Does the 5DmkIII really sucks as many people say ?

I'm a lumix fan, but own the Canons for photography, much of which is resorts or architectual. On a recent job in New York I pushed for the GH2 but the guy that brought me in was Canon through and through and we shot on MKIIs and the full set of Canon Tilt Shift Lenses. My arguments that the MkII was too soft for wide shots kind of fell flat, but the client loved the video. Well known Architect and $8,9000,000 penthouse...I'm starting to believe I'm far more bothered by perceived softness than anyone else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YKWWLkqsX4
 
yoclay said:
absolutely blows away the GH2 in lowlight.
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100 percent agreement

yoclay said:
The "grain" of the GH2 looks like crap above 800 ISO by comparison, and you are very likely to have banding either in your skies or on flat walls with gradations into the shadows.
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100 percent agreement

yoclay said:
but you really need to be on top of the hacks, choosing the right one for the situation
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This has NOT been my experience. I first standardized on Driftwood's Quantum 100 ( 100 Mbps All I-Frame ) which worked perfectly for everything I threw at it. It did require the uber-expensive Sandisk 95 MB/sec SDXC cards to work flawlessly, but I was prepared to invest in a pair of $200 cards. ( the price has come down a bit from last March when I first bought my cards )

yoclay said:
but even with the best cards available it still occasionally locks up or gives error messages. When this happens I lose everything I just shot in that take. Thus I cannot trust it in pro situations, with talent and team costing serious cash.
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This has NOT been my experience. I've shot four Indie films and a few dozen 30-60 minute interviews, and the worst case scenario for me was having the camera "stall" three times on one Indie shoot. By "stall", it meant that I pressed record and the camera would almost instantly stop recording, but would work perfectly the second time I pressed the record button. I don't know the cause of this "stall" problem, but my suspicions are a combination of shooting with lumix electronic lenses in a very hot room for the entire Indie shoot.

Since switching over to Lee Powell's "FlowMotion 2.02" patch ( 2 months ago ), I haven't experienced any issues with my GH2.

yoclay said:
The Mark III is dependable and a great compliment to the BMC camera, especially for wide angles and fast lenses. So regardless of what people may say, it is absolutely fine for what it does, and a worthy alternative to the GH2 for many situations.
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I haven't shot with a Mark III yet, but a friend has ( he's a GH2 shooter like me and he was quite impressed with the new Canon ), but everything I've seen from this camera looks very good.
 
I switched from the GH2 to the Markiii, mainly because I needed a camera that would take excellent stills as well as video, and honestly, I think both are adequate for most of our uses.

Moire and Aliasing? Barely notice them, and I bet most of your clients won't either, I did have a speaker with a highly detailed tie today that nabbed some rainbows, but I've tested brick walls, roofs, etc., and they've all looked great.

Resolution: The GH2 does beat the Markiii in lines resolved, but the Markiii holds up very well with sharpening in post, something the Markii fell apart on. I think this is another issue where pixel peepers will notice a difference, but the audience usually won't.

I've been on a simple shoot for the past week: recording training videos for charter schools, but that has shown me that the Markiii is dependable. No lock ups, no overheating, etc., even when used for hours on end.

Like another poster said, the Markiii improved on all the weak points in the Markii, and people have been working with those weak points for years to produce works that have been viewed the world over and accepted. It's a wonderful camera that takes excellent stills as well as video, just take it through it's paces before you take it in the field, become comfortable with it, and you'll do just fine, and your audience will be more than pleased.
 
The 5Dm3 is a tool in the toolbox- works very well in low light and is sharp enough in bright light with post sharpening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbzF2e5beS4 (House of Blues, Foundation room). The room was much, much darker in real life with mostly red light sources. Shot at ISO 12800, F4 (24-105 F4L). I also had the 16-35 F2.8L II and 70-200 F2.8L II on hand but chose F4 for easier focusing in the dark. Only a slight amount of post sharpening- too much sharpening looks like video (micro aliasing). Light noise clean up with Neat Video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkFmhKoUEv4 lots of sharpening for this test, opening shot on the 16-35 F2.8L II (not the sharpest lens); later shots with the 70-200 and 24-105. Very difficult material included: high detail clothing, bricks, tile, etc., pretty sharp with post sharpening and still little or no aliasing.

