From “The Matrix”, courtesy of Warner Bros.

Bullet Time describes something that is seemingly frozen in time, like a still frame, but the camera is dollying/flying around it at the same time. Basically an impossible shot to shoot with one camera, that’s why they used MANY cameras and triggered them at the same time. A computer interpolated the in-between-frames. In 1999, that was a big deal, in 2013, you can do it yourself with countless of VFX tutorials for it online, here’s one.

The downside: you STILL need many cameras. That’s where it becomes tricky for most people.

Not so for NASA engineer Mark Rober - he built a DIY bullet time rig with ONE GoPro camera. Of course it’s not as perfect as the big Hollywood solutions, nor as versatile, but it is indeed big fun: he uses a ceiling fan motor to rotate the camera extremely fast around a static platform, with a neutrally lit background. The effect: it looks like the object (and whatever you do with it) is spinning super fast. Add the GoPro Hero 3‘s slow motion ability of up to 120fps in 720p, and I am sure you can get even more impressive results.

Check it out:

Now, why has nobody built this with a DSLR yet??

via Mike John / LOOP & laughingsquid.com

‘Relentless’ – an alternative to ‘MoVi’?

Everyone and their mum knows about Freefly’s MoVi now, the gimbal-stabilized handheld camera rig made famous by Vincent Laforet with his demo film right before NAB in April, where it was introduced.

At $15,000, the MoVi M10 isn’t exactly affordable for indie filmmakers.

Its maximum payload is 10 pounds, but they will also introduce an M5 for a maximum of 5 pounds and half the price a bit later.

At NAB, I also wrote about a possible, purely mechanical “MoVi for the rest of us”, which I also saw at NAB 2013, the Bowens Limelite OmniRig (click here).

But while the OmniRig looks similar to the MoVi, it is not stabilized with gyros, it makes use of good old inertia. That makes it less stable, and you need more training (like with a Steadicam).

However, we seem to have overlooked a ‘real’ alternative for the MoVi, which was also shown at NAB 2013: the “Relentless” seems to work exactly like the MoVi, but is made only for very small cameras like the $995 Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, and costs only $1,800. It can be used handheld or put on a copter (there’s a separate special copter version of the MoVi, the MR)

Check out the video:

Strangely, I wasn’t able to find a website for the product yet (let me know if you do!), but it seems to be produced by the production company Relentless, Inc., and according to the Vimeo page you should email Drew to learn more.

So where does that leave us? The MoVi seems to have put the spotlight on gyro-stabilized handheld systems, and it certainly looks like we will see a lot of new products and innovation in that field in the near future – which will also result in more and more affordable options.

It’s a great time to be a filmmaker indeed!

The Magic Lantern people told us how the hack works and that the process is probably non destructive.

We tried it ourselves and have shot numerous stuff with the RAW functionality. It’s really not that difficult to achieve (see our step-by-step guide HERE)

And even though RAW post-processing is time consuming, we’re seeing improvements in the workflow and have a quite simple tutorial for OSX HERE.

The good news for the Europeans among us is that yesterday a compile for a version that does 25p was posted in the Magic Lantern forum.

We tried it and it works well. We get no frame drops in 1080p on our 128GB Komputerbay CF cards. Should you want to try it too follow our guide and download the package described in step 4B.

Note that there’ve been numerous people who didn’t achieve the same resolution with their 128GB Komputerbay CF cards. Maybe there are inconsistencies in different Komputerbay batches. Apparently the Komputerbay 64GB are consistently faster to achieve the 1080p at 25fps. Europeans can get the cards here: LINK

Cheers!

Well, as it turns out, Sebastian here has found a much more straightforward way to post process the raw files from the 5D Mark III which allows us to skip the relatively cumbersome After Effects conversion process. This new process only utilizes Adobe Photoshop’s raw import module, which allows batch processing of files (which is necessary to apply the same settings onto an entire clip consisting of individual DNG files).

Watch our video with a step-by-step instruction on how to end up with editable post-processed files!

