ISO 1920x1080 sample frames of Various Wide Adapters on EX Cameras

I didn't say it was better, but with the stock lens, the EX3, for example, resolves detail down to the pixel, such that the 1920x1080 image will certainly look as good as any 1920x1080 crop from an SLR camera with a theoretically perfect lens.

Not sure about the colorspace comparison. What I DO know is that it exceeds the brightness levels that Adobe Premiere will handle (RGB 236-255 is clipped in Premiere CS3) and I must employ special methods to recover this additional lattitude, usually by rendering out an uncompressed version with Fast Color Corrector set to limit the output to 235 RGB. So based on this, I'd say the camera is working the full RGB range.

The evidence at this point in the technology development suggests that the only benefit the DSLR offers is shallow depth of field and relatively low-cost "HD" video in a compact package, if audio is unimportant or not needed.

Most folks do not realize that you gain almost an extra f-stop of light sensitivity by discarding 60i and shooting 24P with the shutter off. Further light gain can be had by shooting 720P/24. I find that is super adequate for shooting by candlelight alone. In fact, I find myself stopping down the lens to avoid blowing highlights. And I didn't even mention frame accumulation mode. I shot a nice picture of an owl at midnight, at full telephoto, by the light of a 40w porch lamp some 90' away from the owl's perch. The camera gathered so much light as to make it seem like we were shining a flashlight at the owl, but one could see the whole area was lit up, not just the owl. Impressive what the camera can do in darkness.
 
For me I got my EX1 not to 'make movies' and shoot cinema, but because I wanted the hyper-real HD look for my wilderness adventure projects. I use Doug Jensen's PP and I love it. I shoot 1080 30p. For me, shooting 720 (unless I'm shooting slow-mo) is not getting full use of such an amazing high-def picture from this camera. If I'm gonna shoot high-def, I'm gonna make sure it's as big as my camera will shoot. Of course we all shoot for different reasons. I absolutely love the picture I get from my EX1.

The 5D II, to me, is much more cinematic. It's the DOF one can achieve, plus the general aesthetics of the picture. I can shoot 1080 30p from both cameras and the resulting footage looks aesthetically different straight out of the camera. This is just my subjective opinion and overwhelmingly those that I show the footage.

There's no doubt Tom is correct that the 5D II shines in certain situations and not so good in others. I find the 5D II absolutely rocks in low light and shallow DOF and more narrow lenses shooting lower f-stops. But the EX1 has limits too, such as sucking at f8+ due to diffraction and more noise in lower light (although still quite good). I love them both. But personally I think Canon is on to something very very good and once they fine tune that 5D II sensor (aliasing, etc.) and put it in a 'real' video camera, it's gonna rock big time, especially if they can keep the price lower than the projected Scarlet.
 
being a big fan of both my EX1 and 5DmkII i have to say that when i see the EX1 side by side with the 5DmkII (from the same shoot)...the EX1 stomps on the 5DmkII. still though...that doesnt bother me most of the time. like Buck talks about the asthetic of the 5DmkII, i completely agree and it is beautiful...but still not the detail of the EX1. just goes to show for me at least...it doesnt always come down to absolute detail.

also its doesnt really matter that the 5DmkII has 21mp. that only counts for photography but for video they are skipping lines of the sort. moire and other messiness can easily rear its head...especially if you stop down for deeper DOF. it can be a very risky endeavor to shoot important stuff with a DSLR sometimes.

as to the 5DmkII being better in low light that the EX1? thats a good question.

i would say yes...sort of. if you willing to shoot with max shallow DOF like you get from the 85mm 1.8 or 85mm 1.2 or any of the other host of fast glass then...yeah you can shoot nicely in pretty low light. but, what if you cant accept shooting a scene with only a few inches of DOF then it looses its advantage quick as i see it. even stopping down an 85mm to f8 shot @ 10 feet only gets you about 2 feet in focus. that is 4 & 1/3rds stops slower that shooting @ f1.8 and about 5 stops from f1.2. so if your shooting lets say 800 iso @ 1.8 to get a good exposure...youll have to go to 12,800 just to get that f8. although i shoot 6400 iso on the 5DmkII fairly often i have to admit that for certain things i dont find it very appealing.

so for me i see the strength of DSLR's as shallow shooters most of the time unless in good daylight of a nice amount of artifical production lighting. there are just so many situations that shallow DOF wont work but when it does...its glorious!

as far as the ergonomics of DSLR? thats another conversation in itself.

david
www.davidprobst.com
 
I call it the "20/20 vision" look. People have often said, while watching my 1080P footage on my 12' projection screen, that it looks like they're looking through a hole in the wall at real life.

