Time Immortal

As in ridiculously stunning. And yes, I know that the linked video was shot by a professional…but it is also being touted as having received no processing save for the scene-joining edits. No noise reduction, no colour correction…nothing but the raw footage.

If so, then Canon, with the EOS 5D Mark II, has done something incredible. The video has excellent dynamic range, great contrast and (most important of all) fairly minimal digital noise. Considering that much of it was done at night, that’s incredible. The video’s composer, Vincent Laforet, even goes so far as to say that the 5D Mark II outperforms, in low light, the video recording capabilities of the Canon XH A1 camcorder, their top-of-the-line video recording unit (also, be sure to check out the “making of” video at that last link).

As the lolcats say:

I had a chance to speak with a news photographer recently, who gave me a bit of clarity on the reasoning behind Canon’s incorporation of HD video into the 5D Mark II. Apparently, rather than being a nod to the consumer side of the market, it’s a nod to professionals, especially news photographers. I wasn’t aware of this, but it does make sense: apparently, there is a real shift away from still photography taking place in the media right now, so much so that it just makes sense to blend the two functions — traditional still Photography and high-powered video recording — into one unit.