Digital Video Crop Mode

[RenatoPhoto]

I use 5D mark III for bird videos and photography.  One thing I noticed is that when I am focusing my video in Live Mode I use the zoom button (5x-10X) and get fantastic resolution to properly focus on the fine details of the birds.  Unfortunately all that resolution of the sensor does not translate to the resolution of the video.  Now I have learned that inferior models such as t3i allow you to actually record the zoom LiveView details.  This would be a GOD SENT tool for wildlife videographers if it could be implemented to the 5D Mark III.  I think canon would boost their  camera sells if they allowed this digital zoom option to be customized ie. 2x, 3x, 4x, ... 10x and to record the high definition video.

I suppose Canon would prefer to sell you a 600 mm lens of $10,000 rather then allow to make use of the cropped mode sensor to get the same results!! 

So the question arises, since I cannot record cropped video in my 5D3 to test:

Assume I put a 50mm f1.4 lens on my 5D3.  Will the cropped video say at 3x on a 5D3, which is equivalent to 1920x1280, be better or worse than using a 3X lens, which for a full frame camera would be 150 mm?

My guess is that the cropped video might be better since there is no downsizing from the sensor full resolution to the 1920x1280.  Of course that would assume that the 150 mm lens is of prime quality.   

I would love to use my 300 mm prime lens with digital zoom of 3x to capture fine wildlife videos without spending a fortune...
Maybe the great effort to do this with ML would be worth lots of money to some videographers like me.  Hint, hint .. big fat donations!

[bart]

Hi Welcome to the forum,

Great a fellow bird video shooter. In video terms inferiority of the 600d(t3i) is questionable. I'm happy to share my experiences.

Advantages over the 5d3 are:
- 1.6x crop factor, comparable to a 1.6x converter without the light loss but you maintain the DOF from the lens.
- 3.3x cropzoom insane zoom on a 400mm+1.4x TC but also serious quality loss and recording more atmospheric disturbances like heat waves.
- movable lcd screen for comfortable low angle shooting at bird eye level.

Advantages 5d3 over 600d
- no aliasing on fine feather patterns, though the 600d cropzoom has no aliasing but also softens details.
- weather sealing although 600d turns out to be very touch.

I'm trying out a new strategy soon.
A Panasonic GH2 (maybe GH3 later) combined with a manual Nikon 400mm F3.5 and adapter. I expect the Panasonic ex tele to give me much better end results due to the video resolution that is better preserved. But I have yet to find out. You can also use canon fd 500mm 4.5 or 400mm f2.8 + adapter if you are serious about video. They come with an aperture ring and more accurate MF ring.

Remember sensor cropping and cropzooms, TC are just like post photo crop. You keep the same DOF from the lens MM, distance to subject and chosen aperture, but zoom in on the center of the sensor. If your lens suffers from chromatic aberrations, these will be more pronounced. It looks like you can film birds from a bigger distance but you need many MM and a huge aperture to get shallow DOF at that distance and separate the bird from the background. In researching what tele lens would fit best I made a table with lenstype related to aperture and distance.


Based on 600D
        DOF in Meters (http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html)
   lens          5m     10m    20m   30m     50m   100m   200m
   400mm f5.6   0,03   0,13   0,53   1,19   3,34   13,4   54,6
   300mm f2.8   0,03   0,12   0,47   1,06   2,97   11,9   48,2

   400mm f3.5   0,02   0,08   0,31   0,71   1,98   7,97   33,2
   500mm f4.5   0,02   0,06   0,27   0,60   1,69   6,80   27,4
   400mm f2.8   0,02   0,06   0,26   0,60   1,67   6,70   26,9

   600mm f4.0   0,01   0,04   0,16   0,37   1,04   4,20   16,9
   800mm f5.6   0,01   0,03   0,13   0,30   0,83   3,33   13,4

As you see from the table. There are about 3 categories of lenses that offer similar DOF at a certain distance to the subject.
Now it really depends on how much you want to carry or if you are a hide shooter and the amount of crop you could achieve and the price you want to pay for a decent lens. I was surprised that the 300mm f2.8 had the exact same DOF as a 400mm f5.6 at a certain distance to the subject. The 400mm does magnify a little bit more but that can be compensated by using crop factor/zoom.
You also see that the more distance to the subject the DOF increased exponential. Look at the difference between 400 5.6 and 800 5.6. They follow the same DOF pattern but with double distance. So a 400mm 5.6 has the same dof at 50m as the 800mm at 100m. At those distances the differences DOF differences are pretty great.

