes any chance of properly controlling your images.

There is a small glimmer of hope with AE Lock button, which can lock the Aperture momentarily whilst in video mode. But it has extreme caveats. More on this later.

As with the Frames Per Second issue, it would be very easy for Canon to release a new firmware, using the existing Aperture controls available in manual stills mode. But will they do it?

Variable ISO

Variable ISO is something HD Cinematographers don't usually have to worry about, unless you're using absolute top-end cameras. The EOS 5D Mk 2 has an astounding ISO range, from 100 through to 3200 ISO in video mode. In stills, it exhibits the cleanest, noise free images at the faster ISOs of any dSLR I have ever seen. That bodes well for video capture, right?

Wrong.

Like aperture and shutter speed before it, the ISO is chosen automatically by the camera. Not only that, but it adjusts the ISO on the fly, as you shoot. With possible apertures of 1.2 (if your lens can open that wide) through to 22, and a mind-numbingly huge ISO range, this camera's ability to see into the darkness is perhaps unsurpassed. Exactly what most DPs don't want!

Adding ND filters doesn't solve the problem because the ISO just adjusts to compensate, giving you a noisier image and decreasing your Depth of Field, as you'd expect.

As with Aperture, the ISO can be fixed momentarily with the AE Lock button.

AE Lock - the answer we seek?

Amongst all this bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. The AE Lock button actually works during video mode. It is a terrible kludge, but I have found a way to get the exposure you want: Point your lens at a surface or light source and obtain a reading. Keep adjusting the surface to reflect more or less light. You are unlikely to get a reading that is on-the-money for your desired exposure due to the camera's propensity to throw ISO and shutter speed into the mix. But when you do get something close, press the AE Lock button and the lens's aperture and camera's ISO and shutter speed are all locked and won't change during a take. You can then still ride the aperture +/- 2 "stops" (as noted before, it doesn't just adjust the stops) with the AE Lock active.

But be warned! Besides being a kludgy solution, the AE Lock has a serious flaw. If you don't start shooting within a minute, it automatically unlocks and goes back to automatic. How very helpful!

All this means the camera cannot be easily controlled and will eat large amounts of your precious time in trying to control it. It also means that potentially, within the same scene, you may inadvertently shoot with slightly different exposures and not notice until Post.

If Canon doesn't fix the lack of a manual Aperture setting, I can see a market for light boxes that produce light in 1/3 stop increments in a dark environment, designed to fool the EOS 5D Mark 2's auto exposure, to be used in conjunction with the AE Lock button. What a terrible workaround! But if anyone out there takes my idea and makes it a reality, I'd happily take one as payment in full! :-)

Is there anything you can set?

Surely the operator must be able to have SOME kind of creative control over their camera? After all, this is a dSLR, home of manual settings!

Mercifully, you can set your own white balance or use a preset.

You can also choose a preset visual "Picture Style" from the six that are available. These make adjustments such as saturation, sharpening, etc, at the time of capture. That's a shame, because it's utterly useless. Any Cinematographer knows the goal is to record as much natural information as possible. Things like saturation and additional sharpening are examined and altered in Post Production.

Line moire

In some circumstances, the 5D Mk 2 video suffers from a line moire like effect. Because the camera is 21.1 megapixels, a significant number of those pixels are discarded in real-time as the 1080P video file is being created in the camera. To resize it properly would be an unfair expectation on the hardware, given what you are paying for it. This discarding can create a line moire like effect on exceptionally thin lines in your images where they are near horizontal in relation to the camera's pixel array.

The middle of the image on the right shows an enlargement of an almost horizontal line in the distance. The near-white line is actually a metal hand rail, and the dulling of the colour in the middle is the line moire effect in action, as is the pink colour change on the left hand side. Although this area takes up perhaps less than 1/100th of the screen, a professional will spot it. It is most noticable when the image is in motion, where it moves and flickers.

This won't be so much of an issue if your images are reduced in resolution during Post. Otherwise, beware!

Compression

The cavalcade of shortcomings hasn't finished, but fortunately, the remaining ones are far less significant. Your own mileage may vary.

I found over compression of the original footage is another shortcoming. It uses Apple's Quicktime MOV format, with a 24 bit sRGB colour space and the H.264 compression algorithm. However, the compression is a little too much and - you guessed it - can't be set by the operator. The data rate appears to fall short of 5 Megabytes per second, or 38 Megabits per second. The image is "sharp enough," but the over compression is most noticeable in the dark areas. Thankfully, these dark blocks of compression grade-out better than I expected in Post and is not the major issue it could have been.

