General Canon EOS M50 Short Film/Test

torresfilms

torresfilms

Well-known member
The EOS M50 Rocks!

It's not the spec king of mirrorless cameras but the canon eos m50 just works! The auto focus, canon colors, canon menus, and just the overall ease of use makes this camera perfect for me and my passion projects.

Here is a link to some shots I grabbed with the camera while my students were filming their short film. Forgive me for the bad sound. The students recorded sound separately but not while I was filming. The sound is decent. Overall this was just a test to see how would this camera would look under cinematic lighting.

I got this camera for vlogging mainly but after seeing what it was able to produce with good lighting I'm definitely going to be using it for my short films.


Here is the link to the camera test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9UGazloao&t=2s


26BE042D-1CFE-4273-AD34-EEB4F47589EF.jpg
 
Did you shoot this in 4K?

Colors and latitude look good, image sharpness is good (as best as can be judged after YT compression), but there’s a striking amount of jell-o in there. Just, lots of microjitter.
 
thanks for the post.

i welcome any details about settings and lenses used.

thanks in advance.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc
 
Alex H. said:
...but there’s a striking amount of jell-o in there. Just, lots of microjitter.
Click to expand...

It's the rolling shutter and it will go down as one of the worst in history along with the a6300 (both in 4K).

I played around with it at Best Buy the other day and although I'm not too crazy about it (and I love Canon DSLRs), you can't really complain for the price. For 4K interviews on sticks in a lit environment, it will do great.
 
Alex H. said:
Did you shoot this in 4K?

Colors and latitude look good, image sharpness is good (as best as can be judged after YT compression), but there’s a striking amount of jell-o in there. Just, lots of microjitter.
Click to expand...


Thanks for your comment Alex!

The only shot in 4k is at :31 seconds. The whole thing was shot in 1080p 24p, minus the shot where the guy gets choked which was shot at 1080 60p.

I did everything handheld holding it with a little joby tripod so yes there was definitely some jitter in there. If this was a real shoot where I was hired as a DP I would have definitely had a better rig for the shots, but this was just a spur of the moment thing where I decided to test out this little monster on a student film set lol.
 
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robfilms said:
thanks for the post.

i welcome any details about settings and lenses used.

thanks in advance.

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc
Click to expand...



Thanks for the comment robfilms!

The settings I used were auto profile picture setting, shutter speed 1/50, F-stop 1.4( 1 lens used: canon 50mm 1.4 lens), ISO I believe was 400, and most of it was shot at 1080p 24p.

At :31 secs was 4k 24p, and the shot where the husband gets choked was shot at 1080 60p.
 
NorBro said:
It's the rolling shutter and it will go down as one of the worst in history along with the a6300 (both in 4K).

I played around with it at Best Buy the other day and although I'm not too crazy about it (and I love Canon DSLRs), you can't really complain for the price. For 4K interviews on sticks in a lit environment, it will do great.
Click to expand...




Thanks for the comment Norbro!

The rolling shutter at 4k is very bad yes. At 1080p it's not great but it's really not that bad.

And your'e right. It's a really awesome camera for the price.
 
Thanks for sharing the sample. It looks a lot better than I thought it would. I'm curious about this camera for gimbal work. How's the moire situation? Does Canon finally have it under control?

Regarding the DPAF, are you able to control the speed of the focus transitions like you can with the 80D? And how smooth/responsive are the transitions when adapting an EF-S lens to the EF-M mount? Do you lose anything?
 
QuickHitRecord said:
Thanks for sharing the sample. It looks a lot better than I thought it would. I'm curious about this camera for gimbal work. How's the moire situation? Does Canon finally have it under control?

Regarding the DPAF, are you able to control the speed of the focus transitions like you can with the 80D? And how smooth/responsive are the transitions when adapting an EF-S lens to the EF-M mount? Do you lose anything?
Click to expand...


