Hello 5D mkII – Goodbye brevis!
I’ve been watching with great interest the development of DSLR video over the last year or so and have recently decided to jump onboard myself. For nearly a year now the has Canon 5D mkII has been producing some awesome examples, but the biggest limitation with that camera has been that it’s fixed to 30 frames per second. That’s not the 29.97 flavour of 30p that’s common amongst video cameras but an exact 30 fps. Living in a PAL region where pretty much all video is 25 fps that makes it a bit of a nightmare to cut with footage from other cameras.
A few days ago I took the plunge and invested in a Canon 7D which addresses this problem by including multiple frame rates. The 7D doesn’t have as large a sensor as the 5D2 though but it still produces pretty nice video.
I also splashed out on a lovely set of L series lenses, a 35mm 1.4, a 50mm 1.2 and a 70-200 2.8 IS. You can’t beat good glass!
Once I started playing with the 7D I was immediately struck by the noise it produces in the image with an ISO rating over 200, it’s by no means terrible but it always seemed to grab my attention for some reason. I started to question whether I should have gone for the 5D2 which is reported to be less noisy. Then by sheer luck Canon announced that they are going to introduce multiple frame rates for the 5D2 next year. That was it, I had to change to the 5D!
The shop where I got the 7D were pretty good about allowing me to swap the camera, I obviously had to pay the difference of £288 and I’m pretty sure they palmed me off with an ex demo model but I walked out with a 5D2 earlier today.
My first shots with the 5D2 today have shocked me to be honest, they are so much better than anything I’ve managed with the Brevis adapter on my EX1. I think I’d even go as far as to say the images almost look similar to those from the EX1 but with a much narrower depth of field. There’s obviously a lot more going for the EX1 than it’s image though, and the 5D would never replace it as my main camera, but it’s certainly looking like it will mean the end of the Brevis adapter as my shallow DOF tool.