That said, you can use the EX at the long end of the lens with ND filters, wide open, and achieve some very nice shallow DoF shots too. And we can deviate on the colors, by playing with the matrix settings, to achieve a cinematic warm look, or a cold look, or a variety of interesting variations.

I shot a wedding at 60fps, which gave me flexibility in slowing down any part of the footage. Since it goes to DVD, it doesn't matter. Another benefit is that it renders out about 2X faster than 1080P footage.

The Fujinon wide lens won't resolve 1080 resolution, so shooting in that mode is a waste. Only the stock lens is sharp enough to utilize the camera's full resolution.
 
Very nice discussion here, gentlemen.

I haven't done any DSLR shooting so I can't comment there. Other than the oversharpened yet soft look reminds me of the JVC HD100. Not a bad camera for its time but looking old in the tooth. Oh, and there's a decent amount of macroblocking...but that could be web compression? Although the EX doesn't exhibit such bad macroblocking on Vimeo.

The EX series lenses are incredible. Whether it's in the optics or the software, Sony and Fujinon did something right. It's a shame the wide angle lens is so horrible.

When I know I'll be delivering standard def footage and I want a "live" look, I shoot 720/60p. It seems to downrez much better than 1080/60i. If a client later wants HD (none have yet!) they have the option...720p really isn't so bad.

Also, I think 1/2" depth of field is a good trade off for indie filmmakers. 35mm still camera lenses really weren't designed for the rigors of fimmaking. Cine lenses have much wider focus rings so that precision focus pulling isn't such "a *****." From what I've seen, keeping stuff in focus is "a *****" with 35mm still camera lenses when shooting video of moving subjects in closeup.
 
The fact that 720P on the EX looks about as sharp as 1080P on HDV cameras, does remove some of the dreaded stigma of shooting 720P. But it's still short of the almost-magical clarity of the EX's 1080P mode.

For some reason, it seems that the lens on my EX3 is slightly sharper and more free of CA than the lenses on my two EX1's. Shooting tree limbs against the sky 'busts' just about any lens, whether on a DSLR camera or a video camera, but I have a bunch of that footage shot on the EX3 that shows no visible CA, certainly nothing that would call attention to itself. At the wide end, even at f1.9, that stock lens is nothing short of amazing. I watch that footage on a 12' screen from 8' distance and from that vantage point, I see a whole lot worse coming from Hollywood's Blu-ray discs.

I suppose it may have been 'asking too much' of Fujinon to carry that 'magic' to their wide angle lens for the EX3. They just couldn't carry the winning streak to the optional lens product.

I've spent an enormous amount of time doing flangeback adjustments under various conditions, seeking to improve the focus at wide angle, but I can't seem to get better than 650lph out of the lens at full wide. But the alternatives (converter lenses) are 10X worse. Given that I've exhausted the other options, and the one compositional strength of the Fujinon lens being rectilinearity, I've elected to keep it. There is no 'decent' lens for wide angle use in this price range.

Converters vignette, lose the use of manual focus, add 10X more CA, and have enormously-grotesque barrel distortion. May as well run the "Spherize" filter on all the video! :) Nah... can't see going with a $1700 converter lens. Four grand for mediocre lens quality.. I guess in Fujinon's view, the quality of the stock lens is reserved for their $85,000 lenses.
 
This thread took an ineresting turn, coming from converters/ WA adapters to aesthetics of HDSLR vs. EX. Since I am a still photographer, who started to shoot video with a HVX200 and switched since one month to the EX1R (yeah!), I want to give my 2 ct.

I was also looking for a converter but the image quality of these converters/ adapters is so inferior that I refuse to purchase one for my EX1. E.g. you don't get that much CA from the Canon 15mm fullframe fisheye and more corner sharpness, although this lens is far from perfect, for around 650 EUR.