If the gh2/nikon combo doesn't turn out to be great in results, I would jump back to 600D with the far superb control over focus and exposure that ML provides. And I will seriously miss focus peaking.

[RenatoPhoto]

Dear fellow birder: thanks for the nice welcome and for the valuable information.  I will looking forward to your test results of the Panasonic GH3, is there no way to use any canon lenses with the Panasonic? 

Of course I value the shallow DOF of FF cameras and super expensive lenses but this is not the most important thing for me.  I value reach far more than anything and of course I cannot afford the expensive lenses.  Also I am a birding guide and therefore have to carry a scope with tripod on top of my heavy camera so large lenses are out of the question.  This is why a I wish there was more interest in the crop video mode for these large FF sensors and also to a lesser degree to the APC sensors, since their low light capabilities are limited.  I my case I live in Ecuador and go to the cloud forest often, and light is pretty scare inside the thicket of primary forests of south America so high ISO is extremely important.

I go to great extents to get the extra reach and currently use a 300mm f/4 + 2x Kenko + 1.4x Canon making my birding setup a Canon 5D3 with 840mm at f11.   This so far is the best reach vs weight and IQ that I can get.  I have been considering the 300 f/2.8 to use in the same setup but the price and weight is too high for my means and body weight!  When I am in very low light situations I use the 1.4x only and for night photography only use the 300mm f/4.

Here are some photos taken with 840 mm f/11 and Canon 5D3

http://10000birds.com/endemic-birds-of-brazil.htm

http://10000birds.com/birds-of-pantanal.htm

Here is my experience on TC and photography:

http://10000birds.com/bird-photography-equipment-teleconverters-for-7d-and-5d-miii.htm

Most of them would have been useless with the standard 300 mm f/4. 

Now if ML could help provide an additional 3X zoom then I could forfeit all my TC and greatly improve IQ.   I am very, very surprised on how little interest there is on this subject!

[bart]

Hi

Nice work. Here are some examples of closeups with 600D + 400mm + kenko 1.4x and with or without cropzoom. If I calculate right it's 1.6 x 400 x 1.4 x 3.3 = near 3000mm

filming and photographing birds isn't easy. Most people in the Netherlands choose to use hides to get close to birds. Some build their own hides others use their car as hide.
http://www.birdpix.nl/portal.php?language=english

In jungle it is even harder with very strong contrasts, birds up high in the canopy or hidden between leaves. I have some experiences from India, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand and Kenya. I plan to go to South America this summer. And we looked into Pantanal. At this point Venezuela looks more attractive with more variety in landscape and also cheaper. Here the Amazon and Andes come together. But I am still researching the options.

About the reach that keeps being a problem. Teleconvertors work as cropping so an option is to go with a super high resolution sensor and do some serious cropping in post. A Nikon D800 might work. Another option is to digiscope, photographing and video through your telescope. My friend does that a lot but you have to find a camera that fits your scope perfectly otherwise you deal with vignetting. Another friend has a Swarovski spotting scope with a dedicated DSLR adapter and that works very well but is expensive. It does takes Canon DSLRS and you can use focus peaking from ML. There are cheaper options but I don't know what scope you have.

[RenatoPhoto]

I will look at your video later.  I do not have bandtwith where I live, so it will have to wait.  But digital crop video seems amazing 3000mm!!!!  I sure hope ML or Canon get on it and provide a firmware for 5d3.

I think Venezuela would be great for wildlife but I have heard many bad things about security issues if you are doing it alone.  But it should be better if you hire a guide! 

