5dII

[thewanderer]

In re the above as to video capability,

my limited knowledge of the video cams that have interchangable lens, the canon unit comes to mind, have rather hefty crop factors, (feel free to correct me if i am wrong on that)

would the 5dII have any crop factor on the video portion or would the video frame be full frame as the still image.

thanks in advance

[timescapes]

There is no crop factor on the 5Dii with EF lenses.  It uses the whole sensor in terms of size.  How that sensor is downsampled to 1080p, I don't know if anyone has figured that out yet.  Some speculate that it skips photosites, only reading every third pixel, for example.

[Kagetsu]

Cropping only occurs to give it the 16:9 aspect ratio (from 3:2), so nothing of major concern. '

I don't think the preproduction units do pixel skipping, after watching the VL video, it appears his camera had that red dot, but I dare say, the production model will be improved, and likely have a better implemented program. '
That said, I'm no expert.

[jjj]

Cropping to the 16:9 ratio is not necessarily a good thing, far better to have the full height of frame to allow for vertical adjustment in post. Very useful for getting rid of droopy booms!

[thewanderer]

will i be able to use all of my lenses with the camera in video mode,, from the 600 on down?  and how is focus achieved, or is video focus not as critical as still focus

[timescapes]

I believe it has some kind of crude "contrast" AF.  Focus is really going to be a difficult issue on this camera, with its huge sensor and fast lenses.

[jjj]

You only use Auto focus on home movie camcorders. Using Autofocus is a great way to make something look very unprofessional.
Nailing focus is quite challenging when filming and why you normally have someone on film set whose only job is to focus camera.
And that's with smaller sensors and 35mm film [whose image is not as big as 35mm still film].

[Derryck]

Picked up my 5D II yesterday and unfortunately I've been too busy shooting a job to properly try it out. But I did have a go filming lunch being made in the studio and the quality is amazing. The uploads you see on the net don't do it justice. The camera captures video in 16:9 format using the full width of the sensor and stills are 2:3. Below is a screen shot from a movie clip at 70mm f2.8 400iso.

[billy]

Picked up my 5D II yesterday and unfortunately I've been too busy shooting a job to properly try it out. But I did have a go filming lunch being made in the studio and the quality is amazing. The uploads you see on the net don't do it justice. The camera captures video in 16:9 format using the full width of the sensor and stills are 2:3. Below is a screen shot from a movie clip at 70mm f2.8 400iso.

what software did you use to process the video? is it raw when you shoot it?

[jjj]

what software did you use to process the video? is it raw when you shoot it?

The Canon does not produce RAW footage as it outputs in a compressed video codec. Not really any different from a JPEG from a stills camera. People however confusingly refer to the raw footage from camera [tsk, tsk Mr Lafloret   ], instead of saying ungraded footage.
Grading is where you tweak the look of the footage to get a certain style/look or to accurately match different shots in same scene to make for seemless cutting.