Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic - Canon 5D Mark II

filmchild · Joined: 04 Nov 2006 Posts: 99

I've been getting a lot of questions about what my workflow is on the 5DMKII, and rather than answer all my PM's and emails separately, here's the goods.

Hopefully, if there are other folks that have different workflows with the camera they can post here as well.

filmchild · Joined: 04 Nov 2006 Posts: 99

First of all, I work on PC’s. I have two custom built PC’s with AMD Phenom 9750 Quad-core’s, 3GB of RAM, and about 1.7TB’s of data storage (soon to be about 3GB on a RAID5).

I use primarily two lenses: a 50mm prime 1.8, and a 100mm macro 2.8. Combine these two with a solid wide angle lens, and I can’t think of many subjects you can’t shoot.

I also use a Manfrotto tripod with a 128RC video head and 3021BPRO sticks.

Capture -

There are a couple of settings that I recommend looking at almost immediately (as soon as you pull the camera out of the box)

1. Buy larger CF cards (8GB+).

If you don’t have at least an 8GB CF card, get some. Don't be cheap, you already shelled out the cash for this not-so-damn-cheap camera, go for a couple of decent CF cards. Notice I said a 'couple'. You don't want to have to stop shooting in the field because you need to run over to the laptop and transfer. Believe me, the clock runs out on these things much faster than you can imagine. The faster the card, the better, but any of the various high-speed, professional quality cards made by the top companies will work. If it's not at least 133x I'd put it back on the shelf. You can go with slower, but you're not doing yourself any favors saving that extra $30 bucks. Personally, I use Sandisk.

One last point on this issue, I personally would not buy an individual card more than 16GB in size. The reason for this is primarily price. You're better off losing one of two 16GB cards than losing one 32GB.
I've already had a close call with a CF card failing in this camera and I'd prefer to lose small than big.

2. Activate the AE lock before each take.

This is important for one particular reason: AE lock is the only way to force the camera to stay at a particular ISO setting, shutter speed or aperture setting during a take. Even if you aren't using the tricks to force specific settings before a take, you should use AE lock before each take because the camera is very sensitive to changes in light and adjusts to differences in light fairly quickly. This adjustment often happens in abrupt jumps in apparent exposure making the picture suddenly brighter or darker during the course of a take. That can be avoided by simply AE locking.

3. Deactivate the sound recording.

This is stock. Unless you're in the woods shooting a babbling brook or something equally audio relevant, you don't need it and customers don't want it. More importantly, you're wasting precious CF card space.

4. Set your picture style to neutral.

I always start with my picture styles at all zeros. Then I move the saturation up a notch and the sharpness up two notches. Saturation on the camera can get pretty out of control (sometimes in a good way) if you let it, but I prefer to mess with this stuff in post. Gives much more latitude in post.

Import -

This is actually the easy part. Just use the EOS utility to drop the .mov's onto your editing machine's hard drive. No freaking tape capture! Yay!

Once there, I do a quick quality check and sort using either VLC player (on Windows) or the Quicktime Player (on Windows or Mac). On Windows, VLC renders more accurate colors and tonal ranges. It also typically plays files on my machine smoother and loads faster.

My quality check is to make sure that the files I'm considering are lit properly, long enough and have no other flaws that will get them rejected. Everything else is trashed.

Edit, color grade, render -

This may sound strange, because I have access to Premiere, Vegas and Avid, but I use After Effects CS3 for editing, color grading and rendering final output files.

I have a boatload of reasons for using After Effects over Vegas, Premiere or Avid (by the way, this applies to Windows machines only. If you have a Mac, you're a fool not to be using Final Cut Studio).

After Effects, in my humble opinion is easier and more flexible to me to color grade with. I've used many NLE's over the years and for a quick job, I just find it less of a hassle.

In addition, occasionally, I will need or want to track and remove some offending logo, or other element in view. Also, I might need to blank out background elements, remove wires or resize for cropping. After Effects does all this easily.

