I'm excited about this one. I figured I was destined to upgrade to the 50D, but... even though this is going to be at least a thousand dollars more, and my general focus is on telephoto shooting where crop is king, well.. I want that HD recording. I mean.. forget the HD, I'd settle for a very high quality standard definition video recording. But if I can go full HD then I'm not going to fight it.
By Dpreview's description it sounds like the contrast detection AF may be kind of slow, so it's not exactly going to replace camcorders (pro or consumer) as an all around video shooter, but I can learn to work within the limitations.
I've been salivating at the idea of maybe getting a used prosumer camcorder. Canon has a few nice offerings, not only for the better image quality but for the better quality lenses, the ability to directly manipulate aperture to do the same things in video that I can do for still now.
Now all of a sudden for the cost of one of those high end prosumer camcorders (new, not used, mind you) I can just about get an HD flash recorder that's also an intimidating still camera with enough resolution to demand a drastic increase in storage capacity, both flash and hard drive.
Two sobering thoughts, though. First up, Dpreview says it can shoot a maximum of 12 minutes HD video at a time. Using the stated rate of 4.8 megabytes per second file size, that 12 minutes will use up 3.5 gigabytes of space.
Talk about fearing for my storage capacity! I just picked up one 16 gigabyte card. Were I to acquire this I'd be picking up more. Although to get a UDMA card could up the cost significantly. I don't know if there are any intermediate size settings between 1080P (1920x1080) and 640x480.
Second issue is audio. Dpreview says "built in mic and speaker". It also has a microphone input, I know no details such as if it's stereo capable or what not.
If it's recording full resolution 1920x1080P video with the audio coming from a low quality mono microphone buried somewhere in the body that's going to sour the experience. I'm wondering if the three small holes beneath the 5D logo is where the mic is located.
I actually don't know where it fits in. I'm excited, as I've said, I have pretentions towards being a director as well as a photographer, there are a number of small projects I'd like to do for fun. For people like me it opens the door to reasonably high end video making without requiring an investment in an entirely different type of gear.
To heck with youtube. Youtube is highly compressed low quality video. It's for people who want to post pictures of their dog doing something cute. If someone gets a 5D mark II and spends most of their time posting their videos to youtube I'll track them down and... er.. give them a stern talking to.
Mind you distributing a 12 minute 3 and a half gigabyte video is no small task, even as bandwidths increase the ISPs are starting to complain more and more about people that actually use some of the bandwidth that they're provided with. If you live in New York you may have an ISP that limits you to 5 gigabytes of transfer for an entire month! As they realize they can get away with it more are likely to follow that example.
But for wannabe directors, film students and the like, I'm less certain. A prosumer (or outright professional) camcorder is going to autofocus better, have better audio support (including better audio connectors), and have superior ergonomics. Frankly the video quality will probably be better also, I just don't believe that a DSLR adapted to shoot video can beat hardware specifically designed to shoot video.
I guess my thinking is that this will be a good match for people like me. People that want to be shooting both video and stills, general purpose visual recording. However since the video functionality is added in at no extra cost (at LESS cost according to what has been said here) it's also a gateway to video shooting for people not into it to begin with.
I want this to be a revolution, I want it to be the gateway to still photographers moving into the world of moving pictures, I want it to be a generation of photographers becoming hybrid photo/videographers. It will certainly be that for some, but I fear it'll be a novelty for many.
Give it time to settle in, perhaps one or two later revisions to refine the concept, and it has potential to be big.
Sometimes you have to make something sound very bad to realize just how good it really is! It won't be long before sensors are so good, they'll be sooooo very bad. :