Canon Announces 5D Mark III
It seems like forever since Canon released the game changing 5D Mark II , yet Canon have finally announced the 5D Mark III and were excited!
The 5D Mark II has been a great camera for us and has complemented our video camcorders very well. Most of the footage used in our cinematic wedding highlights comes from this camera, due to its film-like quality, size, portability and adaptability ( lenses and mounting options) your able to achieve a variety of great shots very quickly with the Mark II.
Things have moved forward since with many manufacturers offering HD movie recording offerings from their DSLR cameras. It has also pushed manufacturers like Panasonic and Sony bring us more film-like camcorders such as the F3, AF101 and Canon themselves have given us the slightly pricey but awesome C300.
The Canon EOS 5D Mark III will ship in late March. It will have exciting new video features such as the 1D X 61 point focusing system, new compressions, better noise reduction, longer recording times and the all important new headphone jack with audio control! It will also have dual slots to record to either compact Flash Type I/UDMA and SD/SDHC/SDXC cards. The largest improvement over the 5D Mark II will be the increased speed and power that are made possible by the DIGIC 5+ Image Processor. This will enhance the 5D Mark III’s video functions by improving response times and reducing , aberrations and colour artefacts.
We will certainly be trying it out for weddings in 2012.
Some 5D Mark III video footage from Canon
Can you really shoot it yourself?
You may have recently seen a company - Shoot It Yourself- on Dragons Den who stated that the best way to capture your wedding day is to shoot it yourself. As professional videographers we found allot of their claims about pros untrue. This company appear to claim that the editing of the footage is the professional part and that letting your friends and family capture the day ends with better, more fun results than a professional camera shoot of your day would.
The advantages of this approach
We believe that there are advantages to having your friends and family shoot footage of your wedding day. Some of these advantages include:
- You as a couple are more likely to be relaxed around people you already know, so you will provide more natural reactions and ultimately end up with some fun, entertaining footage.
- You can also shoot footage all day from waking up in the morning until the last track on the dance floor
The problems with this approach
If this is the only video you are going to receive of your wedding day we believe that there are some major issues with this approach. Some of these issues include:
- You are making your friends and family responsible for capturing all the important moments in the biggest day of your life (this could end in tears!)
- You may put too much pressure on your guests. Your guests are there to enjoy your day, not to work and feel responsible for capturing everything going on
- Even in ‘auto camera mode’ issues can occur that require manual override knowledge (backlight issues, audio interference, filter switching etc)
- Even experienced television camera operators admit that filming a wedding professionally is one of the hardest tasks a videographer can face (a live event is not easy to capture correctly the first time)
READ WHAT USERS OF HITCHED THINK ON THIS ISSUE
'Behind the scenes extra' solution
We believe that the solution is to have a behind the scenes extra section to your final Blu-ray or DVD. We will lend you a broadcast level HD camera to film the wedding yourself from a behind the scenes perspective, whilst we shoulder the responsibility of capturing the big moments professionally, letting you and your guests relax and just capture moments throughout the day.
This lets your friends and family be creative in capturing fun moments, rather than be responsible for filming the whole day. They can then shoot as little or as much footage as they feel comfortable with. We will provide you with an ideas sheet of the shots you could capture and that we find usually work well, but really your guests creativity is the only limit! We will then edit the footage into a presentable 10-20 minute extra on your final disc.
Take a look at our behind the scenes extra page to find out more