I would recommend Ecuador since I live here!  Maybe we can meet this summer.  Here is where I live:

www.pululahuahostal.com

[RenatoPhoto]

I finally watched the video, wow that is very nice!  Congratulations..

I found some scenes with the cranes on the ground and one with the cranes flying which i assume were the digital zoom at 3000mmm!!!!

It would appear that they are indeed sampling just the center of the sensor to get the excellent resolution.  So now I want this on my canon 5D Mark III.

Since you have the original cropped zoom images I ask your opinion on this matter.  Would you say that they are cropping the sensor at the center image or not.  My guess is that they are.  If you took the original video, without cropping, and zoomed in post, then the quality must be inferior, I mean significantly inferior.  This would confirm that they are using just the center of the sensor.  Please confirm if this is also your opinion.

Thanks
Renato

[bart]

I think the 600d cropzoom is done from the center, but I can't confirm it is truly 1920x1080.
They probably did the same as with normal 600D resolution, 1620 upsize to 1920.

I read somewhere that pancake lenses might work great with filming through the spotting scope.
So maybe EOS M 22mm or lumix 20mm/14mm might get good results and are compact as well.

I want to try that out somewhere.
My friend has a Leica spotting scope.

About the 5d3 cropzoom. I don't know current status.

[RenatoPhoto]

Hi,  I have a Vortex Razor HD scope which is almost as good as Swarovsky at half the price.  I use a canon 50mm f/1.8 to do digiscoping and it is pretty good but you need a lot of light to get good results.  I actually get better results using my kenko 2x + canon 1.4x + 300 f/4 lens with the 5D Mark III,  so I have stopped using the digiscoping setup.  I think the Swarvsky scope can produce better images but the whole thing is a little difficult to use and to aim accurately.  If you are going to do digiscoping I would consider using the Swarovsky scope.

[Dunc101]

Hi,

The new CANON 1DC has a crop factor feature that is brilliant.
It has the option to use the FF sensor size as a 5D markII 1080p, Super 35mm, 1080p (1.6 x crop) and a 4K APS-H crop size (1.3 x crop)

It would be very useful to add a similar selectable crop feature to ML, as it says in this post below - giving you three lens in one, without loosing any apature/light loss (with TC) and adding 1.6 x zoom to your lenses.
If you could make ML use the Super 35mm crop sensor proportion but still retain 1080p, that would be a very useful feature.

http://www.thefilmmakersworkshop.com/movie-cameras/cannon-1-dc/

Thanks
D

[1%]

no aliasing but also softens details

It zooms in on the center and makes the pixels larger (noise bits too) so everything is indeed softer.

I think the 600d cropzoom is done from the center, but I can't confirm it is truly 1920x1080

Its 1720x1000 or something around there zoomed from a 2K sized "window" in the center. Still a few line skips and interpolated. Recording the full window at 1920x1080 with everything else just sheared off would be ideal but not there yet.

5DIII and all newer cameras should be able to do it, just a matter of activating it. Older digic IV is probably not going to happen unless we control the sensor directly.

[RenatoPhoto]

The new CANON 1DC has a crop factor feature that is brilliant.
It has the option to use the FF sensor size as a 5D markII 1080p, Super 35mm, 1080p (1.6 x crop) and a 4K APS-H crop size (1.3 x crop)

Oh well, that clearly explains why Canon did not put any of those features in any of the good cameras INCLUDING 1D X.  Canon sucks!!!!  They want us to pay the price of 1DC to get cropped digital video.

There is no way in HELL  I will pay that kind of money for these features when the competition (Nikon and Panasonic GH2 and GH3) provides them for FREEE.  That is why canon 5D3 does not sell very well and Canon had to drop the price by at least $500.  Instead they should have provided a firmware update with digital cropped video and kept the same price.  But of course nooooooo, they will only add these features to 1DC thinking that people will buy that piece of overpriced c...  Which is nothing more than a 1DX with better firmware.  Canon is losing customers because they piss people off!!!  I am pissed off!

I hope that ML can do something about this!  I have pledged $200 donation to get Digital Cropped video in ML.