Canon 5d mkiii users - can you assign a different button to 5x/10x magnification

T

tikigod19

Well-known member
Hi all thinking of going for a mkiii and as a seasons mkii user (with magic lantern) I rely on the 5x/10x magnification zoom in button being on my right thumb but I notice from pictures that its moved to the left side of the body on the mkiii.

Does anyone know if the software (or magic lantern) allows for this to be assigned to one of the buttons on the right hand side?

Oh, and while I'm here.. any other things I should really know (negatives) about switching to the mkiii. I understand I'll be able to get half as much footage per memory card so might need to buy some 64gb cards. Is this accurate?

thanks guys
 
You can use custom controls to set up the "SET" button right under your thumb to automatically replay the last image and at the same time automatically zoom to 2x, 4x, 8x, 10x, or actual size (100% zoom) with one press, your choice.

There are no negatives compared to the 5D2. The 5D3 is superior in every way. Seriously there is nothing that it doesn't do better than the 5D2.

As far as video is concerned, the ALL-I codec is larger than the 5D2's h264 but not twice as large. The manual overstates the file sizes. Many times I have seen the ALL-I codec run about 480 Mb/min, 5D2 was about 300 Mb/min.

On top of that, the 5D3 has an IPB codec which while still looking better uses less space than the 5D2 codec. So you have choice there ALL-I or IPB.
 
I really appreciate your reply. Would you say it's silly to film in IPB instead of just buy a few more Transcend 400x cf cards and film in all-I?

Just to confirm on this zoom feature as it's really important to me. I'm talking about the 5x or 10x magnification that you can do before recording to useas a focus assist. Can that be assigned to tthe set button? It sounds like you're talking about a playback zoom but the one I'd need to do is a live view zoom before recording.

I've been just read on dslr film noob that the 6d is as good if not better in low light than the mkiii. I wasn't expecting that. I know moire and aliasing will still be an issue but i assume the mkiii is better in other ways for the price difference?
 
Just foundb this online. This sums up the problem. I left the next part about manual focus in. This worries me massively as everything I do is MF...

Zoom in/out functionality is a HUGE step backwards for Live View. Whereas before I could zoom in/out in Live View with the thumb on my right hand*by feel, now I’m forced to remove or reposition my left hand from supporting the lens and/or camera to seek out and find the zoom button which is buried among other superfluous buttons on the far left.*And I have to look at the rear of the camera to do so, because I can’t find it by feel— so I also have to take it away from my eye.It’s an unbelievable step backwards compared to the 5DM2. Nor can I find any programmable functionality to make it work as on the 5DM2. As I use Live View constantly, this is intensely irritating in the field. Maybe there is something I’ve missed— I hope so. One reader tells me that the "Set" button can be programmed to zoom in. That sounds like an improvement, assuming it has no side effects otherwise, but my thumb rests at upper right— still not the same.Zoom aside, I had some real difficulty with Live View (seeing focus even zoomed in). I’m not sure why, and that’s just an initial impression.The display grows very dim at times, for no apparent reason, making it difficult to see the image when playing it back.The focusing screen for manual focus is indeed terrible as some users supposed. It’s very hard to achieve manual focus accuracy— completely unreliable for accurate focus. On the plus side, the focus assist (green dot) feature works pretty well for *some* lenses, but doesn’t work at all for non-chipped lenses (e.g. Zeiss ZF.2 or Leica or anything else with a lens adapter)
 
In order to make sure I get this correct I just pulled out my 5D Mark III to test this for you. When I have the "SET" button set in custom controls to zoom, it does the following in Live view stills or movie mode:

First press, it does 5X zoom, second press 10X zoom, 3rd press goes back to no zoom. This is an easy movement with the thumb, just a minor adjustment compared to the way the old Canons worked. The "SET" button is the largest on the camera and right in the middle of the big wheel, so it's hard to miss, even flying blind.

I don't know how anyone could have trouble with the 5D3s live view screen. It is bigger, has better color, just as bright, and as sharp or sharper than the 5D2 screen. It does have an auto brightness adjustment turned on by default, and you can turn that off. In many conditions the auto brightness is not as bright as default on the older Canons. So if that was a problem, turn auto off, set the brightness to the middle level, and match way the old Canons work.

