I've finally gotten a chance to put the 50D to the test in a real world production situation. I was on a short film shoot that ran 8 hours with a total of 72 minutes of RAW capture footage. Here is what I have to report about its performance:
Given that I know the 50D has a reputation of overheating, I tried to minimize the chances of this happening while shooting by using a original Canon battery grip to help minimize the battery heating up the camera and by using an external monitor via HDMI out. The 1080i signal produced by the 50D I found was great for external monitoring and checking focus.
Pros and Cons:
Pros: The 50D is an amazing performer in low light with just enough noise at the higher 320 and 640 ISO ranges to give the images a classic "film stock" look. The image quality while shooting the RAW is amazing as well and blows up to 2K with ease in Resolve. Overall a great image is produced that would hold up its own if projected on a large theater screen.
Cons: It is with great disappointment though that I have to report that despite the incredible image quality the 50D captures, overheating seems to be a major issue. Production flow was halted multiple times by frame skipping and camera freezing up. Even turning the camera off in between takes for a few minutes had minimal effect in preventing the sensor from getting hot quickly again.
After a shot of 3-5 minutes once the sensor temperature raised above 40 degrees C, the frame dropping and camera freezing issues started. To remedy this, when the camera went above 45 degrees C, I had to turn it off for at least 5 minutes and switch CF cards to enable me to capture another take over 3-5 minutes continuously.
The cards I was using for the shoot are the Komputerbay 64BG 1000X. Perhaps a Scan Disc or Lexar may hold up better for continuous recording as the camera heats up, but eventually when the camera reaches 50 degrees C and is in the yellow, regardless of cards, I think it should be turned off as it has no auto overheat protection.
It is this overheating issue that makes me think the 50D is not suitable for any long shoots. Canon probably disabled the video feature originally because of the overheating, that at the time, they had no solution for until the 5D mkii was released. Just my guess.
The only solution for long hours of shooting with the 50D would be to have TWO cameras on standby taking turns taking shots to avoid the overheating. In fact this is what Shane Hurlbert used to do when the 5D mkii was released to avoid overheating auto shutdown. But Shane shot loads of footage for his projects. So it is an option.
However when considering buying two 50Ds to switch off and alternate cameras to avoid overheating seems like it will slow production time down. In addition, for the price of two 50Ds one can get a 7D cheaper or one 5D mkii, which as we know, both have higher capture resolution.
Perhaps Magic lantern will come up with an option to solve the 50D overheating issue in the near future but I think this seems to be more of a camera hardware functionality. I know even the RED MX had overheating issues that were dealt with with ice packs at the time. The question is, do we really want to have crew and actors wait around while a camera cools down and run the risk of corrupt files? I guess its up to you to decide.
That said, for now, my 50D remain a "B" camera for night time exterior establishing shots (and WOW is it great in low light). But for main "A" camera shooting, I'll be going with the 7D or 5D mkii for the next RAW production. Hopefully these will not overheat as the 50D does.
