Canon's New Full Frame Sensor. Fireflies in Total Darkness

I don't know man. For doing outdoor work, it would be kind of cool to be able to film say, lions on a kill at night in the moonlight. Now, they use huge banks of lightforce lights on vehicles, but what if you could do it under moonlight without disturbing them. Or how about filming some TV footage in the wild without the green glow we used to see all the time, and sometimes still do. Just a small light or even firelight and you're good. More natural I think, although that green can be creepy I guess.
 
Would love to see this uncompressed to all heck and back, but looks pretty useful. Nice advancements on Canons end.
 
Sheldon Charron said:
I don't know man. For doing outdoor work, it would be kind of cool to be able to film say, lions on a kill at night in the moonlight. Now, they use huge banks of lightforce lights on vehicles, but what if you could do it under moonlight without disturbing them. Or how about filming some TV footage in the wild without the green glow we used to see all the time, and sometimes still do. Just a small light or even firelight and you're good. More natural I think, although that green can be creepy I guess.
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You can film like that now, all you need is a slightly modified camera. It's monochrome, but it can be done. BBC/NatGeo does it all the time now, or they use nightvision, or they use thermal cameras.

Example http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/visions/field-test/nichols-serengeti/infrared-sensors

maxmax.com sells modified cameras, or you can send your camera in and they can modify it. They can remove the IR filter, they can remove the UV filter, they can remove the antialiasing filter, they can even remove the Bayer color filter array and make your camera a true panchromatic camera, and you can simply place lens filters to make it monochromatic, or any combination of the above.

For thermal cameras, the MicroCAM 1024HD would be the camera of the day to use. For Night Vision, AstroScope is the go to camera adapter today.
 
Everytime I see the 80,000 ISO upgrade, someone comes along and gripes about how it's not usable! :D

Why complain about a free additional option in the camera?
 
From someone who lives in Finland and it gets pretty dark here in the winter, I'd love the ability to film in the streets without any lights. I think it could actually produce a real nice look too.
 
This is part of the "green" movement in film production. I've been waiting for this development for quite some time. Normal lights use electricity which causes global warming and produce more landfill waste when they are obsolete. Now, we can use the natural light of fire flies which are biodegradable, all natural, and carbon neutral.

On a more serious note, I think it looks very cool. Kudos to Canon for pushing the envelope of light sensitivity in a sensor, even if this is a bit extreme.
 
Canon has released a short video produced with a unique full frame CMOS sensor. Announced in March, it's a sensor dedicated to extreme low light video recording with unusually large pixels. The test subject? A group of Yaeyama-hime fireflies on Japan's Ishigaki Island. The sample video was captured without artificial lighting in just 0.01 lux, a light level that challenges the naked eye. Beyond natural and astronomical applications, Canon says the high sensitivity sensor may one day be used for medical and security purposes.

The high sensitivity chip uses large pixels and low readout-noise circuitry, allowing it to capture light around 10 times less bright than current CCDs used for astronomy. Each pixel is 7.5 times larger than those of the Canon EOS 1DX.
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http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/0...ource=news-list&utm_medium=text&ref=title_0_2

The 1DX has an 18MP sensor so do the math , it's less than 3MP . I would prefer a full frame 10MP sensor for 4K IMHO.
 
* I guess there's something amazing behind all that compression, but I'm not sure I'm seeing it
* if it is a full-frame sensor with 1920x1080 resolution, each photosite has 9 times the area of a 5D3 photosite (a bit more if you take into account the space you lose with the circuitry, and that gapless microlenses and such won't be able to fully give you back)
 
atarijedi said:
Well the article says it is a FullHD sensor, so it is 1920x1080 pixels, meaning the photosites will be about 20um, which is huge, 3 to 4 times larger than most.
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I know it's a full frame sensor but I still would prefer 4K instead of 1080p and with 10MP on a full frame sensor it would still be great in low light with fast F1.2/F1.4 lenses since full frame has twice the area of S35.
 
Darren Levine said:
80,000 iso on the C cameras anyone?

then again, who NEEDS it?
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Why do people always comment on low-light in a completely unrealistic way of "Who needs it?" I need it. I was just shooting a little short film and eventhough we had a bunch of lights, we had to bounce them around and diffuse them to get a really nice natural look. That just tends to be lower light than the hollywood norm of blasting light from every corner. And lighting less looks just better and more natural to me.
 
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