Hello,
First off, I am not a photographer. I bought a 2nd hand Canon EOS M (cheap from Japan) to document & accompany the (sound) field recording I do. The quality of the video seems quite shocking to me? Completely sub iphone quality - full of noise and moire. I installed ML and upped the bit rate to x3 and it's not a great deal better? The 22m lens looks quite nice in close up but for distance it is awful and the 18-55mm lens is just unbelievably bad - huge distortions of the image just focusing on the lines of plywood. Any suggestions? I don't have FCP or avid so dealing with RAW might be tough for me. - I can post some examples - thanks for any help, I am pulling my hair out - the quality can't be that far from online camera tests surely?
Post some of your original RAW samples. Sounds like you are running on OS X? If so, then perhaps try MLP or MLVFS.
Posting an example would help.
Here is some footage that I shot out of my window https://vimeo.com/177372613 password noise - the noise and moire are pretty extreme.
Are you shooting at a high iso? I would not go above iso 640/800 for h264 video.
Quote from: Noisey_Parker on August 01, 2016, 06:12:00 PM
Hello,
First off, I am not a photographer. I bought a 2nd hand Canon EOS M (cheap from Japan) to document & accompany the (sound) field recording I do. The quality of the video seems quite shocking to me? Completely sub iphone quality - full of noise and moire. I installed ML and upped the bit rate to x3 and it's not a great deal better? The 22m lens looks quite nice in close up but for distance it is awful and the 18-55mm lens is just unbelievably bad - huge distortions of the image just focusing on the lines of plywood. Any suggestions? I don't have FCP or avid so dealing with RAW might be tough for me. - I can post some examples - thanks for any help, I am pulling my hair out - the quality can't be that far from online camera tests surely?
First off repeat after me--I am a photographer. There we go, that's all that's necessary. You can do the same with artist, poet, writer and other professions but don't try this with brain surgeon or nuclear scientist.
As far as the quality issues with the EOSM, if you are shooting raw video raising the bit rate has no effect. Also with raw video the EOSM only does what is known by ML programmers as mv720 when using the full sensor. This is an issue unique to this camera. I've written a plea to developers on this post (http://magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=16608.msg161862#msg161862) because it is beyond my meager programming capabilities to enable mv1080 mode on this camera.
If you really want to use this camera for raw video I would suggest trying crop mode video (mv1080crop) and keeping the frame size under 1280x720. (Yeah, I know this is a bit confusing.) A lens of around 8mm is needed to get a "normal" field of view. A fun trick with this camera is using C mount lenses via an adapter.
I found the EOSM to be a very capable camera but it does have limitations--you just encountered one of those limitations.
OP isn't using raw guys, read the initial post again more carefully.
I'm willing to bet the issue is simply one of settings - most likely too high ISO. OP is probably using some Auto mode and expecting miracles - these cameras really only shine when shooting Manual and knowing what you are doing.
Noisy_Parker can you relate all the settings that you are using - ISO, shutter speed, f/stop, picture profile and any others that you know? Have you tried shooting without Magic Lantern to compare? If we can nail down exactly what the issue is then we can give tips to fix it, but there really isn't much to go on in your posts.
to me, the video looks normal in h264 on these camera.
moire is pretty normal, unless you use 5d3.
hard to tell the noise, i dont not have an eos m.
resolution/sharpness wise it just the limitation for the crappy h264 codec canon put on these cameras.
try shoot some simple scenes with not too much detail in the frame and u will be fine.
Quote from: nothing on August 21, 2016, 03:51:31 AM
OP isn't using raw guys, read the initial post again more carefully.
Oops--right you are. Looking at the video it seems that the first few shots might have been shot with the 720p settings. That brings out a lot of moiré. The other shots seem about normal for 1080p H.264 video shot on a Canon APS-C camera.
@Noisey_Parker -- Just came up with some suggestions on how to improve your video quality. First of all, are you using any in-camera sharpening? That is probably aggravating the moiré issue. Try turning off sharpening.
Another thing that might help is to try the Technicolor CineStyle profile. Yeah, there's a lot of debate over whether it is really producing better results but I have been getting good results using it on a documentary I've been shooting mostly on the EOSM. It is a log picture style so you're going to be doing some extra work in post but that's the right time to add any sharpening and other tweaks to fine tune your image.
Sorry for the multiple posts but I just thought of something else that may improve the image quality, especially reducing moiré. Try crop mode. The downside is that your field of view will change radically as will your depth of field. Crop mode is used a lot by astrophotographers for obvious reasons.
Another tip is to find some way of stabilizing the camera. The standard shutter speed for 24p video is about 1/50 sec and jerky camera movement will result in blurry images.