Lastly, After Effects has absolutely no problems editing the native files. I can't say the same for Premiere or Vegas. I've run into problems of one type or another in each.

For color grading, I use a mixture of Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse 2 (an AE plug-in), and Levels adjustment layers.

For editing, I simply trim the composition to whatever content I want in the final render. (pro-tip: 'b' and 'n' on the keyboard will trim the work area's left or right sides, respectively, to your current position in the timeline).

Finally, for rendering, I have Gridiron Nucleo Pro (another plug-in for AE). Nucleo is an alternative rendering engine for After Effects and is far more efficient at using multi-core processors than After Effects alone. In certain types of renders, it more than halves the render times, sometimes more. This is of no value if you don't use a multi-core processor.

I batch render my files to output files with these settings:

**Render the work area only.

**PhotoJPEG at 95% (any higher percentage with this camera will increase file size with no
benefit in quality). You could also use motionJPEG but in my opinion, that codec is better
suited to interlaced source footage, which you aren’t shooting.

**Audio output, cropping and stretching all disabled.

That’s pretty much it, kids. It may seem like a long-winded speech, but in reality, the whole process from shooting a single 15-30 second clip to final export takes no more than about 5 minutes (including render times!). If you’re batching a whole set of them, particularly takes made in a studio environment with the same light set up, it’s even faster.

Try that with tape!

kenny1 · Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Posts: 166 Location: UK

Thanks for taking the time to post your workflow (bookmarked it)

There are so many different opinions on this camera, some say it will blow most camcorders out of the water, others say it's a piece of ****, from the clips I have seen it is very impressive.

Are you managing to get around the lack of manual controls ok, people say you can get more control over the settings if you buy nikon lenses.

Gonna make a decision in the next week or so as to whether to upgrade to the 5d mk11

ken

patuwe1997 · Joined: 10 Sep 2007 Posts: 62

May be this link can help a bit

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-eos-5d-mk-ii-hd/138306-5dmkii-quick-review.html

http://vimeo.com/2327058

I am also very much interested in this camera. Only one thing disturb me is a movable monitor (like video camera) is missing. It would be a lot easier for low and high angle shooting. Perhaps one cannot have everything. May be later Canon will improve.

Thanks Filmchild for the info

Pat

stefgo · Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 9:09 pm

Many thanks for the insights Filmchild!

I´ve been reading a bit about the 5DII but informations are conflicting, so I thought better ask someone who is not only using the cam already but also aware of the usual requirements for stock clips:

1.You have mentioned that, but just to confirm as it is crucial and even in some pro 5D videos you´ll encounter auto exposure takes: Does the AE-lock button definitely what it is supposed to do, also in movie mode: NO exposure adjustments at all during recording, especially in typical situations like a large white bus (or 20 nurses in white dress :) crossing the frame?

2.Is there a not too laborious way to trigger the cam to use small apertures, other than buying extra lenses? I´ve read that the 5DII adjusts, in that order,

1.ISO
2.Aperture
3.Shutter speed

normally trying to keep the aperture as wide open as possible. But for some stuff like e.g. a scenic landscape with a mountain chain in the background you really want a large DOF...

3.Does the focus stay where you put it during video recording, as long as you do not hit the AF button again, and also have liveview focussing turned off?

4.Have you, or anybody else, already heard if implementing full manual control in movie mode is only a matter of firmware, or would we have to wait for a 5DIII or a 7D?

I do not blame Canon for the lack of manual controls in video as this feature originally has not been developed for videographers or film makers but for photo journalists who want to take some quick shots under time pressure. But now that the "film look" and the increased low light capabilities compared to standard video cams are rising so much interest they´ll push it forward and try to get it as good as possible (simply because Nikon will most likely do the same :). The question however is: When, and are we talking about the same cam? The correct functioning of the 5DII as a still cam is surely Canons top priority and they will not take any risk that could compromise it.