The most interesting and underrepresented point in discussions using both cameras for me - apart from the already mentioned (dis-)advantages - is the option to use extraordinary lenses with the Canon that complement the excellent image quality of the EX1. Especially when you think about different gengres, not only narrative or feature films.
I can shoot an architectural documentary (guys, I learned about moire and aliasing the hard way) with a 17mm tilt/shift lens, put a 1.4 or 2.0 extender in between and cover a lot of focal ranges.
For my type of shooting, I don't care about F1.2 - I rarely shoot anything below F5.6 to get at least a minimum DoF. And suddenly the 5D is no longer the low light highness, because at ISO4000 you have a lot of noise, esp. in the reds.

So as the british say: horses for courses. I pick the best tool for the job and I'm happy because both complement well once you have figured out the proper workflow.
 
This raises the interesting question, "how can a relatively inexpensive DSLR lens be superior to a costly video lens?"

Four grand is a fairly expensive lens, at least in the world of 35mm photography. But why is it considered a 'junker' in the world of HD video? Why is a 'decent' video lens $85,000?

I'm having a difficult time believing that the laws of optical physics are that much different for a video lens than for a still camera lens.

If every 35mm shooter had to put up with as much CA and loss of sharpness off-center as we video shooters, I think there'd be a lot of outcry. Most still shooters aren't using $85,000 lenses, but they produce good quality images, at much higher resolutions than HD video. Now if a $1300 lens for a SLR camera can produce a clean 21 megapixel image, why is it so hard for a $4000 lens on a HD video camera to produce a clean 2 megapixel image?
 
basspig said:
This raises the interesting question, "how can a relatively inexpensive DSLR lens be superior to a costly video lens?"

Four grand is a fairly expensive lens, at least in the world of 35mm photography. But why is it considered a 'junker' in the world of HD video? Why is a 'decent' video lens $85,000?
Click to expand...

You brought it to the point. I have these explanations
1. Technical challenge. We're mostly talking about zooms. In video you have usually 10x up to 20x zoom lenses whereas the good SLR lenses are 3x (I consider my 70-200mm one of the best) and a sensor of several times that big of a 1/3" to 2/3" size. So the photosites are larger and more forgiving to manufacturing tolerances, you can use cheaper material, don't need to spend that much engineering effort etc.
2. Economies of scale. Broadcast products are sold by hundrets or thousands whereas still lenses by several thousands (some time ago Canon announced 30 million EOS lenses sold). So the high engineering effort can be distributed over a large amount of units.
3. The market. Film/ TV was a long time a high price market with big margins per unit (see 2.) where at least some companies maka a good living - and for accessories it still is. E.g. where else in the world would you pay > $1000 for some steel rods, clamps and plastic grips (aka rig)?
 
I was thinking the reason might be along those lines, but consider this:

The Fujinon wide lens has a very limited zoom range of only 8X. This made me suspect that as the 'tradeoff' for keeping a high quality image with a 'modest' price. Had it boasted 20X zoom, I would have avoided buying the lens, realizing, and drawing from my background in optical physics, that serious compromised to image quality would result in a lens with that much zoom ratio and this price point.

My thinking is that there is some sort of threshold beyond which, making light rays bend equally across the visible spectrum, is nearly impossible without resorting to very complicated optics. Given it is a 4mm lens at the wide end, working to a 1/2" sensor, I suppose it's beyond that hypothetical limit of conventional (low cost) design methodology.

IF there is a threshold, then the stock lens is below it, and a 'perfect' optical performance quality is achievable at low cost.

Sadly, Fujinon does not warn it's potential customers that one must not expect consistent performance and image quality across a line of lenses for a particular camera.

Guess I should have bought the RED camera if I wanted good, cheap lenses. I can see where working with small sensors can have a deceptively-cheap start, but become very expensive in the long run when adding other types of lenses.

Oh well.. it's a heck of a tax writeoff!
 
The thought of a Letus adapter crossed my mind, and indeed I gave it serious consideration, but it is a $4,000 adapter, and I still have to buy a lens. Not to mention the bulk and size of the configuration, the need for rails and other expensive kit. By the time you're ready to shoot, you've probably sunk another $7,000 into Letus, lens and rails. Fine if shooting a movie or in-studio, but run and gun stuff is a little bulky.
 
I'm just saying that a relay lens looks like it could help one get a cleaner image using relatively inexpensive lens', though yes, the whole Letus adapter thing is expensive. There are cheaper ones in the Letus line, and things for 1,000.00 like Brevis. If one was starting without being 4,000.00 in the hole one could get a reasonable kit together. I have not really seen any tests on how well that setup would resolve though.
 
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