Software used:

Adobe Photoshop
Raw2DNG (free)
QuickTime 7

Since the RAW hack for the 5D Mark III came out, there’s been a lot of speculation as to how Magic Lantern did manage to do it. Understandably, many people are hesitant to hack their 5D Mark III’s and use it with an alternative firmware that is not thoroughly tested yet. And Magic Lantern also recommends to be hesitant:

Again. This is EXPERIMENTAL, so:
 - bloody beginners and non-geeks should not touch the whole thing. wait until it is “beginner-proof”. we will tell you on the website.
 - you know that you are a bloody beginner, when you read the whole thread and you still cannot get it to work.
 - DON’T be disappointed if it doesn’t work or we figure out the whole thing is unstable and/or unusable
 - NO, there is no manual yet
 - NO, there is no all-in-one tool that fits every use case
 - NO, we don’t have tutorials how to use it
 - NO, not all models are supported yet 
 - we are just at the moment testing how good it works and what we have missed and what to improve
 - you are welcome to post comparisons, experiences (both good and bad), or even deep analysis or just cool videos
 - if you are a programmer and you see potential for improvements, grab the source and support 

Raw video menu option in the Magic Lantern menu.

Having said that, the guys from Magic Lantern have also brought some clarity to how they actually managed to make RAW work on the 5D Mark III. I’ll skip all the details which you can read here, but that’s the essence:

The 5D Mark III generates RAW video stream by itself already, it’s used for the live view mode and being converted into H.264 and then written to the card.

Secondly and as a consequence, it means that it’s NOT putting more strain on the sensor or camera as a whole as many suspected. In other words, it won’t melt away, because it’s not doing anything that it wouldn’t do anyway when shooting.

Actually, it might even mean that it needs LESS power and therefore it heats up less than usually:

About sensor heating rumors:
The only thing that could get warmer is DIGiC and the CF circuitry, but i am sure that the power dissipation that reaches the sensor
through all that plastic housing will not have any noticeable temperature raise.

detailed: when doing that much DMA transfers and CF writing, we may cause a bit more current drain (which causes squared power dissipation)
but we do not encode any H.264 while recording, so we use less power there.
its *possible* that the CF writing will consume less energy than the encoding with H.264, which will result in *less* power consumption.
raw is being produced by the DIGiC for every single frame anyway. we “just” save it away.

still this is a *theory*, but i expect the consumption and the temperatures not to raise at all.

Only CF cards need to be faster because of the increased data rate of the raw files (~83 MB/s vs. the usual 10-12 MB/s). However, there’s a great and comparatively affordable option for large and fast CompactFlash cards, and that’s a company called “Komputerbay”.

Komputerbay: Good and fast Compact Flash cards for little money.

Magic Lantern has also provided more details about the nature of the hack and you can read it all in the forums by clicking here.

So in conclusion, that means that you still have to be careful and be aware of the fact that it might be dangerous for your camera and that you are modifying it at your own risk. Having said that, the hack seems to make use of processes that are ALREADY happening inside of this camera and only utilizing/hijacking some of them for all our benefit.

We have already posted an extensive workflow post on how to unlock 24p raw on your 5D Mark III. My partner in crime Sebastian Wöber is currently working on a tutorial video that shows a much simplified process compared to what we posted before – be sure to check back shortly!

via nofilmschool and Magic Lantern.

In a seemingly endless sequence of Canon-related news (sorry about that) – most of them dealing with the 1080p RAW hack for the Canon 5D Mark III – Canon has presented new picture styles for their DSLR cameras called “Camcorder X Series Look”, specifically targeted at video shooters.

This picture style is targeted at shooters that are looking for reduced contrast range and color saturation, which allows for more nuanced adjustments in post production and grading.

I say it sounds like Canon’s better-late-than-never reaction to people (and companies like Technicolor) tinkering with the picture profiles to achieve a maximum dynamic range. The quite popular “flat” picture style was basically an unsharpened and less contrasty, slightly undersaturated modification of the standard picture profile, pioneered by post production guru Stu Maschwitz and used by virtually anyone before Technicolor CineStyle came along (which has its own problems with noise, yet it’s much flatter than what we could record with Canon DSLRs before).

It’s nice to see Canon finally providing something by themselves, but it will be up for to the readers to decide if it’s better than the alternatives.

The Canon Camcorder X Series Look is available for download from here.

Press Release:

London, UK, 14 May 2013 – Canon today announces the release of a new in-camera Picture Style pre-set for its range of EOS DSLRs. Created following direct feedback from video enthusiasts, the new Picture Style, called Video Camera X–series-look, enables users to capture EOS Movie footage with lower contrast levels, allowing for easier colour grading during post production processes.

The new Picture Style can be downloaded now from:http://web.canon.jp/imaging/picturestyle/index.html

Here’s a side by side comparison of the 5D mark III with 14bit RAW 1080p together with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera with 2.5K RAW so you can see how the two cameras differ.