Thanks again!
Stefan

PS: This one is good. Click the play button.

http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/road_test/richard_walch_eos_5d_mark_ii.do

maunger · Joined: 01 Sep 2005 Posts: 28

Thank you so much for providing this - we'll add it to the 5d wiki at http://planet5d.com - we're collecting all sorts of 5D2 info and this will help a bunch!

filmchild · Joined: 04 Nov 2006 Posts: 99

Response to Stefgo:

1. Yes. AE lock prevents any of the auto-exposure features in the camera from that point forward.

2. That list of priority of auto-adjustment settings is dubious. I wouldn't believe the order unless you've seen the camera do it yourself. I've seen the camera shutter speed first, for instance.

Nikon lenses with an adapter is the best way to control aperture. (Sounds stupid, I know.)

3. I believe you can set it to periodically check during recording for focus, but for all intents and purposes, you probably want to do this manually. If if looks for focus during recording, you'll hear it searching on the audio and any focus change will not be subtle.

4. Honestly, nobody can say for sure but Canon. That said, it's probably very likely that the manual control features for video have been intentionally disabled by Canon via firmware. Unfortunately, the firmware is encrypted and messing around with it could very easily brick your camera.

The thing I suggest to everyone that has this camera, is to write Canon, tell them you really, really need manual control in this camera. Hell, even limited manual control would be acceptable.

Bear in mind this, though. If Canon releases firmware to make this camera fully manual in video, it will kill much of their existing video camera lines (not to mention most of the competition). This camera has incredible low-light capture, a huge CMOS sensor, immediate access to the full Canon range of lenses, and incredible color gamut. PLUS, it's a top of the line 21 megapixel camera. All for $3000. Go check out what $3000 worth of Canon video camera will get you, and you'll quickly see what Canon has actually made with this camera.

stefgo · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:09 pm

Thanks a lot for your reply Filmchild!

So you can definitely lock down the exposure. That´s good news.

Focus: Yes, I would want it that way: Set manually and no adjustments by the cam while recording. Autofocus is no option for a stock clip, even if it were fast, and Canon themselves say it´s slow in live mode.

I have been thinking about the fact that Canon, with the 5D2, are in fact competing with their own line of video cameras, and that they might be a bit reluctant therefore to make it more video friendly.

On the other hand,

-Canon know that Nikon do not have anything to loose by heading into the video market, so they will very likely try to push the video mode forward for one of their next models

-they do not want to loose these customers to Nikon, nor do they want that 5D2 users buy Nikon lenses

-a pure high class video cam, aside from stock, still has other features which many videographers would not want to miss (audio quality, recording with high frame rates...??? Francois could tell better :).

That makes me think that they´ll come up at least with an option to control the aperture using EF lenses, which is what matters most. Maybe also the ability to use classic frame rates like 25 and 29,97 (I personally don´t care that much about 24p). Then it would be truly the best hybrid cam imaginable for stock at that price. But it´s already now a great value, especially if you´re fine with the adapter. The low light capabilities probably blow you away!

I will wait a bit longer and see what´s happening.

Have fun shooting!

Stefan

tgtg · Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Russia

Now I have this device.
I think NTSC mode better (more fps).
How can i start shoot video? I can't find this mode. ))

itunes - good player and catalog.

http://footage.shutterstock.com/clip-329164-child-and-car-in-snow.html some deformations of picture.

tgtg · Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Russia

dapoopta · Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:05 pm

I think the DSLR will force the video camcorders to get better... I don't think canon will try to compete too much with the DSLR + VIDEO , but take the technology and compete with the RED camera system.

tgtg · Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Russia

I stick paper to camera "use tripod and lock exposure" ))
Now this is not photocamera, but videocamera.
Needed option - auto lock exposure with start shooting.

dapoopta · Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 2:33 pm

tgtg, I think there are tricks and other work arounds to obtain those things. I don't own the camera, but have been reading a lot about it.

tgtg · Joined: 18 Jul 2005 Posts: 624 Location: Russia

say me