Is the 5D Mark II a 30 fps still camera?
So are you dreaming of shooting sports at 30 frames per second at 1/4000th shutter speeds? Well now you can with the Canon 5D Mark II and the updated firmware 1.1.0 which allows for manual exposure control in video mode. The tough part will be finding the balance between using a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action and trying to keep your video smooth which is accomplished at the slower shutter speeds. But what if you don’t care about the video and only want to frame grab? Might be good cases for that. Like maybe the backswing of a golfer? Tennis? Baseball (at the plate)?
What else might this be good for? You can’t count on the auto focus tracking a subject while shooting in video mode, so I wouldn’t expect football, soccer or basketball to work well.
Ah, but it’s cheating, you say? I say no. It’s using a tool. If a Mark III could shoot 30 frames per second, I’m betting no one would complain.
I shot a little test video of my pigeons being released in my backyard using two 5D Mark II’s shot at slow and fast shutter speeds. Hopefully you can see the difference in the video quality: The higher shutter speed producing jumpy, flickery video and the slower shutter speed providing a smoother look.
Canon 5D Mark II frame grabs at high shutter speeds from David Stephenson on Vimeo.
You can download the frame grabs to see the difference up close. They were captured in Final Cut Pro.
Frame grab from video shot at 1/2000th of a second. The resulting file size is 1920px by 1080px, about 6Mb.
Frame grab from video shot at 1/30th of a second. The resulting file size is 1920px by 1080px, about 6Mb.
Here is a test frame from Rob Carr of the AP. He says he plans to test it out more during a tournament in the coming weeks. That's a very publishable image there (remember what we used to get with the Nikon D1?).
How much quality are you giving up by shooting video and pulling frame grabs? What are the file sizes from the grabs?
Quality suffers, yes, when compared to the ‘normal’ way of shooting stills. The frames won’t be quite as sharp, for one thing. Certainly a photographer should run some tests with this kind of operation before shooting a paying gig!
I’ve added the file sizes to the captions above. The resulting file size from frame grab is 1920px by 1080px – about 6Mb.
Pretty amazing stuff. Digital technology really isn’t that far away from 30 decisive moments a second.
How are you pulling the frame grabs from the video?
any new info on set up into final cut to stop drop frames?
the settings you gave, are they for internet only ?
I need to produce a video for a 50 inch flat screen to be shown in a hotel lobby
are these settings good for me ?