Update
Here are two RAW to play yourself:
BMCC: bmccdng.zip
5D RAW: 000123.dng

What we did:

We went out with a Canon 5D mark III that had the Magic Lantern RAW module hack on it and shot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera in RAW mode alongside.
We used the Canon 24-105mm lens on the 5D while we used the Tokina 16-50mm on the Blackmagic. Native ISO on the Blackmagic is 800 so we used that.

We tried to get similar shots. It’s not so easy, in fact it was easier to get the shots on the 5D as the Blackmagic is just not a very easy to use camera in many regards. Wrongly interpreted zebra indicators had me fooled several times and the internal battery almost died.

Post processing
After a lengthy process of getting the RAW files converted into something usable we graded both to match more or less. We didn’t do a very sophisticated grade, working with RAW files like that is time consuming.

What became clear is that both cameras provide very similarly capable RAW files. You can adjust everything and everything is possible. You can get similar details out of the sky and set all you like in post. Color temperature, tint, dynamic range, no problem. The 5D is just as strong as the BMCC, providing maybe a bit more dynamic range.

Where the cameras differ in terms of RAW is one big thing: Noise. The 5D mark III can shoot indoors at ISO 1600 and there’s almost no noise while the Blackmagic starts to get ugly at this point.
The noise from the BMCC is also apparent when raising the blacks in a shot.

Moire and aliasing is another big big issue on Blackmagic and there is very litte of that on the 5D RAW. The cleanness of the shots of the 5D RAW in general is extremely pleasing and jumps at you when you sit in front of the RAW images. Check some of the dng’s yourself in our other post.

Conclusion
The 5D RAW has the clear advantage of a large sensor and never before seen ISO performance on a RAW camera. It’s intriguing and soon a stable version will probably be ready for real usage.
On the downside the 5D RAW has a little less detail than the Blackmagic or an Alexa, but a lot more detail than the 5D had without the RAW hack.

We’ll keep you posted on the progress of the Magic Lantern solution.

If you buy a Canon 5D mark III, please get it HERE to reward our efforts and PLEASE ALSO MAKE SURE YOU DONATE TO MAGIC LANTERN FOR MAKING THIS AWESOME DEVELOPMENT POSSIBLE: LINK

The Blackmagic Cinema camera is currently in stock again and available for $3000 LINK

Music provided by The Music Bed
Blake Ewing – Revolution

Yesterday the developers working on the Magic Lantern hack for the Canon 5D mark III posted about their progress on a RAW hack that enables the Canon 5D mark III to shoot continuous 14bit RAW at 24 frames per second (!!!). The results are totally breathtaking, make sure you download and watch the source at vimeo: LINK

For a complete dummies GUIDE on how to achieve the RAW hack on your Canon 5D mark III see THIS ARTICLE.

TEST NOTES:

First and most important, I would like to thank the ML team for what they did. Adding RAW recording to a very popular camera and the plan to add RAW recording for most of Canon HDSLR family is earth shaking news. It is as big as allowing HDSLR cameras to shoot video.

This short test we did was shot in an hour and meant to test the following:
-The quality of footage coming out of the Canon 5d markIII in RAW shooting mode.
-Workflow from shooting to delivery (see the related article here:http://www.cinema5d.com/news/?p=17898)
-Cleanness of footage in ISO 1600 (see from minute 00:51:05)
-Comparison of few shots between this camera and the BMCC (coming soon)

RAW recording in this camera price range was till now only possible with the Blackmagic cinema camera which has a relatively small sensor, and unsatisfactory low light performance and in some conditions a major amount of moire. By introducing a RAW recording possibility for the Canon 5d MarkIII you can now enjoy full frame image, Canon’s extremely clean high ISO performance and almost moire free footage.

The high quality footage coming out from the camera in RAW mode is simply INSANE!. I recommend downloading and watching it on a big screen in order to appreciate what ML did. Yes, there are still some glitches like horizontal color lines popping up un-expectedly in the footage (you can see one at 00:53:22 ) and the actual digging in the ML menu in order to activate RAW recording can be a pain but all in all this feature implementation is huge!

If you buy a Canon 5D mark III, please get it HERE to reward our efforts and PLEASE ALSO MAKE SURE YOU DONATE TO MAGIC LANTERN FOR MAKING THIS AWESOME DEVELOPMENT POSSIBLE: LINK

Notes:
Tokina 11-16mm 2.8 used on 16mm focal length
Camera picture profile: Neutral

UPDATE:
The files are really strong. Some DNG RAW files if you would like to test it yourself (open in Photoshop):
000123.dng
000169.dng
38000310.dng

Yes, the source for the still above is a 1080p 14bit RAW shot with the 5D mark III!!! Here’s a test video showing you how that looks in motion with an article elaborating the work with the camera: LINK. If you haven’t seen it you should check it out.