About manual focus with the optical viewfinder: It is hard with the 5D3, it's a trade-off for having the best of the best auto focus system in the 5D series. If I was shooting stills with a manual focus lens, I would use live view mode, with 5X and 10X zoom for focusing. An add-on viewfinder for movie shooting would work great for live view manual focus stills.

About ALL-I or IPB. There isn't much difference. I think ALL-I is a tiny bit sharper, shows a little more noise, and deals with high motion scenes better. In most situations, IPB is fine. Maybe ALL-I is a little better if you have the card space.

About the 6D. I don't own one so I can't say how the movie noise looks at high ISO. Since I can download raw still samples, I can tell you that the 6D raw stills at super high ISO are a little better the the 5D3, but once you normalize the 5D3 raw to 6D size with they are pretty even. 6D for movie shooting? Just don't go there, it has moire and aliasing worse than the 5D2, much worse than the 5D3. I would never buy a 6D for movie shooting.

Side Bar: Speaking not to you but of the person you quoted above. It is beyond my comprehension how someone can find the money to buy a $3500 camera but be so lazy that they can't spend the time to read the manual and learn how it works. I just don't get that at all. And to make it worse, they post on a forum about how the camera doesn't do something they want it do to, when the only problem is their own ignorance. Just unbelievable.
 
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I cant thank you enough for your reply and taking the time to test for me. The set button does exactly what I want it to do. If anything the set button is bigger and easier to find blind like you say so this will be an excellent transition.

I didnt read that it was the optical viewfinder that make it harder to focus manually, thought it meant the LCD screen which would obviously be disastrous (and to be honest I was surprised I hadn't read of this complaint elsewhere) so that problem is non existent which is good as like you, for photography on MF lenses I'd always use live view.

Just like you say the post I quoted is very misleading and it gives the impression it's written by someone who has used the camera for 5 minutes and not tried to exploit it to its maximum.

I didnt realise the moire and aliasing on the 6d was worse than the 5dmkii I assumed it'd be a slight improvement. I'm mainly upgrading for the low light capabilities so in that case the 6d seemed like a viable option but I've since thought about it and like you say, for the relatively small price difference I should really get as close to perfection as I can and the moire does annoy the hell out of me on a daily basis so I'll be glad to see it (all but) gone.

2 final points if I may..

I've read in multiple locations online about the mkiii hving a soft picture in video mode. I can only assume this is down to the anti aliasing filter as my understanding from the third party filter thats so popular is thats what it does, essentially soften the image to reduce aliasing and moire. Is this softness a problem (or is it even present?)

also I'm intrigued as to why there is little difference between the IPB and ALL-I modes, I assumed if ALL-I was that much bigger on the card then it'd be head and shoulders above IPB. I'm going to try to read up and look for a capacity chart and see how they directly compare on say, a 16gb card as this would be a huge consideration for me, but also what the disadvantages of using one over the other is. For example is one a more reliable format, less likely to result in corrupt cards or recording stopping due to a buffer over-run (I'll be shooting weddings so reliability is paramount)

As I said, I really appreciate your help so far Celluloid Dream and anything further you have to chime in would be greatly appreciated!
 
ok.. got a bit trigger happy on ebay. A mkiii is on its way!

I need to find out if magic lantern is available as I really love it and looking online it doesnt seem like a public release is out yet.. is that right?
 
tikigod19 said:
ok.. got a bit trigger happy on ebay. A mkiii is on its way!

I need to find out if magic lantern is available as I really love it and looking online it doesnt seem like a public release is out yet.. is that right?
Click to expand...

Congrats. You'll love the camera.
Magic Lantern is available for the 5D3. There are some nice features like being able to punch in the live view for focus while recording, and also having a small window zoomed in so you can keep an eye on focus without having to punch in the whole screen. The only caveat to ML on the 5D3 is that once installed, it will slow down your wake time in certain conditions. It goes from instant without ML to about a second after ML has been installed. At this time this is not something that can be undone even if you uninstall ML. Not a big deal for most, and I hadn't even noticed it until someone pointed it out, but some stills photographers consider it a deal breaker.
The 5D3 is a bit softer in video mode, but you can add sharpening to the video in post and it pops right back. This is nice since the alternative is getting a sharp image with a lot of aliasing and moire.
A note on IPB vs all I encoding. In grossly simplified terms IPB takes a frame, then compares the differences in the next frames. This allows it to store much less data when there aren't a lot of changes from frame to frame. Think of a person sitting down talking. Very little changes other than the mouth in most of those frames so it doesn't take much space and the codec can allocate a lot of power to those changes. All I treats each frame as its own, so has to throw the same amount of data at each one whether it needs it or not. This can be useful if you're whip panning across a forest where every pixel will be different, but does you no real favors in the previous interview example.
 
tikigod19 said:
ok.. got a bit trigger happy on ebay. A mkiii is on its way!

