Canon 5D Mark II Video Monday!!!

Good Morning Everybody,
It’s true – finally today you get to see the next great video produced with the Canon 5D Mark II camera. And wait, there’s more – I’ve got a couple new images to toss in as well.

I hope everybody had a great weekend. LaDawn and I are all settled back in Cincy. We left Cabo at 85degrees only to arrive home to 25 degrees and snow. Hey, it's still home. We've got a pretty busy next few days as we move into the final couple weeks before our holiday deadlines. But, as promised, I’ve got a lot of good stuff for you today.

First and foremost - New Canon 5D Mark II video
My friend, Kent Smith, picked up his 5D Mk II the day before we departed for Cabo. Needless to say, we had a blast playing with it down in sunny Mexico.

I know you don’t want to wait, so I'm kicking the post off with the video first. Hit the PLAY button below and enjoy one of the best Canon 5D Mark II videos on the web!! So folks I present to you a brand new Canon 5D Mark II video entitled, "Live Your Life." Enjoy! -David

Live Your Life - Created With Canon 5D Mark II from David Ziser; on Vimeo.

The rest of the story... A few weeks ago Kent had the opportunity to borrow the 5D Mark II from our Canon rep while she was in the Columbus, Ohio area. Kent only had the camera for a short amount of time - just a few hours one evening, but that was long enough for him to produce a terrific series of images and video clips of the young lady that you're going to see in this video.

You know, many of us are talking about the convergence of still and video imagery and a tremendous possibilities it offers each and every one of us in our profession. It's very exciting!

I think when you look at Kent's video, you will be awestruck by number one, the possibilities that this convergence offers, and number two, the quality of the finished result. This video only takes about 3 1/2 minutes to play but, I bet you watch it over and over again. It is chock full of so many ideas for the portrait/wedding/senior photographer that I think it may blow your mind.

Here's additional background on the video. Kent did all the photography at his studio. His studio is newly equipped with Westcott’s new 900 watt Spyderlites. Westcott’s Spyderlites are perfectly balanced for daylight shooting and they are bright enough to stop the action of the moving subject.

He shot everything on 8 gig SanDisk Extreme IV cards, but we found while playing around in Mexico that the Sandisk Extreme III cards work just as well.

The whole project was put together on my Mac Book Pro laptop using Apple’s I-Movie HD software. Kent normally edits in Final Cut Pro but without the benefit of this program in Mexico, he got the hang of I-Movie quickly and we were able to organize and produce a great show. What amazed me was the project size of this 3 1/2 minute video -- 3.6 gigs!

I saved the video out as a high quality QuickTime .mov file which rendered to 132 Megs. Next, I uploaded the QuickTime file to Viddler, but wasn’t happy with the final result. I think the Viddler compression scheme was too hard on the video and it lost too much quality for this project. After returning home, on Sunday, I gave Vimeo a try and had much better luck.

The video was sized to 640x480, but I still think you will be impressed and inspired as to what great possibilities are in store for creative photographers.

So, hit the play button again and again and see what you think.

More Thoughts On These Wonderful High ISOs.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. One of the biggest kicks for me up with the new camera, are these unbelievably high super usable ISO settings. I just think this opens up tons of possibilities for us wedding photographers.

With this camera, it's so easy to capture those wonderful non-intrusive, non-flash images on the wedding day. And, we don't even need big fat glass to do it. The new camera really makes it super easy to catch those great shots with lenses that don't break the bank. WOW, life is good!

Now I know that there's going to be some readers saying, "Well, what about the shallow depth of field?" Folks, I guess were I sit, that's not nearly as important to me as getting the shot and capturing that great expression, that sensitive mood, those spontaneous feelings on the subjects face. These new high ISO cameras - in my mind, make it easier than ever for us to be able to do just that.

I know, I know, the Nikon readers are saying the we've had high ISOs for the last year. I know you have and I hope you've been making the best of it. Unfortunately, from the many comments I receive many seem to be still afraid of those wonderfully high ISOs.

Think about it - now our candids will have the availability to take on a wonderful new look capturing that low light ambiance without any problem at all! I see myself shooting routinely at ISO 3200, and sometimes it's 6400. Shooting at 3200/6400 ISO at F5.6 at 1/60 second means that our cameras will be picking up a lot more ambient light at the wedding reception. That ambient light is going to give us a much greater feeling of depth and dimension in our portrait/wedding candids.

Just as an additional side note; many of you may think I'm crazy even bringing it up but, those very high ISOs also allow the flash to use much less power with each flash. That means that one set of batteries should last us for the entire job.

Now you all know that I'm a shooter who loves to use two and three lights at the wedding reception. It gives me a great look in my candids - detail, depth, dimension, etc, - that differentiates me from a lot of the shooters in the Cincinnati area. Add a high ISO to the equation and the photography, and those candids can only become even better and more exciting.

Another ramification of the high ISOs is a fact that I can use less powerful light as my room light and for my second light (off camera flash) my assistant carries. This means, it makes it eminently easier for me to get the same lightning I've been getting for years with substantially lower power output. I can't wait to experiment with this and see what I can come up with.

You know, another benefit of the higher ISOs, is that when I’m shooting with room lights firing, since they would be using much less power with each flash, the recycle time should be almost instantaneous. And what's that mean it means that the flashes can keep up with the rapid firing of my digital SLR.

Every way I try to think about this, the versatility of the higher ISOs, everything keeps coming up roses. Sometimes I think I'm the only wedding photographer on the high ISO. But when you're shooting a shot every 9 seconds for 10 hours, every little bit helps. These higher ISO cameras are one of the biggest most recent benefits ever for us wedding guys.

Canon 5D Mark II For The Photo(Visual) Journalist
You need to check out this review of the 5D Mk II over at MoPhoto blog. Here is the link. David Stephenson, a staff photojournalist at the Lexington Herald-Leader, provides a great take on just how photojournalists could use this camera. Be sure to watch his 5D Mark II video too - its worth it.

David offers some great in-depth insights into the use - application, focus, editing, etc. - of the Canon 5D Mark II in video mode. It's a post you need to read as we all try to get our heads around the convergence of still images and video. Every new piece of info is valuable - if you have a link to what's going on with this camera in other parts of the world, let us all know in the comments section below. All this stuff is just way to cool!

Hey gang, that's it for me today. I can't wait to get my hands on one of those new cameras myself, hopefully by the weekend because I get another big event coming up, and I can't wait to try some of these previous ideas I've discussed. I'll see everybody tomorrow for another episode of Technique Tuesday: How To Photograph a Bride. See ya' then. -David