Yesterday the developers working on the Magic Lantern hack for the Canon 5D mark III posted about their progress on a RAW hack that enables the Canon 5D mark III to shoot continuous 14bit RAW at 24 frames per second (!!!). We tested it and it works, and the results are totally breathtaking and revolutionary (videos and review to follow later today). Here’s how you can do it too!

If you’re not a computer scientist it’s not easy to get the Magic Lantern hack and 14bit RAW module working that was posted in the Magic Lantern forums yesterday. There are no guides around and it’s still in its early Alpha stage.
After struggling for a day we managed to pull it off so here’s our complete dummies guide to squeeze the RAW bits out of a 5D mark III.

NOTE: Here’s what WE did and what worked for us. There’s no guarantee this will work for you, in fact you will void your warranty for the camera and it might be dead afterwards. Note that we take no responsibility for what happens when you follow our guide. Do it at your own risk and research on your own if you want to make sure.

Getting the firmware and RAW module onto the camera:

1. Get a 5D mark III with a fully charged battery. If you buy a mark III, please get it
___HERE. We did this on a Mac with a Transcend card reader, a 16GB SD card and one of
___the fast Komputerbay CF cards (fast read/write required. You get 15 minutes of 1080p
___on a 128GB card).
Note that there’ve been numerous people who didn’t achieve the same resolution with their 128GB Komputerbay CF cards. Maybe there are inconsistencies in different Komputerbay batches. Apparently the Komputerbay 64GB are consistently faster to achieve the 1080p at 25fps. Europeans can get the cards here: LINK
2. Downgrade the Canon 5D mark III firmware from 1.2.1 (latest) to the compatible
___1.1.3. Firmware Links:
___OSX: LINK (thanks to user Kobus)
___WIN: LINK
3. Format the SD card (up to 16GB) in camera. Make sure the dial is always on “M” (manual mode)
4. Get the whole Magic Lantern package (link updated May 16th: Latest working version
___seems to be from May 13th) (File –> Download) (posted by aaphotog in the
___Magic Lantern forum)
4B. (updated on May 17th) To get 25p with a 1/50th shutter use this package: LINK
5. From the Magic Lantern package copy the 5D3-113-bootflag.fir file to the root folder
___of the SD card.
6. Place the SD card in your camera, switch it on and go to the firmware update in the
___camera menu. Do the update which will “turn” your camera’s bootflag. Whatever that
___means.
7. The camera now loads weird overlays, wait until it’s finished. Switch the camera off.
8. Get the SD card back in the Computer. DELETE 5D3-113-bootflag.fir file from the SD!
9. Copy the autoexec.bin and “ML” folder from the updated package onto the SD
___card.
10. Download Macboot and the Mountain Lion fix (if you’re on a Mountain Lion Machine)
___(for Windows see here: http://wiki.magiclantern.fm/install).
11. Open only the “.command” file (for Mountain Lion) and insert your password in the
___Terminal window that pops up.
12. The Macboot app should open. Select “DSLR Bootable” and press “prepare card”.
___It should now display a “success” note.
13. Click “Eject Card”.
14. The SD card goes back into the 5D mark III together with the Komputerbay CF card.
15. Switch camera on.
16. Now press the “trash button” on the camera to activate Magic Lantern. The Magic
___Lantern menu should load.
16B. If it didn’t work try step 5 again. And make sure mode dial is on “M” and you’re on
___movie recording setting.
17. Go to “M” Symbol in the Magic Lantern menu (on the far right).
18. Select “Load Modules”. Now you should see “raw_rec ok” with a green dot next to it.
19. Go to the menu with the camera symbol.
20. Select the “RAW video” tab.
21. Go to height and set it to “1080″.
22. In the same menu then press “Start”. And you’re rolling!
23. You will see the camera capturing (or dropping frames…)
24. To stop press the “trash button” again and select the highlighted option.
Note: If you’re dropping many frames you might have the wrong card selected in Canon’s folder menu.

The whole thing is still quite buggy and not very user friendly, but they are constantly working on it and getting it better. As mentioned before this is still in Alpha stage.

