Digicam Video
Word was that the “House” finale that aired this past Monday was shot on a DSLR with 1080p HD video.
When the shots had deep-focus, all looked well. However, whenever there were large regions of darker bokeh, it was obvious that there was some pretty serious quantization going on. I’m not sure what needs adjustment for the video capture, but it looks like there’s still something for digicams to catch up with on regular video gear.
Now all I need is someone to tell me that, no, those scenes weren’t done on the DSLR…
According to my reading at various photog web sites (I’m a professional photographer) the 5DMKII was indeed used. It’s neither a secret nor just a rumor.
I hadn’t confirmed what I had heard, but wanted to make an observation about what I saw in the broadcast that was a distraction. Thanks for the confirmation and the detail on which DSLR was used.
I didn’t catch House, but if there is indeed some issue with the vid, it ain’t the camera’s fault.
http://philipbloom.net/dslr-films/skywalker-ranch-5dmkii-and-7d/
It could be a post-processing issue for the “House” episode, but I’m not the only one who has noticed the quantization issue. That one pegs the problem as the choice of the MPG4 codec. I don’t have a 5D Mk II so I don’t know if you can simply choose MPEG2 or other codec instead and have that go away.
The “Skywalker Ranch” video had some out-of-focus areas, but generally not much that had large parts of the frame at nearly the same dark value, which is where the “House” video demonstrated the quantization clearly. As I said in my post, when you have deep focus, there is no visible problem. The shot with the dead leaves did have a large out-of-focus dark area to the bottom left, but since there was little gradation to anything else, I didn’t see an issue that. Something that would point to post-processing as a possible cause of the problem is the final fade-out in the “Skywalker Ranch” video, which plainly shows visible quantization.