Canon 5D Mark III

[nanomad]

Because the firmware is different

[dude]

Great News, a1ex!
I am up for testing!!

[wintix]

I'm thinking to start public testing pretty soon, maybe next week. First with a minimal version, then enable new features when the old ones are confirmed to be rock solid.

That is awesome news!

[kinematicdigit]

Great work a1ex. I have two 5Dmk3 would love to beta test.

There's not a lot on the 5Dmk3 that I'm not happy with, but one of the features I personally use all the time is the Multi-exposure mode. I use it like a Sony multi-exposure noise reduction. It would be nice to make it so it would just shoot 9 shots with a single shutter press rather than hitting it nine times.

I also find it interesting that you can stack 9 images into one RAW file, but you can't stack other stacked images into each other for more stacks. Ideally for astrophotography it would be better to have 30 stacks, and this would be really handy at the higher ISOs.

One of the features that I love on the Olympus OMD is Live Bulb. Again I use multi-exposure to simulate something very similar. Multi-exposure overlays the last frame captured in the live-view for a sorta psuedo live bulb exposure. I wonder if it is possible to make this not rely on multi-exposure and to have the exposure just slowly appear on the screen much like the Olympus does with Live Bulb.

[a1ex]

Here, multiple exposures work with a single press if you hold the shutter button pressed (in continuous mode). So it shouldn't be hard to automate it to work on a short single press with self-timer.

I don't think I can change the number of shot in a stack, as they seem to be stored in memory and postprocessed when the sequence is finished.

Live bulb is technically possible only in movie mode, at 2 megapixels. But since the 5D3 does proper downsampling, there's probably no downside for this other than lower resolution.

Edit: it may be possible with intervalometer, but with large delays between the shots. Plus, it will increase shutter count a lot.

[kinematicdigit]

Here, multiple exposures work with a single press if you hold the shutter button pressed (in continuous mode). So it shouldn't be hard to automate it to work on a short single press with self-timer.

I don't think I can change the number of shot in a stack, as they seem to be stored in memory and postprocessed when the sequence is finished.

Live bulb is technically possible only in movie mode, at 2 megapixels. But since the 5D3 does proper downsampling, there's probably no downside for this other than lower resolution.

Yes, the continuos mode works if kept held down, as does the remote, but only if you keep your button pressed. Automated single press would be very welcome here.

I rarely do video work but I do quite a bit of long exposure. One of the other things that I wish and this is not exclusive to the 5Dmk3 is to be able to have either an on camera calculator or someway to calculate proper exposure with a 10 stop ND filter. It never meters correctly (usually maxes out at 13 seconds) so it's a guessing game. Now normally not a huge issue as I carry around an exposure chart, but I wonder if there's an easy way to maybe have something like DoF button combined with AE to give values for 10 stop (or whatever is set) exposure, and times that go beyond the 30 second. Be nice to meter, take the value down, then put the filter on, switch to bulb, program my remote for long exposure and expose correctly.

I'll share other thoughts if they come to mind, but that's all so far.

[kinematicdigit]

Edit: it may be possible with intervalometer, but with large delays between the shots. Plus, it will increase shutter count a lot.

Yes, this is how I've actually sort of dealt with it with a handheld remote. It's not perfect but it does work. I'm not too worried about the increased shutter count. It's worth it to me as it increases the usable dynamic range when I adjust images for shadow details. Shutters are consumables to me, just don't buy one of my used cameras off of me is all I suggest 

Here's an example of how I use it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kinematic/7696561690/in/photostream

[a1ex]

With current ML, you can already estimate the time for long exposures with display gain or FPS override or both. It's true, you have to do some math yourself. I try to find the limit where ExpSim stops working, then boost the exposure until getting a correct image, then increase shutter speed by the same amount.

Or, simply use HDR in automatic mode and let it run until it gets the right exposure.

This may also help: http://wiki.magiclantern.fm/faq#can_i_use_liveview_in_complete_darkness

[kinematicdigit]

Lastly.... I just donated $50 to the ML cause. Small contribution, but hopefully it helps some!

I just thought of another thing that drives me bonkers sometimes is the ability to see the AF points at times. I wonder if you can figure out how to make it so that it's always on the bright red for confirmation. There was word that Canon was working to fix this problem. I've since gotten used to it. I don't know if it is worthwhile to fix it or not, but just something to add to the 5Dmk3 list (also part of the 7D and 1Dx).

[a1ex]

Thanks a lot!

[KAIT Labs]

Excellent news Alex!

I'm a very big fan of keeping ML on a single CF card and using my SD card collection for storage. I'm using a 5Dmk3 and a T3i and it's a pain when I once again forget that formatting the card on my mk3 also removes ML.

