The natural progression of technology seems to be it incrementally introduce new features into gadgets to constantly push the bar and get that competitive edge over the masses. Gone are the days where a mobile phone is used just for making calls. Nowadays it seems like it is a secondary feature to the phone and that the personal organizer facility, camera, music player, radio etc all takes precedence.

You must be wondering where I’m going with this. Just recently I purchased a Canon 5D Mark II which is a full frame DSLR, and one major revision to this flagship pro series camera is the introduction of 1080P high definition video. To me, when all the camera manufacturers started to push this as a major marketing feature for their new camera series I thought "Here we go… Is it really necessary to have video in a DSLR?" After seeing what you are able to achieve with filming on this camera I was truly amazed. This is the first short video created on the Canon 5D Mark II call Reverie by Vincent La Foret and it is absolutely amazing what was achieved with the range of depth of field, sharpness and fluidity:

Another video by Vincent La Foret

Off course it’s had its Hollywood post production etc, but at the end of the day the entire thing was shot using a DSLR. For those of you who are interested this is the technical specs of shooting video on the 5D Mark II:

• 1920 x 1080 (16:9) up to 12 mins (Quicktime 1080p H.264;
38.6 Mbits/sec)
• 640 x 480 (4:3) up to 24 mins (Quicktime 480p H.264; 17.3 Mbits/sec)
• Max file size 4 GB
• Quicktime MOV format (H.264 video, PCM sound)
• 30 fps

Here’s a quick example of the raw footage straight off the camera. This is my Coral Banded Shrimp "Juggernaut" one day after shedding his outer shell. He does this once a month on average as he grows larger.

Since I’m not a videographer, this feature will definitely just be a nicety for me rather than a necessity. It definitely will change the game for movie production in that such a versatile device will be accesible to more people and hopefully this will push the barriers of creativity as the 5D Mark II gets adopted into the world of video production. Don’t forget to click on the HD button when viewing the videos!