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Home » A Great Time for DSLR Video & Photography

A Great Time for DSLR Video & Photography

This year, just prior to NAB, turns out to be a breakthrough moment for DSLR photography and video. While many of the important innovations have come over the past few years, we’re now in a time when DSLR makers are prepping their gear for video as well as photography.

You can probably imagine there will be announcements of other new gear that we don’t know about yet at the April show. But right now the noise continues around the release of the much anticipated Canon 5D Mark III, generally to positive reviews, but with a few going negative.

Meanwhile the first in depth video tests are coming in on the Nikon D800, which features a new sensor by Sony. Some consider it a consumer model compared to the top of the line D4, but the D800s video chops might turn the tables.

As an added treat, Adobe, for the first time ever, is offering a public beta of its upcoming Adobe Photoshop CS6. Curious? You can download a copy from Adobe Labs.

While it’s taken Canon nearly four years to produce since the prior model, the new Canon 5D Mark III isn’t a radical change, but marks a straightforward, evolutionary path from the Mark II. I tested a pre-production unit, and noted a much-improved image that offers two stops more latitude than before and slightly higher resolution.

In movie mode, the Mark III pretty much eliminates aliasing and moiré, two common problems with CMOS sensor-based systems. While sharpness for stills is superb, the camera surprisingly falls down in movie mode; the look varies from wonderful in scenes with less detail to a definite softness in more complex scenes such as full landscapes. That might be related to the codec’s compression, but after all these years you would have thought that they would have solved this.

If Canon opens up the HDMI to a clean output then we would know for sure. But that’s one of the problems with the 5D Mark III; you might think that by this time you could pull an uncompressed video signal out of the camera, something increasingly common — that new Nikon D800 can do it, for example. But the HDMI connection limits output to a 720P signal with added information overlays. Good for monitoring but don’t expect to record the highest quality image uncompressed.

With better places to put your hands and a more balanced feel, the body is nicer to hold and easier to use. The power switch, for example, has been beefed up and moved to the top of the camera next to the mode dial. It’s easier to find, and harder to accidentally flip. The Mark III not only accepts Compact Flash cards like the previous model, but also adds in recording to SD cards. You can even create a backup as you write to one card

One of the things that distinguished the 5D Mark II was its amazing low-light performance. That’s surpassed in the Mark III with an amazing ISO rating of 102,400 for stills (with expanded ISO enabled) and ISO 25,600 for video (again, with expanded ISO enabled). That’s said to be the result of a gapless micro lens setup borrowed from the 1D X.s While you might not want to use the image at that extreme, it does mean that you have even more flexibility in shooting where you want.

The autofocus is also greatly improved from the previous 9-point AF system to a potent 61-point version.

I plan on testing the Nikon D800 soon and will report back on that. I’ll have a look too at the Photoshop beta and I’ll be testing that as well. NAB’s coming up soon too, so there will be postings on the many things that will turn up at the show that will interest DPs and others curious about the latest gear.

Later,

Mark Forman
Mark Forman Productions
http://screeningroom.com

About Dan Ochiva

New York City-based journalist and NYCPPNEWS founder Dan Ochiva writes and consults on film, video, and digital media technology.

Community & Partner Links

How Sony’s New Virtual Sound Technology Can Change How We Hear Films

Kami Asgar and Jessica Parks are post-production heavyweights who work with major studios, namely Sony. As a sound designer (Asgar) and as a post executive (Parks), their collective resume touches on everything from Apocalypto to Grandma’s Boy to Venom.

Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

NJ – Governor Murphy signs $14B Incentive Program Bill – the NJ Economic Recovery Act of 2020

 Film tax credits — amending existing programs to include provisions for so-called New Jersey film partners and New Jersey film-lease partners and allowing an additional $200 million of tax credits annually over 13 years.

Click this link if you want to read the full article on the Lexology site. http://bit.ly/35NtDx6

Film Commish announces date for production restart

In her December 18, 2020 news update, MOME Commissioner Anne del Castillo announced that the Film Office is now accepting permit applications for production activity that begins on July 27th.

She also announced awards now (Awkwafina) and more. To read all of the Film Commish’s bloggy sort of news column, click here.

Stimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts Venues

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

If you want to start production, here’s the latest news from the Mayor’s Office

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

Nikon to Stop Making Cameras in Japan

Nikon has fallen on hard times as of late as its camera sales have cratered, and now there’s a new indicator of how dire its financial situation is: the company is reportedly pulling the plug on making cameras in Japan after over 70 years of doing so.

To read the full article on Petapixel’s site, click here.

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

 

 

 

Union Health Plan Dodges Film Workers’ Suit Over Virus Relief

Law360 (October 9, 2020, 5:22 PM EDT) — The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan’s board can’t be sued under ERISA for allegedly flouting its duties when it relaxed plan rules in response to COVID-19, a California federal judge has ruled, nixing a proposed class action filed by two cinematographers who still couldn’t qualify for benefits.

In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

Russo Brothers Received Close to $50 Million From Saudi Bank

Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.

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