I know there are many people using multiple cameras and don't want to buy another set of cards for each camera while it's perfectly possible to share the cards between them.

SD cards are much cheaper than CF cards while the camera does not utilise the full advantage of CF cards anyway.

Keep it up!

[wintix]

SD cards are much cheaper than CF cards while the camera does not utilise the full advantage of CF cards anyway.

That's untrue. The SD card implementation in the cam is way sllower than the CF slot. If you care about getting data out of the buffer and onto the card fast, the SD card slot will bite you hard.

[Marsu42]

I just thought of another thing that drives me bonkers sometimes is the ability to see the AF points at times. I wonder if you can figure out how to make it so that it's always on the bright red for confirmation. There was word that Canon was working to fix this problem.

The problem according to Canon is that highlighted af points hinder metering (unlike the 1d4), it seems to be a design flaw with the many af points and Canon already stated that the upcoming solution "might not make everyone happy". On another forum it was already suggested that's because the solution might be "no solution at all" :-p

@alex: Now that you've handled both 5d2 & 5d3 extensively, maybe you could write something about your personal "is it worth it" opinion about the differences? I'm still unsure about which camera to get, and for the 5d3 I'd have to wait for a price drop anyway. But now that ml is really ported, I'm not so sure about the 5d2 anymore (worse af, more banding).

[vitafab]

Hi guys
My 5d mark iii came yesterday, tomorrow i'll give it the first test shooting a wedding reportage... I really miss all the ML features..
I can't wait to see the first beta vers for this port.
I am up for testing too!!
Great Job, a1ex!

[Lcrusher]

Hey a1ex, what does smooth ISO mean?

[a1ex]

Something that will change the way you shoot videos. Or maybe not

[pascalc]

Up for testing too!
If ML must stay on a single card I also prefer on the SD one to keep CF higher speed for data.
Tomorrow I'm going to US for a doc and I miss ML on my 5D3 (

[a1ex]

@Marsu42:

Actually, the only thing I've shot with the 5D Mark III was the timelapse above, so I can't really give a good advice yet.

For now, I can say that LiveView is actually a lot more usable in darkness on 5D3, compared to 5D2, probably a 2-3 stop improvement. Certainly a lot more than the 0.5 stops rumoured on some forums.

Also, if you shoot in burst mode, or if you care about battery life, go for 5D3. When shooting the timelapse linked above, I've measured 6 hours of battery life during 15-second exposures with intervalometer set to 20 seconds. That's impressive IMO.

[nanomad]

Hey a1ex, what does smooth ISO mean?

Awesomeness, just tested it on my 1100D and it's beautiful. You can actually use it do an ISO-based iris pull. Until today you either had to use HDR video which sacrificed FPS or a manual de-clicked lens.

[Lcrusher]

Awesomeness, just tested it on my 1100D and it's beautiful. You can actually use it do an ISO-based iris pull. Until today you either had to use HDR video which sacrificed FPS or a manual de-clicked lens.

Oh I see. That's what I thought. I wonder how it works.  So if I increase the ISO while shooting from 160 to 320 won't it give extra noise in the middle of the shot due to unnative ISO?

[a1ex]

Noise on the Mark III?! Maybe if you shoot with a pinhole lens

[nanomad]

That and you can still "ML" ISOs that can apply a negative EV to the native ISO thus masking noise a bit

Preview (1100D, no post-processing, ISO range from 75 to almost 1600) http://nanomad.magiclantern.fm/1100D/samples/ml_iris_pull_1100D.mp4

[Marsu42]

For now, I can say that LiveView is actually a lot more usable in darkness on 5D3, compared to 5D2, probably a 2-3 stop improvement. Certainly a lot more than the 0.5 stops rumoured on some forums.

Thx for the first impressions- it's valuable to me because I trust you to be more independent than the usual "I bought it for $3500, it must be stellar" vs "I cannot afford it, it has to be bad" forum talk.

Btw, the alleged 0.5 stops improvement concerns the iso noise in raw shots, and I must admit myself after comparing iso samples from 5d2 and 5d3 myself that up to iso3200, it doesn't make much of a difference. The one thing that is more of a problem on the 5d2 seems to be stronger banding, and this limits raising shadows much more than iso noise - the 5d3 has cleaner sensor readouts...

[a1ex]

Good news: card autodetection is working pretty nice, so you can use any combination of cards. Recommended: install ML on a small SD card and shoot pictures/videos on CF cards.

Here's the proposed feature set for the first public version (alpha 0) - coming next week.

[wintix]

Sounds great, you are awesome! Looking forward to giving it a try.