Canon 5D Mark II video in Low light

[princigalli]

This small clip should pretty much clear all doubts about how usable the Canon 5D Mark II is in low light. It is not usable at all. A fisher price camera will produce better video. All controls are automatic, you can only lock the exposure and make it darker or lighter. The camera controls Exposure, Aperture, and ISO setting. With a lens capable of 4.0 the camera kept closing it to 5.6 and then still push ISO to 2000 or even 3200. This is not the way anyone wants to work with video.

http://princigalli.com/canon1.html

[Ralph Oshiro]

Can't you "trick" the camera into exposing properly, similar to how you trick the Nikon D90? Also, an f/4.0 lens is far slower than a fast prime, and would generally not be suitable for low-light, D-Movie photography (or whatever Canon calls it) under any circumstances. Compared with, say, a 50mm f/1.4, an f/4.0 maximum-aperture lens is three stops slower. This means an f/4.0 lens would need 8x the light level to expose the same scene using an f/1.4 maximum-aperture lens. That's a lot.

Now, I don't know about the f/5.6 auto-exposure issue (if it's a zoom lens, many zooms do not maintain their maximum aperture throughout their zoom range), but trying to expose a low-light scene at f/4.0 would require an undesirably high ISO, as you experienced.

[pranic]

The first thought that went through my mind, is that if I were to be shooting natural light situations where it was dark out -- I wouldn't be using an f/4 lens. The smallest aperture lens used by me would be 2.8, but most likely 1.2. or 1.8 using primes.

That said, I think the auto exposure is over-exposing the scene, and you could have brought the ISO down a bit -- avoiding noise, and getting a better exposure. To say that the 5D mkII is crap might be a bit of an overreaction.

[Spartacus]

"Capable" of 4.0? Yeah right...
And the Camera is shi*ty in low light?
Hehe, so it already plays in the same league as my beloved HVX...:)

[princigalli]

Well the problem is that when I attach a prime lens with 1,2 aperture the camera still almost never goes below 4,0. You have to perform a wild dance pointing the camera at different light sources until it exposes properly and then lock it. In low light, instead of a wider aperture the camera prefers to increase ISO dramatically.

I resolved the issue by mounting a manual Leica lens with an adaptor. I film with the apertures I want to use and now the quality is extremely high.

[zijital]

can you post more video? b/c that first clip looked aweful

[prodigywookie]

what are you guys using to view this? I use VLC player. It usually plays mov files just fine, but this video is black with some distorted pixels here and there. i suppose i'll just install quicktime :-/