With a good preamp, internal audio is also usable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bWGogt2Kxg (lightly post-sharpened).

All live action shot on the 5D3; Forest Lawn shot with the 24-105mm F4L and Gen I Fader ND, some shots with 16-35, 70-200: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLbZ_nwm8-I
 
I too shoot architecture and design. So I have the mk3 and the 17,24, and 45 tilts. I also have the gh2 and af100. For stills, obviously I go mk3. And lately I use it for video as well. Low light being the biggest reason. I shoot 6400 ISP without worry. After post sharpen I really am not concerned with resolution. Monitoring is no problem. All I codec drag and drop editing. I see no moire and very minimal if no aliasing. The gh2 aliases just as much.
Maybe you should look at the 1dx as well. But for a combo arch guy shooting stills and video, the mk3 is the camera.
 
Mark III is definately the best in my opinion, we recently did a short film on 5D3 and screened a DCP in a local cinema, we used Dark Energy in our postproduction and the image looks surprisingly organic and detailed (the sharpness is just right, sharper than we expected). We used Zeiss ZE prime lenses.
 
Also just screened a DCP in a theater nearby and it looked great. For those that don't know, DCPs require higher resolution (2K or 4K). Uprezzed to 2K, 5DMKIII footage looked great.

Stop pixel-peeping.

Kegan
 
DevonH said:
Marvin, did you use the AE version or the full kit?
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Just the AE version, we only used the denoise function of Dark Energy in 1080p, then the clean plate was sent to PFClean to upscale to 2K, using Lanczos scaler for best result, and applied film grain and chroma noise.
 
I have been using a default USM sharpening of (300, .9, 0) in Premiere Pro for my Canon T4i images. Thay are stunning with that default sharpening. Pretty simple to throw it on an Adjustment Layer.

Canon has always used a strong AA filter, but it is easy to counter.

I just got my 5D3 and have started testing that out. I love the T4i, even though the sensor is essentially the same as the 7D/T3i. I got teh 5D3 for higher ISO.

I am still hoping that the Canon full frame camera expected this fall is more video centric in terms of down-sampling, off-loading teh sensor, codecs, even the AA filter. Let's hope.

Best,
Michael
 
Well thanks guys for the suggestion, I finally bought it and I love it.
I still have my hacked GH2 and I use it for aerial filming because it's light but I like the 5D mkIII a lot, as video camera and still camera aswell. Stills are just out of this world, awesome quality.

About sharpening, if you just set sharpness at 1 it's ok in my opinion, about the strong contrast, cinestyle by technicolor makes a huge difference. Colors are simply better than GH2, I see no banding, no macroblocks in shadows.. it just need some time edit the settings but then it's awesome. Up to 6400 grain doesn't disturb...

HDMI sucks, but magic lantern is coming soon... and the alpha version available already offers lots of cool features.

Now that I have it in my hands I really don't see such a bad camera as many many people describe it.

The footage looks very natural, I wonder if all this sharpness is really needed.... I don't think so. But it's a personal taste.
 
I've tried the 5D Mark III and I didn't see the softness that most sample videos on Vimeo were showing.

What disappointed me was the price for what we are getting. At $3K, here is what we SHOULD have gotten:
1) Clean HDMI out at 1080p with simultaneous active internal LCD
2) If not Clean HDMI, then at least don't window the output like they do now
3) Mirroring between the SD Card and CF Card
4) Continuous video recording
5) Peaking
6) Slow motion in 1080p

Canon needs to redo their market assessment of what value means in the sub $3000 pro market.
 
dustylense said:
Yeah, the 5d sucks
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You cheater! :) Personally, I wouldn't say that the 5D3 sucks. Not at all. The problem with the 5D3 is that the price is a bit too high for what it offers, but it's a pretty nice camera indeed. And, as was obvious to me all along, that "price issue" is solving itself quite quickly too: at BH, the body-only is selling for $3200 (or $3300 with $160 worth of goodies), and the kit has gone down from $4300 to $3750. As long as it's cheaper than the D800 (as it should be, given its IQ for stills), it's a mighty contender.
 
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