Using a monitor with the 7d MUCH better than 5dmkII

[qazwsx]

Well that becomes much less exciting all of the sudden.
Granted, it's nice to be able to run the signal out to a monitor....but ideally it would be so that the shot could be monitored by a client, the director, or whoever else...while the camera operator could still use the LCD.

Damn.
The obvious crippling of technology has never seemed more readily apparent than with this newest crop of DSLRs...

Lets hope one of these manufacturers eventually breaks down and realizes they can only protect the rest of their products for so long...
and decides to just jump on the lion's share of the market by beign the first to release something fully functional.

Then again - Nikon has no high end video cameras to protect

(of course, arguably, neither does Canon... so who knows)

i agree, but until a new camera (or firmware update?) addresses multi-display options, why not work around the problem and get an hdmi splitter?

http://www.smartvm.com/HDMI-Distribution-Amplifier-1x2-Mini-Splitter-Full-HD-1080p-v1.3-P39400.htm

 

[sblfilms]

Damn.
The obvious crippling of technology has never seemed more readily apparent than with this newest crop of DSLRs...

You kind of destroy the entire point of your post (intentional crippling) when you bring up Nikon. They don't have AND video line to protect and they have made some of the same design decisions that Canon is getting flak for.

 

[morgan_moore]

Then again - Nikon has no high end video cameras to protect

(of course, arguably, neither does Canon... so who knows)

Ha Ha !

Its right no-one apart from red has any proper camera under $20k at all

Neither brand produce proper professional stills cameras either IMO

One wonders is it
1 lack of processing power
2 purposeful crippling
3 failure to understand the customer

I think with the D3/3X, and Canon One series it is 1 and 3, in the main

S

 

[Peter J. DeCrescenzo]

So why have the manufacturers designed the HD-capable DSLRs they way they have (thus far)?

Is it ignorance, greed, stinginess, belligerence, wisdom? Or what?

Why do rich, powerful, world-class companies make [IMHO] so many brain-dead design decisions when it comes to these 2nd/3rd generation cams?

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not recommending these cams have more "bloatware" features -- they already have too many of them!

There is nothing high-tech or costly about manufacturers designing-in full-time, live, uncluttered "some form of HD" video out. Or designing-in full-time, live audio out. Or allowing users to turn off audio record AGC.

So what if these features consume battery power? Swap batteries more often, or use a bigger external battery or AC. Wow, that was hard.

So what if these features create heat? Design-in a mechanical interface to allow attachment of an optional external heat sink for "pro" use. Something like that can't possibly be difficult for "rich, powerful, world-class companies" to figure out.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for singing the praises of these products & their manufacturers when they get something right, or even half-right. I can fan-boi with the best of 'em.

But stop making excuses for them when they get certain details completely, utterly and insultingly wrong.

 

[morgan_moore]

I dont know what it is either..

processing power - im not techy so I dont know what features eat power

surely it would be easy just to pipe out the ones through a FW cable reather than processing them ?

Also design brain dead ness

I have much experience of stills cameras and they are ALL flawed by numb features that make them a PITA in a proper pressured professional environment

I have been moaning on an other board for years

The non useability of pre D3 DSLRs forced me to buy an Eyelike digital back, that is a company that I suppose is up there with Ikonostop in its market penetration but at least they just concentrated on hoovering up the 1s and 0s leaving everything else to be done in post - really eveything in the early builds

S

 

[sblfilms]

Hudson just posted a video showing his newest ML firmware for the 5D keeping output in HD during recording.

http://www.vimeo.com/6618825

Oh hell yes. 7D please.

 

[Luis Caffesse]

You kind of destroy the entire point of your post (intentional crippling) when you bring up Nikon. They don't have AND video line to protect and they have made some of the same design decisions that Canon is getting flak for.

I disagree - I think Nikon has only dipped their toe in the water.
The D90 was the first of these cameras to open to the door to video.
It wasn't until the 5D and GH1 that it became apparent how popular (and potentially profitable) this functionality could be.
I wouldn't expect Nikon to come out of nowhere a few months ago with a fully functional video capable DSLR - but now that the market has been tested and demand is clearer it might make sense for them to do so.