Not to sure about the Moire situation. I haven’t really done tests or have seen much Moire from any of my videos. I also haven’t tried to control the DPAF speed but I’m pretty sure there is no control over that. I’ve looked through the menu pretty hard and have seen nothing of that nature.

The responses to adapted EF lenses are perfect and accurate. I haven’t seen any issues with the DPAF at all so I don’t think anything is lost.

Thanks for your comment!
 
Nice short movie! I saw it months ago on Youtube, when I was trying to find info about the camera. :)

Personally I like the camera, but only in 1080/24p mode. I only tested it once in 4k, and I didn't like what I saw (from jello, to crop, to bad AF), so I never switched the camera back to 4k again. Given enough light, ND + IR CUT filters outdoors, stabilization, and the right pictured profile, the camera is capable of a nice image in 1080p -- as long as you don't pan (jitter). I usually use a flatter version of VisionColor CineTech profile ($20), which gives me the film look without much color grading (and without losing dynamic range compared to Cinestyle or the third party C-Log), because when I try to push that 30mbps h.264 footage in DaVinci Resolve, it breaks apart. So whatever can be done in-camera, rather than in post, is most beneficial. I shot a test with the M50 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYYTJsIzRAw

I have a Blackmagic camera too, and yet, if I'm to shoot run and gun (e.g. a kid's birthday, as I did recently, with kids running around in random directions), the M50 is perfect, because its AF keeps up. I could never keep up with manual focus in such a situation. For a more controlled environment, e.g. a music video or short movie, another camera might be a better solution though.
 
I bought an M50 as replacement for a 60D. No-one complains about the IQ. Handles well on my FeiyuTech A1000 gimbal. No jitter in 1080p if you turn off the IS. With the f2 22mm lens the camera fits into a coat pocket. With an adapter (I bought the excellent Vitrox, less than half the price of the Canon) you can use all your Canon EF/EF-S lenses without losing anything. For budding and budget cinematographers, the 4K crop means that with a $3 adapter you can use cheap fast Chinese C mount cinema lenses. You can own a whole set of cinema primes for under $500. Don't know why anyone would buy an 80D when this is available - offers so much more at a cheaper price.
 
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No jitter in 1080p if you turn off the IS. With the f2 22mm lens the camera fits into a coat pocket.
Click to expand...

Actually, the jitter I get when panning (even slowly) is with all in-camera IS off (lens IS was ON in one sample problematic footage, but OFF on another -- the problem remained). My guess is that the problem is the codec, as it's trying to guess frames instead of actually recording real frames 24 times a second. That guessing creates artifacts when panning, or when an object is moving fast (e.g. a car) as the algorithm either is not good enough or can't keep up. Or it doesn't have enough bitrate (30 mbps), who knows. The problem does not happen with my ProRES LT BMPCC camera (100 mbps).

I have the f/2 22mm lens (footage with it linked above) in addition to 2 more EF-M Canon zoom lenses, lots of EF lenses + adapter, the Rokinon 12mm f/2 EF-M manual lens, and two 12.5mm f/1.4 C-mount lenses. The one I end up using the most is the 15-45mm EF-M zoom because it's the most versatile, although it does have a very ugly bokeh. Sample footage of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J-By_LWUw
 
Came across some footage shot with the M50. Not bad little crash cam/b cam for whatever set up one's going for. Though, I do see some issues (aliasing/moire) with it, unless its the compression on vimeo that's creating the problems and its not on the footage itself.

https://vimeo.com/319441269

https://vimeo.com/315325341

https://vimeo.com/264760335

https://vimeo.com/291823252

And Gordon Lang did own test with the auto focus, works great, and from this clip there's barely see aliasing/moire issues on his beanie...(if you download the file)

https://vimeo.com/264405062
 
I use an M50 for a b-cam to a c100 and on my Ronin-S. I shoot strictly in 1080p as it matches the C100 nicely. Its nice to fly cause it weighs nothing at all, tho I have had issues with the pan balance on the Ronin that I don't have when using a bigger camera. Its also great as an everyday camera for out and about stuff cause its small size.
 
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