General Canon 50D ML Raw in late 2015??

I

IronFilm

Veteran
I'm seeing them going cheaper than ever before! Could pick one up in the US$150ish region, or even less.
Does it make sense though to get a 50D for video in this day and age? (be it raw, or the ML H.264 option)
 
I don't think so.
I have a 550D (T2i) and it's not far off from the 50D and ML doesn't really help with video much. You can't shoot RAW on these lower models for more than 2 seconds because of the tiny buffers that Canon built into them. These lower Canons also are just too soft by today's standards. Poor video dynamic range too. Really an iPhone 6 is probably a better video camera. These are still great stills cameras though and that's the main reason I keep mine.
Magic Lantern does make ANY Canon a better camera though - it should always be on any Canon you may have. It's that good.
 
As mentioned, you can take advantage of many of the ML modules which are very helpful, but you will not be able to really take advantage of the raw video module using this camera.

Does it make sense to get this camera?

Depends really.

It would give you another camera angle on a sit-down interview, an overhead on a cooking show, a crash cam, a vacation cam, save the day backup cam. If you can put it to work then $150 is nothing if that's what they are going for. I spend more than that on gaff tape. I still have my T2i which I purchased new as a low cost B-cam to a 7D for a shoot 5 or 6 years ago. No it's not going to give you what a 2015 camera is able to offer up, but that does not mean it can't be a useful tool to keep around.
 
DPStewart said:
I don't think so.
I have a 550D (T2i) and it's not far off from the 50D and ML doesn't really help with video much. You can't shoot RAW on these lower models for more than 2 seconds because of the tiny buffers that Canon built into them. These lower Canons also are just too soft by today's standards. Poor video dynamic range too. Really an iPhone 6 is probably a better video camera. These are still great stills cameras though and that's the main reason I keep mine.
Magic Lantern does make ANY Canon a better camera though - it should always be on any Canon you may have. It's that good.
Click to expand...

Agree that in general going with Canon is a horrible horrible choice, they've fallen too far behind over the years (and even back in the days of the GH1/GH2, Canon was never ever really ahead on a technical level).

However...... got to totally disagree with 50D only being not that far off from the lowly 550D!! As having CF cards with a fast card write speed is a huge boost to its capabilities as you can see here (huge!):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16cgnRivbUv7nA9PUlCLmLdir3gXdIN3pqzCNAAybepc/edit#gid=5
 
That fast card write speed won't help you with video because it's all governed by the buffers, which are just too small even on the higher end Canon's.

The 5D mkIII I think is still an outstanding camera if you're shooting ML RAW.
The 6D is very close behind.
 
DPStewart said:
That fast card write speed won't help you with video because it's all governed by the buffers, which are just too small even on the higher end Canon's.

The 5D mkIII I think is still an outstanding camera if you're shooting ML RAW.
The 6D is very close behind.
Click to expand...

The much faster write speed in the 50D over the 550D does help, people are getting continuous HD raw all the way until the card fills up! 64 or even 128gigs worth.

Basically the 5D mk3 is of course "the best" for ML raw (but at such a ridiculously high price it would be foolish to buy one only for the sake of ML raw), but the 50D is a very close 3rd place behind the 2nd placed 5D mk2 (if only the 50D could do audio!! Then I'd fairly enough rate the two of them as almost 2nd Equal with each other).

The Canon 6D comes nowhere close to these 3, as its SD card slot cripples it too much. The closest to continuous HD raw it can do is 1792x1008 for 120 frames. LOL! Merely 120 frames is nowhere near "continuous", unlike the other 3.
 
IronFilm said:
The much faster write speed in the 50D over the 550D does help, people are getting continuous HD raw all the way until the card fills up! 64 or even 128gigs worth.

Basically the 5D mk3 is of course "the best" for ML raw (but at such a ridiculously high price it would be foolish to buy one only for the sake of ML raw), but the 50D is a very close 3rd place behind the 2nd placed 5D mk2 (if only the 50D could do audio!! Then I'd fairly enough rate the two of them as almost 2nd Equal with each other).

The Canon 6D comes nowhere close to these 3, as its SD card slot cripples it too much. The closest to continuous HD raw it can do is 1792x1008 for 120 frames. LOL! Merely 120 frames is nowhere near "continuous", unlike the other 3.
Click to expand...

Dude...WHAT? REALLY? Then buy that summabitch like NOW!

EDIT: Found this 2nd follow-up review by a guy using it extensively.
It has some pretty major limitations that he goes into in detail here. It's interesting for sure! The 50D pre-dates all the other popular Canon cameras, but it had that ONE difference of not being bottlenecked by the hardware.
 
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Jump on eBay and you can see a fair few have sold at around about that US$150ish price region (thus it means you can pick up one yourself at similar pricing with a little bit of patience. So long as this thread doesn't result in a fresh flood of people being sent to hunt them down on eBay!! haha):
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&_nkw=canon+50d&_sop=15


(they're often being sold "for parts", but so long as live view is working then it is all fine and dandy to go ahead and use for ML raw video! :-D )

However once you add up the hefty cost of fast CF Cards (which thankfully are heaps cheaper than what they were back in early 2013!!) then a 50D isn't looking quite so crazy cheap. As for most of us these CF Cards are not anything we'll ever use with any other cameras we've got now, and ditto its old batteries! Buy a bunch of them for a 50D, only to never be able to use it for anything else (if only the 50D was ever so slightly more modern and used the ridiculously commonplace Canon LP-E6 instead!!).


But the main reason why I question its relevance, is we've got BMPCC also selling very cheaply, and 4K cameras like the Panasonic G7 selling very cheaply as well. Just to mention a couple. The world now in (almost) 2016 is very different to what it was in early 2013 when the 50D first hit the headlines.

Especially if you already own a BMPCC like myself.... I wonder what is the point??
 
Well...if you've already been sitting on an old 50D then ML RAW is an amazing addition.

If you're using the BMPCC make sure you download the latest version of Resolve 12 because it Auto-Applies their rec.709 lut automatically. Crazy easy now.
 
When I started this thread I wasn't too sure if I was going to get a 50D (because I already have a BMPCC/PMW-F3/G6/D5200/etc), just investigating the possibilities. But now I'll be buying one from a FB friend tomorrow evening! As just been offered a too good to ignore deal.
 
Good choice. I've had most of those cameras. Find some cheap 35mm-ish prime lens, and adapter, then use MLVProducer https://sourceforge.net/projects/mlvproducer/ and you'll get seriously beautiful footage, which you can output as ProRes422 or 444 that is more pleasing to my eye, at least, then most 8bit, even 4K.

The only problem for me is I get write errors with the 50D. So I just got a 7D for $425. It has been rock solid. I hope to still figure out the best settings for the 50D.
 
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