Yianni wrote:
What? A firmware (A legal one anyways) that adds features to an existing Canon Camera? Did heads roll at Canon HQ recently? I cannot recall this ever happening before.
With Nikon, yes, quite often! With Canon, this has to be a first!
A firmware update added joystick AF control to the 1Ds MK III. That was just prior to my ordering one. It was a major improvement for my needs.
helimat wrote:
Another firmware upgrade I would like to see (even more than this one) is spot metering linked to active the AF point like the 1D series.
Yes. Out of my 1-series camera, I miss this kind of stuff the most. I have center weighted spot metering on my 5D all the time. I meter what I want, then focus, and sometimes recompose. I know it isn't that big of a deal but in today's world of technology, it is definately possible to incorporate some of this in the pro-sumer line.
Paolo Dolina wrote:
^^ my guess is the rumors about the 5D2 being rushed to market because of the D90 was true.
Not true at all, simply another case of Canon Marketing getting in the way of the engineers. If it took more than a few lines of code to enable this it would be shocking. This frankly is one of the more pleasant things Canon has done in a while and as a long time customer it makes me smile.
Wow this will really pump up sales.. much cheaper solution for videographers than expensive HD cams, especially with the lens choices. I for one am glad.. I find the video frustrating especially in backlight.
Seth Tower wrote:
Okay, someone please explain to me the difference between 24fps ("true" video) and 30fps (what virtually ALL point-shoot cameras and DSLRs have)?
24fps is standard motion picture film frames per second rate (well sort of 'doubly' projected to 48fps to cut flicker) and I believe shutter speed is most typically at 1/48th, although sometimes they go at different shutter rates for certain feels like sometimes for in the action war scenes they may go to a noticeably faster shutter speed for a more staccato look and a more frantic otherwordly feeling. Sometimes they may shoot at a different frame rate to do slow mo or speedmo stuff although ultimately the final product is show at 24 (well doubled to prevent flicker, but it's still jsut 24 different frames per second). Just shooting at 24fps alone won't make it look like a feature film, you need a shutter speed around 1/48th to get the proper amount of motion blur for a motion-picture type look as for instance if they gave us 24fps but had the shutter speed say 1/120th and up then it would still never have a motion picture type feel (and if you used a tiny video sensor you would always have so much DOF it would never give the film look, not that film isn't often shoot with large DOF, but usually a mix).
it doesn't sound like 24fps will be allowed, but who knows, maybe they are holding that back as the final suprise on release day, or maybe marketing won't let them or maybe the h.264 encorder is locked into expecting a 30fps input or maybe something else in the hardware just didn't work out to allow it.
some film, such as IMAX, I believe has more like a 30 or even 60fps speed, I forget.
in some ways 24fps was an accident, it was hard to make them run fast back in the day due to technological limitations so they kind of went as slow as they could without getting totally choppy. In some ways 30fps and more are more realistic and the higher you go the less you suffer from panning judders and stuff so higher fps are not necessarily something bad, although it turns out that the 24fps / 1/48th by making things a bit artificial happens to do it in a way that perhaps can seem grandeur or something in a way even if less realistic.
anyway whatever the case with the frame rate, wow about the new manual controls.
Will Patterson wrote:
The AF is mostly hardware (cross type sensors as opposed normal sensors), so no, it'll never be updated. I still have 0 complaints about the AF on my 5d2, though. It's never let me down, and I've owned a 1d2 and 1d3.
Haha yes I know. Next time I'll turn the <sarcasm> tags on
It may simply be that Canon have now reached the point where stimulating more demand for 5D MkII is appropriate. Until now it has prestty much not been out of back-order. If they gauged market reaction properly before the launch, it would be logical to not enable this feature right away, the only effect of which would be to create massive unsatisfied demand. Whereas now they have something to talk about -again-, always a good marketing tool. Also, in the interim, Nikon have released not one but 2 bodies with video, and seem to be struggling to offer as much as Canon. So it makes sense to upgrade the firmware now and establish themselves as the supplier of the best possible video among DSLRs.
Just my $0.02
You guys can send your thank you's in either email or pm form I just purchased my first old school pentax lens SPECIFICALLY to shoot video with aperture control, thus Canon decided it was the right to release the update
