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.

…with the EOS 5D Mark II.

…Canon has finally unveiled the successor to the venerable EOS 5D, the world’s first ‘compact’ full frame digital SLR. The EOS 5D Mark II boasts a new 21MP CMOS sensor, an expanded ISO range of 50-25,600 and a wealth of improvements and new features including full 1080p HD movie recording, live view, 3.0″ 920k dot LCD, DIGIC IV processor, increased battery capacity and sensor dust reduction.

HD movie recording? On an SLR?

Well, people have been asking for it. Oh, who am I kidding: people ask me if my puny (but still pretty cool) EOS 350D can “do movies,” which it can’t. “Movie mode” is what consumers are looking for, even if it makes no sense to put it in a semi-pro camera body.

Oh yeah, the downside of all this awesome:

US: $ 2,699, EU: € 2,499, UK: £ 2,299.

*sigh*

But hey…I can dream, right?

This is a sunrise I captured from the parking lot at work. I tried out a few new Lightroom presets on it, placing the focus of the edits on enhancing the sky. That’s always tricky, because it seems to be the case that in the Canon EOS 350D, digital noise is most prominent in the blue colour channel.

This is, I admit, something of a weird shot. I was trying to capture the height of the plant in the foreground from a bit of an unorthodox angle (really the only angle I had to work with in this corner of Grace’s grandparents’ yard), and from here it kind of looks as though the plant is flat, laying atop the shrubbery below.

That’s not quite how it is in real life. But the effect is interesting all the same.

Here, I think, the intensity that Lightroom 2’s on-export sharpening seems to give to pictures is really on display; this is a very punchy image. Equally impressive, I think, is that a lot of fine detail has been retained in the shot, despite the fact that I had to do a fair bit of noise reduction on it (as it was shot at a fairly high ISO).

I didn’t really have to mess with saturations either in this image; even the greens were already at a nice hue after I applied the default calibration/Punch preset that all my images get treated with. But then, Canon cameras always seem to do well with outdoor shots.

The weekend of the Ides of March, I found myself with a free afternoon, and I decided to set out and grab a few picures of the new snowfall. In the end, I didn’t shoot too many pictures, but I did grab this one just outside the grounds of an Anglican church near the apartment.

It’s some manner of bush — I’ve no head for horticulture — and I took the shot by crouching down and focusing through the branches. A key to the picture was that I managed to minimize the number of foreground branches caught out of focus (it was a thick bush).

Edit-wise, I tried a new preset that desaturated everything but the browns in the image, which worked out pretty well. I also darkened the shadows quite a bit. digital noise in the image was negligible, and so required no editing to adjust for. I love how the EOS 350D — like most Canon cameras — performs outdoors, especially in winter.

Up until this point, I haven’t grabbed too many sunset shots with the Lensbaby — at least, not direct shots of the sunset. Filtered through trees, yes, but not direct shots.

So let me correct that oversight.

This shot actually took a fair bit of effort to line up properly, as I had two or three perches from which I could potentially capture the shot. And I was torn between including the tree on the right in the frame or not. And don’t even get me started on light metering. Eventually, I decided to keep the tree in the frame, and used the EOS 350D’s “almost spot” metering setting to capture the shot. The focal point on the Lensbaby was basically center-frame.

Edit-wise, this shot didn’t need much of anything done to it — Canon cameras really do excel at outdoor work, and what digital noise might have otherwise been evident in the sky was taken care of by the blurring from the Lensbaby. I did adjust the blue, orange, and yellow saturations a bit, and also darkened the shadows somewhat. But those were changes borne mostly out of personal taste — right out of the camera, this was a beautiful picture.

This is another picture from the Christmas Day sledding. After a few runs down the tree-lined path, we moved to a hill a few hundred metres to the East, and kept on sledding there. If you’ve never tried to go down a hill on a baking pan or a big, metal bowl, O Reader, let me assure you that you’ve missed something…unique. It’s surprising how fast those metal bowls can go, especially.

This is one of Grace’s sisters coming to a rather…abrupt stop on the hill (hence the large amounts of flying snow). I had to wait a fair bit for this shot, and getting into position certainly kept me…cool (given that I was stretched out prone on the snow). As was the case with the previous picture, I just love the action in the shot — I think it makes the picture.

Edit-wise, I didn’t have to do as much to this shot, as I’d remembered to reduce the ISO setting on the camera by this point. I did have to do some highlight reduction, and I boosted the red and green saturations a bit (and the green luminance) to bring out some of the background details. Still, I’ve always been pleased with how well Canon cameras conduct themselves in outdoor conditions, and one of the great joys on my old PowerShot A70 was shooting outdoors in winter. The same holds true on the EOS 350D, I can assure you.