Freitag, 5. April 2013

5D Mark III lowlight test: detailed look

As promised here is the more detailed take on the low light capabilities in Video fort he 5D Mark III

I took a couple of screenshots from the short demo video to show how the low light situation is dealt with by the cameras sensor. While i was sitting on the porch of our hotel in Soroti, eastern Uganda, storm clouds slowly pulled up. The region is known for the highest amount of lightning strikes pers square mile in the country.
The sunlight at this time of the day, was almost gone and only a almost non identifiable sunset was glowing in the back of the frame, while quiet dramatic clouds started to pull up . I slightly underexposed the frame, to have more emphasis on the clouds and their structure. Resulting in a pretty dark "supporting" scene of the streets under the porch. I shot in the highest ISO Setting the camera is offering in standard settings: 12800. No ND filter was used for that shot.

Original shot screenshot
In general i was quite pleased with the results. The colors are ok, sharpness was sufficient for the test i found, and we can still see movement and structure in the underexposed areas, while having a quite dramatic cloud part.

In the image below i did a 200% magnification
showing the noise and detail loss of such a high ISO setting. I found it to be definitely usable, but if you want clear and flawless imagery, you might want to avoid it.

200 % magnification

increased levels to show noise artifacts
To show the real effect of noise i took a screenshot and raised the levels in photoshop to bring to attention what happens in the "shadows".
You can see strong artifacts and color distortions coming from the high current on the sensor in the high ISO area. In artificial underexposed situation that works well, but if you need a well lit scene under such circumstances or settings, you gonna lose a lot of details and sharpness and might end up quite some time post production to clean up the image.

I dont really have a comparison with other cameras right now on that scene but i still think that the 5D Mark III does an excellent job in bringing this scene to life. My 7D would have easily surrendered by then and only with some tricks and some significant amount of post production could i have achieved similar results.

Here again is the full video:

5D Mark III low light test from Marc Hofer on Vimeo.




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