If you buy a Canon 5D mark III, please get it HERE to reward our efforts and PLEASE ALSO MAKE SURE YOU DONATE TO MAGIC LANTERN FOR MAKING THIS AWESOME DEVELOPMENT POSSIBLE: LINK

Workflow to end up with usable Quicktime ProRes 4444 files:

1. The camera produces .RAW files which need to be converted to something usable first.
___This can currently only be done in Windows with an app they wrote called raw2dng.
Update: They just released a OSX app for that: download HERE, info HERE
___If you’re on Windows don’t use the one in the package downloaded earlier. Get the .exe here: LINK
2. Get the raw2dng.exe together with your .RAW files into the same folder on the
___Windows computer.
3. Go to “Start” and “run…” or just in the search field type “cmd”, hit Enter. The
___command Terminal should open.
4. type “raw2dng M0000000.RAW targetprefix”.
___Instead of “M0000000.RAW” insert the filename of the .RAW file you want to convert.
___Instead of targetprefix type a prefix.
___“shot1″ as a prefix would make files like shot1000000.dng.
5. The .dng files that come out of this are raw files you can open in several programs. We
___found it can only be opened with Adobe programs which is unfortunate as this makes
___the workflow even more complicated. It did not work in DaVinci Resolve which offers
___a very quick and painless DNG conversion process.
6. Next we had to put the files for each shot into separate folders.
7. In AfterEffects the .dng files can be converted to any format you like. We chose to
___convert to ProRes 4444.
8. We imported the files into an empty project by selecting only the first file of each
___.dng sequence.
9. The RAW dialogue pops up. At this point you can color correct with the Adobe
___RAW tool, but we wanted to do a final grading later.
___So we just corrected the wrongly set “tint” value from +77 down to +30.
10. The file imports, but is interpreted as 30fps. To change that for the next shots we
___changed the default framerate in the AfterEffects preferences menu to “24″.
11. Right clicked the imported file and clicked “set proxy” to “movie”.
12. On the Render Dialogue that now pops up we set Render Settings to “Best Settings”
___and created a new Output Module for Quicktime ProRes 4444.
13. The rendering took forever and After Effects crashed numerous times.
___We really don’t like that application for this kind of workflow, sorry Adobe.
___If you find a better way to do this please post it in the comments.
14. Thankfully 3 hours later our 13 minutes of footage was converted on our high end iMac.

We ‘re certain the workflow will be improved very soon. At this time it is still a hassle to get these .RAW files to convert to something useful. When all the tools are here this will be amazing, groundbraking, revolutionary. Why? Because the images the 5D produces are wonderful, clean, strong in lowlight and it has a large sensor. All things which you don’t get in any othr RAW camera at this time and certainly not at this pricepoint.

Please stay tuned for some awesome test shots from us which we are editing and uploading right now. We will keep you updated.

Only a few weeks after Canon finally gave us the 5D Mark III firmware update for clean HDMI out and after the firmware hackers extraordinaire at Magic Lantern announced that raw video from the 5D Mark III is indeed a possibility, they have now managed to squeeze a very impressive 24 frames per second of continuous RAW video recording at 1920×850 pixels 1080p (!) out of said camera.

In other words: 24p raw from the Canon 5D Mark III is a reality and it looks MUCH better than the soft look we have grown accustomed to from Canon’s DSLRs over the years.

Check it out here – the video on top was recorded with the standard H.264 ALL-I codec, the bottom one is raw footage recorded onto a 1000x CF card (oh yes, you do need very fast and expensive cards, just like when recording 4K with the Canon 1DC):

The resolution of the raw footage is at 1928×850 at 24fps right now. User lourenco from the Magic Lantern forum said that frame rates above that resulted in the camera’s buffer to fill up.

Personally, I think this development is significant since the picture quality is much better even without additional grading involved. The notoriously bad sharpness of most Canon DSLRs (apart from the 1DC and 1DX) in video mode has tired us all over the years, especially because enhancements only reduced aliasing and increased light sensitivity – but with regards to sharpness, the 5D Mark III is almost as weak as the 5D Mark II, which makes it very hard to match with cameras such as Canon’s very own C300 or even C100.

So let’s see where this all leads, but it certainly makes the 5D Mark III a much more valuable proposition if you are willing to risk using the Magic Lantern firmware. After all, it has that unique full frame look, so having the option to get raw video out of it can make it a camera like no other – especially with all those enhancements the guys over at Magic Lantern are certainly working at.

Here’s another video from the Magic Lantern forum – it’s just a 1 second clip, but to investigate the quality, be sure to head over to the Vimeo page and download the ProRes 4444 version that user squig uploaded.

via nofilmschool