Interesting new piece of freeware for Canon 5D MkII / 7D / 1D MkIV users looking to improve their workflow, called 5DtoFCP from idustrial revolution.
I’ve not had a chance to try it out yet, but this is the blurb from the creators:
“A complete FCS workflow package to get footage from a Canon5DmkII/7D/1D into Final Cut Pro at 25fps. Custom droplets, correctly configured sequence settings and flow chart included to make getting the HD H264 files into FCP easier & quicker.”
If you do try it out, let me know how it goes….
[Update 27/01/10] New version 1.1 out, is said to add “New set of droplets & timelines to work with Final Cut Studio 3″ and “support for FCS3 Compressor 3.5″
Adobe has posted a new release candidate version of its raw-conversion Photoshop plugin Camera Raw. Version 5.6 adds support for a bunch of new cameras including the very nice Canon Powershot S90 (see Luminous Landscape review) that I’ve recently acquired and have been quite impressed with. It’s the first point-and-shoot I’ve had that I feel comfortable using at 800 ASA, the noise is very low.
Other cameras of note that it adds support for are the Canon EOS 7D, Canon PowerShot G11, Nikon D3s, and Olympus E-P2.
Guardian photographer/videographer Dan Chung has set up a new website DSLR News Shooter aimed at those shooting news video on the new generation of DSLR cameras such as the Canon 5DmkII.
With the recent release of the Canon 7D and unconfirmed rumors that Nikon’s new flagship camera the D3s will feature full-frame 1080P video and 14fps stills shooting, the DSLR video race is starting to heat up.
What I’ve found with many of those sites though, is that most of the people there are using the cameras for what I’d categorise as a “slow” working environment i.e. documentaries, feature films, editorial work, etc.
Trying to shoot and edit video with DSLRs in a live news scenario is a heck of a lot different, so am hoping Dan’s new site will live up to its name and cater more to this field.
Canon today announced its latest high-end compact, the 10 megapixel Powershot G11, successor to the G10 which has been fairly popular with photojournalists as a carry-everywhere camera due to its rugged body and full manual controls.
10 megapixel… huh? Wasn’t the older G10 model 14.7 megapixels?
Yep, that’s right, and by all accounts it is good news. Seeing as the sensor size remains the same at 1/1.7-inch, this hopefully means Canon have taken a break from the neverending and rather ridiculous megapixel race for compact cameras, which brings us high-megapixel but high-noise images that are often unuseable over ISO400… and instead has decided to bring out a camera with fewer but larger pixels. This should result in much better overrall image quality, particularly at high ISOs… and DPReview is claiming 2-stop improvement in noise compared wth the G10.
I do find the omission of 720P video rather odd…. 640×480 doesn’t really cut the mustard these days.
Also of possible interest to PJs is the new Powershot S90 – which seems to share the same sensor as the G11 and have full manual control. I’ve had a few of the S-Series Powershots in the past and liked them a lot, being some of the few genuinely compact cameras that still have manual control.
That said, they now face some stiff competition via the likes of the Panasonic DMC-LX3 etc. DPReview has posted a hands-on article about the S90 including photos comparing the S90 against the LX3.
We’ll have to wait and see for the reviews to come in… but any break from the megapixel madness in order to improve on actual image quality seem like a good thing. Engadget has posted some hands-on pictures of the G11 here.
This high-speed video shows what actually happens when you take a picture with a digital SLR camera, in this case a Canon 5D. See the full video on SmugMug, along with a couple of other cameras.
The video was shot at 2000 frames-per-second using a specialised Phantom HD camera, as seen below.
If you like the Tilt-Shift lens effect but don’t have any Tilt-Shift lenses, you can now recreate the effect via a new application called, appropriately, TiltShift Generator.
Written by Takayuki Fukatsu, it can be used as an online application direct from the webpage or downloaded to your computer to run as a standalone program and since it’s built from Adobe Air it will run on Windows, Mac or Linux.
Designed for use with low-resolution cameraphone pictures such as those from the iPhone it does choke a little when you throw it a high-end DSLR image but eventually it does produce a result. Quite a fun application to play with, just bear in mind that using this would be considered image-manipulation, so it’s not at all suitable for journalistic photos.
Professional photographers have their needs taken care of by Photoshop, Photo Mechanic, etc when they have to resize/recompress photos. However when you are dealing with amateurs or other people who have no training in image-editing, there is often a need to explain in very simple terms how to resize an image appropriately for emailing or sending via FTP, often over a slow internet connection.
This happens frequently when dealing with members of the public who have photos of newsworthy events, or indeed inexperienced stringers, and in such cases I have frequently advised them to download and use JpegCompress – which used to be free, but is now commercial software.
As an alternative, I recently came across PhotoRazor. It is a free and very easy-to-use piece of software that’s only 934kb to download, and can both resize and recompress single images, or indeed a whole folder of images. It’s Windows-only I’m afraid – if you know of similar software for Mac, or indeed other such software for Windows, please leave a comment. I also understand there are a number of online image editors available now, but I wonder whether to resize you have to upload the full-size image first, which defeats the point for those on slow connections.
In the latest Digital Journalist Tech Tips, Canon USA’s Technical Advisor Chuck Westfall explains something that I’ve been wondering about for a while – just what do the Auto Lighting Optimizer and Highlight Tone Priority modes in the newer Canon cameras (such as the 5D Mark II)… actually do?
Update: There are some interesting tests concerning noise when using Highlight Tone Priority in this Cinema5D forum thread
The Canon EOS 5D MkII can shoot video in either 640×480 (VGA) or 1920×1080 (1080P, Full HD) resolution, both encoded with H.264 video compression. Playing video files in the former is easy, but the sheer amount of data that needs to be processed with 1920×1080 resolution can tax even quite modern computers. VLC has been my video player of choice for many years as it is free, open-source, and will play virtually everything you can throw at it – but disappointingly I couldn’t get it to play 5D MkII videos without major stuttering or no playback at all.
Go to Tools > Preferences
In the lower left of the box click the checkbox “Show settings – All”
Then go to Input & Codecs > Other Codecs > FFmpeg and look for the option called “Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding”
Change it from “none” to “all”
Restart VLC
I’ve tried it on Windows and all the 5DmkII videos that were problematic before now play perfectly. It also works on Mac, though you may not need to do it on that platform.
Bear in mind this method DOES reduce the playback quality (by not doing any de-blocking noise reduction), so if you aren’t having problems with playback then don’t do it, but if you are then it’s pretty useful.