I need to find out if magic lantern is available as I really love it and looking online it doesnt seem like a public release is out yet.. is that right?
Click to expand...

I'd say buy a 1000x card, then you can play around with ML RAW if you want, you need a fast card for that.
 
yeah I read all the raw stuff when it first happened. Its amazing but not much good to wedding shooters I dont think. I may buy one 1000x card for corporate shoots or times when I have enough time to set it up for raw, but not for every day.

The start up delay is no problem but I notice the mkiii version of ML isnt in the normal downloads section which is what worried me about it. I have since found it and downloaded it ready for the cam arriving tomorrow, but is it as reliable as the unified public release, thats what worries me. In the early ML days I had some lock ups and you just cant have that at weddings..
 
Andrius Simutis said:
Congrats. You'll love the camera.
Magic Lantern is available for the 5D3.
Click to expand...

I thought I'd found it but now that the camera has arrived I'm having trouble finding the link. I can only find 'nightly builds' which are described as very risky and not for first time installs. This mkiii has never had ML installed so that I assume is what it means by first time install. Could someone link me to the correct files? I'm a bit worried that they're not glaringly obvious on the ML website.. it suggests they're not quite ready but I really hope its stable! I'm not fussed about raw, I just want the focus assist whilst recording and LV and Display off options..
 
anyone?

I have this version but not sure if its a 'nightly build; which are apparently much less reliable

"magiclantern-v2.3.NEXT.2013Nov18.5D3113"
 
Just looking at the stable releases and the mark III isn't in it. I've been running the nightly builds for so long a thought there had to be a stable build for it. Go with the nightly. They keep improving it but its pretty solid....
 
tikigod19 said:
anyone?

I have this version but not sure if its a 'nightly build; which are apparently much less reliable

"magiclantern-v2.3.NEXT.2013Nov18.5D3113"
Click to expand...

I'd say to avoid confusion follow the guide on installing on mkIII on Stephen Mick's sticky, and after that update your ML in your card using the nightlies. You'll be fine.
Just follow the developments in the ML forums to keep abreast of improvements.
 
thanks guys, I didnt think I was going to risk it but I really rely on cropmarks so I might just do it.

A question regarding stability..

At a wedding the ceremony and speeches are the two key moments for me in terms of stability, I can't afford a lock up or failure. If I were to save 2x CF cards (do I install ML on the cf card or do I install it on a single SD card and just change CF card to record video to) without ML installed, and just switch before speeches and ceremony, would my cam be just as stable as it would if I'd never installed ML in the first place?

edit: I've just read its ok to install ML to sd and record video to CF. In that case, would I just need to remove the SD card to boot without ML and guarantee stability?

Sorry to be a pain but if theres any chance of letting me know this today or tomorrow that'd be great as I have a wedding Friday and Sat and I've made a rather late decision that I may need ML after all..

thanks so much

edit: one more question.. in this dvxuser ML raw guide

it says "5. In the Canon menus, set your photo mode to JPEG/S3 only (turn off RAW photo shooting). This frees up memory in
the camera, allowing for more Magic Lantern mojo to happen
in video mode."

Is that only necessary if shooting raw? I wont ever use raw but would really prefer to leave raw photo mode switched on incase I start taking photos and forget..
 
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I've been running ML on the 5D3 since June. Using mostly the June build, I'd say I crashed while shooting standard video about six times. I had a few times when I'd power cycle and need to remove the battery to get bootup. And while shooting raw, well, it definitely wasn't stable. I lost maybe 10% of my takes to errors/crashes/card overflow. But I would still consider it worth it, as long as I have a backup camera in the bag for peace of mind.
Hopefully the newer builds are solving more problems than they are creating.
 
somebody has scared me on the ML forums but saying that worst case scenario is that ML can result in an entire card being destroyed and therefore losing all of the footage on it.. is this accurate? Is it any more likely to happen with ML than without?
I've decided not to use ML for this weekends weddings and I'm really not looking forward to it .. :(
 
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