Canon 5D Mark II - Over and Under Exposure Tests

Canon 5D Mark II - Over and Under Exposure Tests from Ben Cain / Negative Spaces on Vimeo.

I really like this little camera but the latitude feels a little thin to me. I want to know how far I can push it and how many stops over and under I can record before running into problems so I did this test exposing the gray card / chip chart to key and then over and under exposing by 5 stops each.

This is a full resolution 1080 video file so watch it full screen in HD to really see what's happening in the images. 

ISO 200, bracketing was done with the iris and shutter. The charts are slightly hotter in the upper center. A soft, even source like a Diva would have been better for this test but all I had at the house was a tweenie. The difference is about 3-5%, not enough to compromise the test so I'm just going to go with it. 

Key Light: Gray card is at 50 IRE. The gray card is even across the parade indicating correct white balance at 3000k. We have some highlight and shadow information in the grayscale and a full range of hues in the Macbeth. Even at optimum exposure, you can see the codec is having trouble with the shadows. The last 4 swatches on the grayscale are clipped down to one. It's important to also include a color reference in tests like these because you want to see how much chroma information is retained in the highlight and shadow portion of the signal.

1 Stop Over: Nothing to worry about.

2 Stops Over: We're still good though we're starting to lose our peak highlights. Look at the skin tone swatches though, they're getting close to the edge. This means you really need to watch the contrast on the face or else the limitations of the codec become apparent. Skin tones even at 90 IRE are crippled even though they aren't clipped. You'll never get the full range of tone back that you could have captured with a correct exposure.  

3 Stops Over: Highlights are gone. A lot of our chroma information is gone as well though we're still retaining some of the darker values. Gray card is almost at 100 IRE. 3 stops over and we're right on the edge. 

4 Stops Over: Gone

5 Stops Over: Even more gone.

1 Stop Under: Nothing to worry about.

2 Stops Under: Still in the zone though we're starting to see some noise in our darker values, darker colors, and skin tone swatches. If you don't want a lot of noise in your faces, you can't be too contrasty. Based off these test, anything more than a 3:1 is compromised. 

3 Stops Under: Dark values are crushed. Still retaining some color information but noise is getting worse. 

4 Stops Under: Gone. There's no way to get any useable information out of this. 

5 Stops Under: Even more gone. 

In my assessment, the Canon 5D Mark II has about 5 stops of solid latitude and about another stop where you're retaining some information but from there it falls off very fast. Let's call it 6 stops dynamic range to be fair. 

Canon 5D Mark II - ISO Test

Canon 5D - ISO Tests from Ben Cain / Negative Spaces on Vimeo.

I have something coming up where we're going to go crazy low light using 2x Mark II's along with 1.2 glass. I want to see how far I can push the ISO in the camera so I set up a little gray card / chip chart test to have an objective look at the midtones, shadows, and highlights as well as how basic hues are affected across the full range of ISO from 100-6400.

This is a full resolution 1080 video file so watch it full screen in HD to really see what's happening to the image at various ISO settings. 

Despite compensating the stop on the camera 1/3 for each ISO bracket, there still is a slight amount of exposure difference in each setup. 

My thoughts: ISO 100-320 are extremely clean. 400-800 are still acceptable. Anything beyond that, I don't think I would go there unless I didn't have another option. ISO 3200-6400 is the equivalent of +18dB on a traditional video camera. Hideous. Even at low ISO's you can still see where the codec is having trouble resolving very rich and saturated colors like deep red and purple. I must say, I'm pretty impressed with this as compared to the 7D. I didn't have a chance to do this test with it but even at ISO 400 I noticed a lot of noise in dark tones. 

Michael Ballhaus: Over and Under Exposure Tests

Michael Ballhaus: Over and Under Exposure Tests 

The guy who started his career shooting feature films for RW Fassbinder and now shoots for Scorsese (amongst others) has taken the time to create exposure tests of the Canon 5D Mark II, Sony PMW-EX3, RED One, Sony F35, and Arri D21. The beginning of this test, the exposure bracketing, is an incredibly useful resource as it shows the true limitations limitations of these cameras. Disregard the Side by Sides at the end of the video as I see that several of the examples have been heavily manipulated in post production. Was this accidental, overlooked, or intentional? Don't know. Don't care. It's good to see the over and under examples on the 5 different cameras though. 

Michael Ballhaus : HMS Kameratest - Testmaterial from zoom magazin on Vimeo.

I spent the afternoon at Kodak today and saw a film projection of Daryn Okada's 5219 demo and I've got to say, it made me feel a little fatigued by digital. That 5219 is just incredible. It sees so much and is so forgiving. It sees into the highlights 2 stops more than 5218 even which still was a great stock. You don't have to light so carefully and be so protective of your shadows and highlights. There's also a certain smoothness to the tonality that I've just never seen in a digital camera. We spend so much time these days looking at these tiny web videos that it's difficult to really evaluate the quality of a medium until you're seeing it massive in front of your face. I make my living with digital cameras and love the process but, DAMN, I'm just blown away by the quality of this stock. Even rated at 2000 ASA/EI and processed normally, the grain is remarkably tight. I hate this reigning attitude of film vs. digital and "why can't film just hurry up and die." Why can't both technologies co-exist peacefully? Just as manufacturers are developing new ways to digitally capture and process motion pictures, Kodak is developing stocks that are of equally remarkable technology. Yeah it's a cost issue and sadly, shooting 35mm color neg is not an option for most independent productions. But I'm glad that Kodak (and Fuji) remain committed to creating excellent products that still very much fit into the current paradigm.