It's rather ironic to think the resulting edited and graded video will probably be encoded at a higher bit rate than the wild footage was recorded, but there you have it. Shooting video on a dSLR would always have its technical drawbacks, and this is an obvious one that probably won't change.

While we're talking files, I can advise the camera will only write files up to 4Gb in size, which roughly equates to 12 minutes per file. As this is no different to shooting with film, experienced crews will readily embrace this particular shortcoming! And at least you don't have to change cards for each new file!

Blacks and grading

The unprocessed footage from the EOS 5D Mark 2 is rather flat, with very little detail in the darker registers. I am perfectly fine with flat, because this usually means the optimal amount of light detail has been recorded, ready to be brought alive better than ever before by good grading. Kodak saw the light in this regard with their Vision 2 and 3 range of films. But I'm not fine with little detail in the EOS 5D Mark 2's darker registers. They contain what comes across as rough pixilation due to too much separation between the values in the blacks. As with the over compression, a little grading will go a long way here. Crush your blacks and darker colours and you would never know anything was amiss. Just don't expect to get a ton of detail out of dark colours and you'll be fine.

The 5D Mk 2 video footage grades nicely and benefits greatly from a film-like "S" response curve. It really does look much better than something from a dSLR should!

Dynamic Range

At the time of writing, I have not had the opportunity to gather and collate data on a range of reflected light readings from within the same shot. However, I can arbitrarily state that the EOS 5D Mark 2 reproduces a reasonable range that allows for blue skies to be seen as blue when people are correctly exposed in the foreground. It certainly seems to be "on its game" in this regard, ably defeating some older HD cameras, but it has nowhere near the range a colour negative does.

Operating

With a third party rails and follow focus setup, camera operation becomes achievable with the Canon EOS 5D Mark 2. Even if the aperture issue is corrected, the camera will always be a menu driven unit for a lot of features, bringing with it a certain level of inconvenience.

You cannot begin shooting until the "Live View" button is pressed, placing the camera's mirror into a locked open position, exposing the CMOS to the lens. Whilst this button is easy to find, it is an extra step none the less. Whilst in Live View mode the camera burns through batteries in less than 90 minutes, which is not too bad. Further, if left in Live View mode without recording for too long, Live View will automatically shut off, taking with it anything you had configured under AE Lock.

Finally, there is no view finder. With the shutter mirror locked up, the camera's own view finder is unavailable. The camera has a HDMI out and a Mini-Jack-to-RCA video out, which can be used for an onboard monitor and split. However, if your budget does not extend to on board monitors, the camera's own 3 inch LCD display is good enough. It is bright, with 900,000 dots. It just makes operation a lot more awkward.

If you need to focus by eye and don't have an experienced First AC, then you will find it hard to focus accurately off the small LCD display on the back of the camera. Fortunately there is a focus assist, which shows a x5 and x10 enlargement if you use it before recording.

Autofocus is next to useless in video mode, as always. But no suprises there. Why would you want it anyway?

Sound

Whilst the camera has a built-in microphone, no production would use this. Besides, it picks up all the noises from the camera body, including the focus ring being turned! The unit has a mini-jack audio input, however, there is no way to set the levels and all productions will use their own separate sound recording deck anyway.

Today and tomorrow - in summary

Make no mistake, this camera is capable of producing amazing motion pictures right now.

But the EOS 5D Mark 2 falls frustratingly and unnecessarily short in simple, easy to fix areas. It already has the technology built-in to allow the operator to set the aperture and other settings in stills mode, it just needs Canon to make a miniscule effort to allow the operator to access that for video mode. This is encouraging, because it is very achievable: a simple firmware upgrade will fix all of the issues. Hopefully Canon will do the honours, but if they don't, then there's no shortage of home hackers who may produce their own unofficial firmware over time.

It's not like the camera is physically incapable of producing excellent images. It IS capable. They are so very, very close. The device has all the potential to be a serious low budget cinematography tool. But not today.

One wonders if the shortfall in simple, critical software functions isn't perhaps deliberate: Canon also plays in the Prosumer HD video market, after all.

Thanks go to the well informed and helpful folks at cinema5D.com for their comments.

- Jason Kempnich is the Principal Director and award winning Cinematographer for Yarnmaker. He is a member of the Australian Cinematographer's Society.