Shooting a Canon EOS 5D Mark III
After the release of the previous version of the "five" - Canon EOS 5D Mark II - a lot has changed in the world of video. Operators and videographers have the opportunity to use for video recording ... a full-frame camera! Moreover, the image quality turned out to be comparable to professional video cameras, and the possibility of using interchangeable optics opened up simply unthinkable horizons for creativity for relatively small money by the standards of the film and video industry. Naturally, the Canon EOS 5D Mark III has enhanced video capabilities. The camera has opened up even more new opportunities for creativity. Which ones? Today this will be discussed. With a SLR camera, you can use interchangeable optics, which allows you to shoot virtually any story. For example, macro is a genre that is almost inaccessible to most cameras. In this case, the shooting scale will be what your macro lens gives: for example, 1: 1 with most conventional models of macro lenses or even 5: 1 using the Canon MP-E 65 f / 2.8 1-5x Macro Photo. Download this video in original quality Naturally, the large size of the image sensor allows you to get a very small depth of field in the frame, especially in the case of high-aperture optics. This feature of the Canon EOS 5D Mark III is especially important for artistic movie shooting. Depth of field can be flexibly controlled by opening and closing the aperture. Download this video in original quality By the way, Canon EOS 5D Mark III implements an interesting way to change parameters during shooting. When the video is running, a number of settings can be changed without pressing buttons or rotating the control wheel. The rear steering wheel of the camera has become touch. It is enough to touch it to, for example, close or open the diaphragm, change the sensitivity. This does not create unnecessary camera vibrations, and the sound of clicks of the selectors is not recorded on the sound track. Download this video in original quality Speaking of sound recording. As in professional camcorders, the Canon EOS 5D Mark III has the ability to work with external microphones. For this, a standard 3.5 mm jack is used. The sound recording level can be set both automatically and manually. To control the sound during recording, the operator can use headphones - the corresponding connector is also on the camera. For amateur video recording with sound, the wind filter implemented in the Canon EOS 5D Mark III will be superfluous. If we talk about the quality of video recording, then shooting is possible in resolutions up to 1920 × 1080 with a frequency of 29.97, 25, 23.976 frames / s. When lowering the resolution to 1280x720, shooting at a frequency of 59.94, 50 frames / s becomes available. Video files are recorded in MOV format. The H.264 codec is used with intra-frame compression or inter-frame compression - to choose from. Download this video in original quality Download this video in original quality To obtain the highest quality, including recording video in raw format, you can use external video recorders with the camera that are connected to the HDMI output of the EOS 5D Mark III. A clean uncompressed stream of 8 bits 4.2.2 is output to this output. The maximum video length is limited to 29 minutes, 59 seconds or 4 GB of disk space - we still have a camera in our hands, and we have to reckon with this. In most cases, you will have to focus manually (but this is just normal for video recording), using an enlarged fragment of the frame to check the focusing accuracy. Unfortunately, picking focusing in the camera is not provided, and it’s impossible to precisely focus on sharpness without enlarging a fragment. Download this video in original quality But the image sensor created for a photo in any conditions opens up the widest possibilities of video shooting with insufficient lighting. For example, the EOS 5D Mark III provides an almost noise-free ISO image of up to 3200 units. This is enough for shooting in the light of city lights after sunset. If you come to terms with some loss of quality, then you can use higher values of sensitivity, shooting in very low light conditions. Here, the competition for the Canon EOS 5D Mark III can only be professional camcorders that are superior to this model in price. In multi-camera shooting, a time code can be used to facilitate the work of the editor. Also for the services of a videographer - all the same image styles that photographers use. If serious color grading is not planned for editing, you can use styles with increased saturation and contrast. For further color grading, you can always select and further customize the image style with reduced contrast. By the way, the videos in this test were completely shot on the Canon EOS 5D Mark III using all the technologies described above.