Clearing up the 24 fps issue for those that don't understand why it is needed.

[Lee Jay]

In other words, you deny that the camera can do what Canon says it
can do.

No, I deny your interpretation. It slows down the real frame rate (not the recording rate) when shutter speed needs to be slower than the frame rate, just like about every motion camera I've ever had except super-8.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[Lee Jay]

As I said, you need a lot more education. It looks like you have a
very poor understanding of digital camera technology, and of the
performance of digital cameras.

I have a Masters in Electrical Engineering and I do data acquisition and control at a National Lab for a living. You?

If you are looking for a change in
fps to make the 5D II look like a "cinema camera", you have a rude
awakening ahead of you.

I don't expect it, but the new firmware will allow people to select 1/50th and fix it.

Oh yes, I'm still waiting to see how that jet fighter fly by looks
when shot with a shutter speed of 1/48 of a second. It sounds as if
theatrical people actually desire large amounts of blur in their
images.

Right, they do, and so do you. You just don't know it.

Perhaps that looks more like what old time, obsolete cameras
produced?

Right, the same as modern > $100,000 cameras produce.

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_angle

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[Kiddpeat]

the same results as a $100,000 camera. That's what you call reality? Chuckle.

I have a Masters in Electrical Engineering and I do data acquisition and control at a National Lab for a living. You?

That's worse than I thought. You don't know squat about cameras on a professional basis. An EE that specializes in data collection. Big talk is easy. Things like $100,000 cameras, and how movies are produced when you have no experience in the field. My guess is that you don't even know what an XH-A1 is unless you have just looked it up. My guess is also that you have never used a 5D II. Many of your comments mean that you are not even familiar with its video operation, but you want to tell everyone what is or is not possible.

I said;

If you are looking for a change in
fps to make the 5D II look like a "cinema camera", you have a rude
awakening ahead of you.

You responded;

I don't expect it, but the new firmware will allow people to select 1/50th and fix it.

New firmware? on the 5D II? Here's a news flash for you. The 5D II already has a shutter speed of 1/50. Further, the 1/50 can be used with video recordings. Here's what the manual says (p 121);

"You can shoot movies in all shooting modes."

That includes mode M (Manual) which allows you to set both aperture and shutter speed.

Or, can you possibly mean a frame rate of 50 frames per second when you talk about 1/50? That would not make sense. I doubt very much that Apple supports 50 frames per second which is totally nonstandard.

You also are now attempting to backpedal.

Earlier, in response to this question;

Perhaps you can explain why it can't use shutter speeds which are
slower than its frame rate (1/60)? It looks to me like these include
1/4, 1/8, 1/15, and 1/30.

you said;

Because that means the sensor is being used to take more than one frame at the same time. Shutter speed cannot be slower than the frame rate.

Now you say that the Canon XH-A1 can use a shutter speed such as 1/4 of a second when recording 60 frames per second because;

It slows down the real frame rate (not the recording rate) when shutter speed needs to be slower than the frame rate, just like about every motion camera I've ever had except super-8.

Well duh! So what was your point?

The only meaningful frame rate in a video camera is the number of frames recorded per second. There is no relationship between shutter speed and the frames per second captured by the camera. The shutter speed can easily be less than this frame rate.

Now, tell me what film based movie cameras can do this same thing.

 

[ScottyNV]

this IS the usual RAW vs JPEG debate all over again... and for the record, I am not a RED user either. nor do I advocate blindly using one format over the other - I use both depending on the final desired use/output.

there are benefits to RAW capture in video, just as in still photography, but the vast majority of users, including more than 50% of professionals, have no need of the potential benefits - just set the appropriate WB, pic style and call it a wrap.

those needing the RAW capture capability are not looking at the 5D2 as a primary cam anyway, as their needs almost certainly exceed its 1080P (approx 2K) output.

cheers,
S.
--
beam me up captain, there's no intelligent life down here!

 

[silentstorm]

it does make a difference
(and requires advanced de-interlacing algorithms for solid display on
today's typical progressive displays)

I mentioned it as a placebo effect becos' the frame rates chosen for good old TV was based on our eyes threshold & after decades of TV ogling, i've not seen an action pack program, from video or film transfer, looking bad with artifacts that those manufacturers claimed when viewed interlaced. I can see that kind of artifacts when the frame rates drop or through poor encoding, no doubt, but so far none on TV.

Don't forget that all over the world broadcasters are transmitting in 'i' mode, so even if the display panels can reconstruct the images into frames again, any distortions or artifacts would have been embedded. So would the pic be better? Another point to consider: TV programmes are shot in either 25fps or 30fps, so by converting it to 24p, how much artifacts is it going to introduce? Similarly when a movie was filmed in 24fps, it gets converted to 25 or 30fps for broadcasting, then reconstructed back to 24p for viewing at home, how much errors, distortion & artifacts are generated via all the processes? My take on this is: manufacturers are just hyping up these progressive panels to sell, no advantage when watching TV.

On the other hand, such panels are good when you watch discs becos' there's no limitation to the processing power & bandwidth from the players. Only limitations is the capacity of the medium. Again, that's why you see even with blu-ray having a whopping 25GB, the movies are still compressed, but it can be canned to 24p, 25p or even 30p formats w/o much restrictions.

The full HD that we know, 1920 x 1080i, is only 2MP (1080p is not a
broadcast standard, maybe not yet).

umm 1920x1080p IS about 2MP, just multiply the two numbers
and the 4k cameras are moe like 8MP than 10MP.