Time will tell which way they decide to go - I seriously doubt they will jump headlong into the video market, but they are certainly in a great position to do so.
But they may instead decide to keep their company focused on what they've done well for decades, instead of trying to spread themselves too thin by moving into a new (and somewhat saturated) market.

Point is - I don't think the crippling of the Nikon cameras was done for the same reasons as the Canon and Panasonic cameras. If anyone could come out with a noncompromised camera right now, it's Nikon. Much greater chance of that happening than Panasonic or Canon (though I would put Canon at second place there, they have less to lose than Panasonic does, in my opinion).

(and yes, of course, RED)

 

[sblfilms]

The D300s solves less D90 issues than the 7D does 5D issues. There is no camera for Nikon to protect, and yet the D300s still doesn't add a lot of the things people want in a video capable DSLR. I really think people are making big assumptions here.

 

[Luis Caffesse]

There is no camera for Nikon to protect, and yet the D300s still doesn't add a lot of the things people want in a video capable DSLR. I really think people are making big assumptions here.

That's because it's still first and formost a DSLR, not a video camera.
My point was only that IF Nikon wanted to, they are probably in the best position to release a big gamechanger video camera... not saying they will, just saying they are in a unique position when compared to the other companies - by virtue of the fact that they have no video line to protect.

That's all.
No assumptions - just an observation (and opinion)

 

[morgan_moore]

Time will tell which way they decide to go - I seriously doubt they will jump headlong into the video market, but they are certainly poised to do so. But they may instead decide to keep their company focussed on what they've done well for decades, instead of trying to spread themselves by moving into a new market.

What nikon have done for decades is have a brand that is driven by the 'hero' press photographers at the olympics and big news events - all those big sexy lenses on display

that not where they made their money - but it is their brand - which leads to them making money

these 'hero's are now demanded by their bosses to shoot video (good or bad)

I can say as a nikon user of 20 years plus that I wont buy a DSLR that does not have motion

and that must be the same for 50% of the pros that drive thier brand - it must come or they will die IMO

looking and the C/N race, C usually are a year ahead, N usually get it right

nikon lagged on..
AF
Affordable Digital
FF chips

S

 

[Michael Olsen]

The D300s solves less D90 issues than the 7D does 5D issues. There is no camera for Nikon to protect, and yet the D300s still doesn't add a lot of the things people want in a video capable DSLR. I really think people are making big assumptions here.

To make an even bigger assumption, there may be a reason that the D300s doesn't move it into the video market. Nikon may very well be in the process of creating a competing product.

 

[sblfilms]

That's because it's still first and formost a DSLR, not a video camera.
My point was only that IF Nikon wanted to, they are probably in the best position to release a big gamechanger video camera... not saying they will, just saying they are in a unique position when compared to the other companies - by virtue of the fact that they have no video line to protect.

That's all.
No assumptions - just an observation (and opinion)

"The obvious crippling of technology"

So if it is first and foremost a DSLR and not a video camera, why would you use the phrase "obvious crippling of technology"? Aren't you know saying that being that it is a DSLR, things like full HDMI out during recording + leaving the LCD on, headphone monitoring, etc. are not an obvious attempt to cripple technology but not features that would be naturally expected in a still camera than also shoots video?

 

[morgan_moore]

"The obvious crippling of technology"

So if it is first and foremost a DSLR and not a video camera, why would you use the phrase "obvious crippling of technology"? Aren't you know saying that being that it is a DSLR, things like full HDMI out during recording + leaving the LCD on, headphone monitoring, etc. are not an obvious attempt to cripple technology but not features that would be naturally expected in a still camera than also shoots video?

Any stills photographer who is half serious about their profession and is dabbling in motion will..

Very quickly consider the tools crippled

Stills people who own big heaps of primes to tend to be serious about their image aquisition - be it still or moving

the D300 is of course not aimed at those people


S

 

[Eddy Robinson]

So why have the manufacturers designed the HD-capable DSLRs they way they have (thus far)?

Is it ignorance, greed, stinginess, belligerence, wisdom? Or what?

Why do rich, powerful, world-class companies make [IMHO] so many brain-dead design decisions when it comes to these 2nd/3rd generation cams?

