-
Dear Canon
I previously called regarding what I think is a really important addition to your new camera that has so stunned all of us since the announcement. First, a little background, I’m a visual effects artist who owns the now dated XL-1S and Digital Rebel XT and the time to upgrade both my video and still equipment to a more professional line of products is very near. I watched as Nikon produced great light sensitivity on the D3 but when the first D90 videos hit I thought I was going to—painfully—make the switch. Then I saw the 5D MkII and I was floored.
As a VFX artist I’m one of the niches that high megapixels really matters to for shooting textures, reference and HDR environment maps and the XT isn’t cutting it and the D90 didn’t look very promising in that respect either. As a photographer I’m very excited about the light sensitivity and as a cinematographer I couldn’t believe that we could already have such strong video capability from a DSLR.
Then I saw Reverie, it instantly made me stop even thinking about Nikon or the RED Scarlet we’ve been promised. I showed it around work with other artists and one outstanding cinematographer. When I showed Reverie to our cinematographer out of context and asked him to guess what camera had shot that on and the camera he guessed was in the $18,000 range.
There was, however, one little thing, it still looks like video.. The 5D MkII takes a massive step toward achieving a filmic quality, it’s all about the glass, right? Well, not quite yet, you see, we were still watching 30 frames-per-second with it’s routs firmly planted in the broadcast standards we watch on our televisions, not the 24 frames-per-second progressive film we watch when we go to see something epic in the theaters. Your video guys have learned this lesson before, it’s why I never really looked into upgrading to the XL-H1 and I know I wasn’t the only one who based their decision based on those specs.
So here we are, looking at one of the most amazing DSLRs in years, maybe even more revolutionary then the RED camera itself. We can now put your best pro-lenses on a camera that shoots incredible stills and incredible video but we’re missing one of the last, most important components in taking the revolutionary step to a whole new class of cameras. Please Canon, add 24p (or 23.976) to the 5D MkII via a firmware update.
I’m not the only one hoping for this, you can find many others and a more eloquent plea here:
http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-letter-to-canon.html
and here:
http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/09/26/original-raw-clips-from-reverie-now-available-for-download/#more-1249
—
Chris White
3D | VFX Artist
Mobile: 303.916.2189
Twitter: @chrisWhite