Well if its just 4000x2000, ya, you do get 8MP. But the Red One is touting a 4520 x 2540 active array, that gives you closer to 12MP. But i said about 10MP to be more conservative.
http://www.red.com/cameras/tech_specs/

So professional video cameras
with big sensors like 1/2" or 2/3" 3CCDs actually has very good noise
characteristics becos' the pixel density is not high. Eg. a P&S
with 1/8" sensor boosting 10MP vs a 2/3" sensor with only 2MP.

but what about a 35mm FF DSLR still has larger photosites

If the photosites are larger, then the noise performance better. But the 5D II is not having really large pixels since there are 21MP crammed inside, if i'm not mistaken, the pixel pitch is about 5.7microns or somewhere there about. When you compare to the 1st gen 5D, the pixel pitch is like 8+ or 9+ microns. Big difference there. If Canon were to put mkII technology into the old 5D or the 1st gen 1Ds, the noise performance will be unbeatable by any makers. Relatively speaking, a 2/3" sensor with 2MP would have large photosites as well. In the past with SD, a 2/3" sensor housed about 470k to 800k pixels, Sony betacam rules big time back then. Of course things progress & here we are with HD. LOL!!

yeah probably so, going dual-digi already could get to 3MP bandwidth
already or so on a 5dmkii so it seems very possible in even just 4-5
more years, I bet a dual-digic VI will be able to (just barely) do it.

As long as the future DIGIC VI can deliver the min, don't think anyone would make an "overkill" product by putting more advance stuff. Exception perhaps an 8 cores Intel i7 CPU computer with tri SLI just for email, posting in forums & pacman classic? LOL!!

 

[bronxbombers]

the ironic thing is by the time enough people actually started
watching HDTV in general the cost of tech has come down to the point
that having made the OTA standard 1080p would've be 100% feasible.

It wasn't a matter of cost. It was a matter of bandwidth. The 19 mbps
MPEG-2 that ATSC standardized on couldn't transmit 1080p at 60 fps
without extreme artifacts. If it could, that would have eliminated
720p as a competing format. There were other factors, like
progressive video was a new technology at the time (CRTs were the
only kind of display) and many engineers weren't familiar with how
well it would work.

well it was both, they could have just doled out more space for the channels, as it is they use much less than they used too (of course i'm sure the gov wanted to sell off as much space as it could), but back then 1080p was really, really expensive and thought to be too costly too, but perhaps minimizing signal space was a larger element.

progressive was hardly new technology as computer displays were running progressive years, decades before the ATSC standards came out. CRTs do progressive perfectly fine! Although they did do it differently than on an LCD and refresh rate did matter on a CRT, set it too low and don't use long enough persistence phosphors and you get flicker, I have to say European TV drove me mad with the 50Hz flicker.

You could argue that MPEG-2 encoders might be advanced enough now to
compress 1080p 60 fps into ATSC bandwidth and MPEG-4 is perfectly
capable doing it with that bandwidth, but these true facts aren't a
matter of cost. They just didn't exist when ATSC was defined. The
U.K. held off converting to HD until last year and they're benefiting
from this (however they're transmitting in 50i!).

 

[Lee Jay]

the same results as a $100,000 camera. That's what you call reality?
Chuckle.

I didn't say that. However, it is still possible for it do both do so and exceed that quality if the other camera is a film camera.

I have a Masters in Electrical Engineering and I do data acquisition and control at a National Lab for a living. You?

That's worse than I thought. You don't know squat about cameras on a
professional basis. An EE that specializes in data collection. Big
talk is easy. Things like $100,000 cameras, and how movies are
produced when you have no experience in the field. My guess is that
you don't even know what an XH-A1 is unless you have just looked it
up. My guess is also that you have never used a 5D II. Many of your
comments mean that you are not even familiar with its video
operation, but you want to tell everyone what is or is not possible.

Right...when do you get your drivers license?

I said;

If you are looking for a change in
fps to make the 5D II look like a "cinema camera", you have a rude
awakening ahead of you.

You responded;

I don't expect it, but the new firmware will allow people to select 1/50th and fix it.

New firmware? on the 5D II?

Yes. Assuming you know how to read, try here:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0905/09052701canon5dmarkiifirmware.asp

Because that means the sensor is being used to take more than one frame at the same time. Shutter speed cannot be slower than the frame rate.

Now you say that the Canon XH-A1 can use a shutter speed such as 1/4
of a second when recording 60 frames per second because;

It slows down the real frame rate (not the recording rate) when shutter speed needs to be slower than the frame rate, just like about every motion camera I've ever had except super-8.

Well duh! So what was your point?

The only meaningful frame rate in a video camera is the number of
frames recorded per second.

So the number of frames captured is meaningless? Riiiiiiiight.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[Kiddpeat]

the shutter speed.

I said;

Well duh! So what was your point?

The only meaningful frame rate in a video camera is the number of
frames recorded per second.

and you replied;

So the number of frames captured is meaningless? Riiiiiiiight.

I did not say that. I said that the only meaningful frame rate is the number of frames recorded per second. That IS the number of frames captured.

Your "real" frame rate is noting more than a calculation based on shutter speed. A shutter speed of 1/4 of a second, in your "real" definition, yields a frame rate of 4 frames per second. Your whole argument then devolves into meaningless and pointless. You want 25 "real" frames per second? Use a shutter speed set to 1/25 of a second. That yields your definition of 25 "real" frames per second. No firmware changes are needed. The 5D II already has a shutter speed of 1/25.

Your definition means that the actual recording speed (30p) is irrelevant. All you want is a shutter speed of 1/25. The camera already has that ability. You may now buy the camera, go forth, and shoot theatrical productions.

It seems that your main talent lies in trying to insult people. It certainly is not in understanding camera technology.