'OMG did you hear! XXXX is releasing an awesome camera for only $yyy'
'Wow, never before have we seen so much quality at this price point!'
'Ya, pretty amazing right? Look at this goddam footage.'
'I wonder if it does zzz?'
'No, seems not...oh well, at least it's only $yyy'.
'Sucks. I hate them.'

Look, the short answer is that if they did all the things you wanted it wouldn't be $1700 (in this case). Or if they wanted to stay at the lower price point, you'd have to wait longer for it. Or compromise somewhere else. 'Cheap, fast and good - you can have 2 out of 3, and that ain't bad' applies to hardware as much as anything else.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not recommending these cams have more "bloatware" features -- they already have too many of them!

rogar-BlackEye(DBG

(...) So what if these features consume battery power? Swap batteries more often, or use a bigger external battery or AC. Wow, that was hard.

So what if these features create heat? Design-in a mechanical interface to allow attachment of an optional external heat sink for "pro" use. Something like that can't possibly be difficult for "rich, powerful, world-class companies" to figure out.

'XXX battery life SUCKS!'
'XXX runs way too hot...noisy image, how can they knowingly sell a product that's designed to MELT!!'

Look, RED are taking one approach by going all modular so you can change out subsystems as you see fit without throwing away the whole camera. And that requires ergonomic compromises. HDSLRs are taking another approach by aiming for* film-camera-like image quality at the expense of some video features. High end camcorders try to give you all the tools you need in a single unit at the expense of bulk and interchangeability. Cheapie camcorders are affordable and deliver passable quality and functionality at the expense usability and manual control. And so on.

* please note 'aiming for', as in trying to offer the best lens/sensor options at a realistic price

The nature of competition is that you try to please some more potential customers than your competitors without pissing too many off, and you try to innovate fast enough leap in front, grab a little bit more market share than you had before, and make enough money to do it again when your competitors leapfrog you. Innovation is a sequence of repeated short hops towards a vague and distant goal.

Talking about a perfect design that manufacturers should just provide is like betting on a bunch of frogs hopping toward a river. you can look and say 'well no frog is hopping forward so consistently and wisely that I'm willing to bet, i'm disappointed in all these frogs', or you can pick whichever one you think is best of the bunch (longest hops, best sense of direction, least time between hops...) and put your money on it (ie buying one of their cameras).

The alternative is just wait. Let all the frogs go by, and know that thanks to evolution, there will be more frogs along next spring and they will be marginally better, faster, stronger. When I buy computer hardware I do exactly this: last year's hot thing is cheaper this year, so I usually wait to see which technologies shake out well and buy 1-2 years behind the cutting edge, which is vastly cheaper and saves me from buggy drivers, incompatibilities, and obsessive calculations of bang for the buck: it's much easier to decide at the end of 2009 which graphics card turned out to be the best thing released in 2008 than it was at the time of release.

Take this approach to an extreme, and you let the manufacturers decide. This was the Soviet approach; let people just go without for a while, observe which designs had staying power, then take the best design, build it to last, like a tank, and wait another 5 years. In fact, if you want to shoot 35mm film, the best deal is an old Russian camera which can be had for cheap and will probably keep working after you're dead (incidentally, you can pick up some good old lenses this way).

It's easy to be wise after the fact and say 'zzz feature is so obvious'. But in product design there are tradeoffs to be made, and generally it's better not to add a desired feature if it means worsening the performance of something else. This is why I can't take your battery/heat suggestions seriously: underperformance in those areas would damage their reputation far more than failure to improve what may be a peripheral feature for a lot of people (like AGC). 'New Canon camera runs way too hot' would call into question their entire design and quality control pipeline and reflect badly on all their products. 6 months after release every blog article that mentioned Canon would have some know-nothing commenter saying 'oh yah, I herd Canons run hot and are unreliable, u will burn your eyeball when you put it up to the viewfinder LOL'.

(rant on, as if that wasn't bad enough)
You damn kids, when I was a lad I had to walk 10 miles uphill to school in both directions!

The first feature I worked on was 5 years ago next month. We shot it on super 16mm, an Arri-IIs...mercifully, it wasn't as loud as the sewing-machine like Arri-III I had worked with earlier that year. Monitoring was on a black and white video tap that put out SD to a little 9" broadcast monitor with gaffa tape along the top and bottom, and it flickered when you started to run the camera because it was plumbed into the optical viewfinder so you could see the shutter strobe. We didn't have playback because nobody wanted to hook up a VCR to the monitor output.

