Canon announced today their plans for adding 24P video to the popular 5D Mark II camera. Here's the press release (with my comments in italics).
Canon today announces that it is currently developing a firmware update to the EOS 5D Mark II to enable the recording of high definition 1080p video at 24 and 25fps.
This is good news.... but no mention of shooting at 60P in 720 mode like the 7D. That is more exciting to me for the options for slow motion effects.
The decision to develop new firmware to support these features has been taken following feedback received from cinematographers and photographers.
Can you say overwhelming feedback, forum posts, and blog posts. Wow... nice to see some companies actually listen to their customers.
Introduced in September 2008, the multi award-winning EOS 5D Mark II was the first DSLR product to offer full frame 1080p HD video recording, opening up a multitude of new creative possibilities for photo journalists, news photographers and amateur filmmakers.
Amateur... PLEASE. Could companies please stop talking down to their audiences. The camera and proper lenses and gear is a minimum $7,000 investment. That's not amateur. Also... can anyone tell me the difference between a photo journalist and a news photographer?
Since then, Canon has continued to develop its groundbreaking EOS Movie functionality, firstly with the firmware update to the EOS 5D Mark II that enabled manual exposure control, and more recently by introducing a choice of video recording frame rates with the EOS 7D and EOS-1D Mark IV
Both nice cameras and worth exploring. We're writing a book and shooting a music video right now with the 7D and 5D. We'll let you know about the process more soon..
Adorama also has a nice head to head coparison of the new Canon EOS-1 and Nikon D3S
Canon currently expects the firmware update to be made available during the first half of 2010. An announcement regarding details of the update and its availability will be made closer to the release date.
So please stop complaining... and asking us when... oh and first quarter means March 31... or maybe NAB in April.
View the original here.