I had a little point-and-shoot that we used for continuity pictures on the set. It could record video too! 320x200 and when you plugged it into a TV to play back it looked kind of like some collage of moving shadows and a pac-man game. My cellphone now shoots better video than that thing did. for behind-the-scenes stuff we had a few students that would come on set 3 days a week with a DVX100a. It was not bad, especially for $4000. I would have considered putting some of my pay towards getting one, but for the fact that I was working 12-15 hour days for a month for a total of...$0. As a matter of fact, I got kicked out of my apartment because I wasn't able to pay the rent at the end of the month.

That was OK, because we loved the look of the film, which was shot on black-and-white. I think we spent about $15,000 on film stock, development, and telecine, and the camera and lens package for a month were a few thousand on top of that. Now, here's a digital camera that does not shoot film, but puts out an image that's at least somewhat competitive with s16mm and costs about a tenth of what we spent on film stock, and weighs about a tenth of the Arri to boot.

For the love of god, please stop complaining about how hard the camera companies are making your life and start thinking about how easy and cheap it is to shoot a movie these days.
(end rant)

 

[Ian-T]

Dang right Eddie. Good read.

Plus...you gotta love those Russians.

 

[Peter J. DeCrescenzo]

Hi Eddy: Sorry my posts weren't clear enough. It's hard to communicate via these $#%@& keyboards.

First, if you don't think the current crop of mid-priced video-capable DSLRs have too many features then perhaps you should take another look. By "too many" I mean features that most people will never use, including serious users, and importantly: Especially in the context of the manufacturers leaving out drop-dead obvious features which any video camera capable of this image quality should have.

That last bit is important.

It's reasonable to expect features like live audio & video monitoring during preview & record in a video cam with image quality such as these cams have.

This is not some feature request from the future. This is not some far-out science-fiction liquid-cooled fusion-powered fevered fan-boi wet dream. This is decades old, ordinary technology 101 I'm talking about.

I'm talking about freak'n live video & audio out on a $1,500 - $2,000 US video camera.

That can't possibly be too much to ask considering that probably 95% of every video camcorder (consumer, prosumer & pro) ever made has had this capability. These aren't film cams, they're video camcorders, and video camcorder should have certain basic features.

Of course it's wonderful & fabulous these new cams make very pretty pictures & video. But their audio capabilities & A/V monitoring capabilities are ridiculous.

It's not (only) manufacturers who do this sort of thing which sometimes makes me crazy, it's also people who don't even work for them who "excuse" and "enable" these manufacturers. Don't take this personally, we all do it one time or another.

This is one of those "emperor has no clothes" situations. We need to laugh in Panasonic's & Canon's face about this one. Shame on them.

Of course we'll muddle through and some of us will make good-looking & good-sounding video in spite of these cams' shortcomings, but as I've said before: Meanwhile, what an idiotic waste of everyone's time!

 

[sblfilms]

That can't possibly be too much to ask considering that probably 95% of every video camcorder (consumer, prosumer & pro) ever made has had this capability. These aren't film cams, they're video camcorders, and video camcorder should have certain basic features.

And this is where you fail. These AREN'T camcorders, that is why they don't have those features. As people start demanding more features in these devices like those found in dedicated video cameras, the manufacturers will accommodate.

And if you can't work within the confines of these devices, there are a million other options that will have those options.

 

[Peter J. DeCrescenzo]

And this is where you fail. These AREN'T camcorders, that is why they don't have those features. As people start demanding more features in these devices like those found in dedicated video cameras, the manufacturers will accommodate. And if you can't work within the confines of these devices, there are a million other options that will have those options.

In terms of the electronics they contain & the engineering effort they embody, how are these new video-capable DSLRs significantly different from most new video camcorders?

Really, I'm asking. I don't mind being wrong. Please explain.

My contention is that they're far more alike than different. Nowadays, they're all "camcorders".

 

[Scott F]

if they did all the things you wanted it wouldn't be $1700 (in this case).

That's a good one. :beer::beer:

 

[mhood]

I didn't realize 1/8" headphone jacks were so expensive.