Shooting Anchors: The First Feature Film on the 5D Mark III
In mid April, I had the honor of being the first cinematographer to put the Canon 5D Mark III to the test on a feature film, David Wexler’s “Anchors,” which stars Blue Bloods’ Will Estes and The Chernobyl Diaries’ Devin Kelley.
In this post I’ll give you the lowdown on how the eagerly awaited update to the camera that started the DSLR revolution performed under pressure…serious pressure. And since plenty has already been said about the differences between the Mark II and Mark III by experts like Philip Bloom, Vincent LaForet and Shane Hurlbut, I won’t spend time listing them, but will instead focus on how the camera performed in specific situations and address the differences as they come up. Cool? Cool.
The eagerly awaited 5D Mark III. Can it stand the 'feature in eight days' test?
DP David Cavallo on the set of Anchors with the 5DMKIII rig.
As some of you probably know, at the time of the shoot the Mark III had been out for less than a few weeks, and although I hadn’t really had the opportunity to do much more than casual testing around the Endless Picnic office and at home, my extensive on set experience and thorough testing of the MKII (see EP’s tests here) led me to believe that I would be comfortable with the camera on a tight shooting schedule–if it behaved similarly to its predecessor. (More …)Tweet
N Dadabhoy, 
Michael B and 9 others are discussing. 
eco_bach 4:49 pm on December 12, 2011 Permalink
interesting and thanks for posting. Have you considered also considering Jorgen Escher’s latest Marvel’s CInestyle in your tests? http://colorbyjorg.wordpress.com/
Samuel Hurtado 7:10 am on December 13, 2011 Permalink
“I found that the CineStyle, while protecting the shadows and highlights admirably, desaturated the image to such a point that trying to return the saturation to skin tones resulted in a kind of unpleasant look–as if the footage had been pushed too far”
Same findings here. And still, I found a way to use CineStyle without suffering all these issues: these are the 3 custom picture styles I carry in my camera:
* CineStyle, with contrast = 0 and saturation = +3 (sometimes only +1)
* CineStyle, with contrast = -2 and saturation = +3 (sometimes only +1)
* CineStyle, with contrast = -4 and saturation = +4 (sometimes only +2)
Extended dynamic range, but just as much as I need for each shot, and pretty nice colors right out of the camera. Have you tried something similar to this? Did you like it, or you still find issues? (I’m not a pro, my eyes are still not well trained to find every IQ issue)
much more here:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/picturestyles/picturestyles.html
Alex Ricciardi 1:23 pm on December 13, 2011 Permalink
@eco_bach – Thanks for the tip! I hadn’t heard of Jorgen’s Marvels Cinestyle, but I’m a big fan of his DSLR Moire removal plugin. I’ll certainly check it out!
Alex Ricciardi 1:25 pm on December 13, 2011 Permalink
@Samuel – To be honest, I hadn’t done really extensive testing with modifying the CineStyle preset. Your post about it is extremely informative, thorough, and clear. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting. We’ll be sure to play around with some of those settings you suggested.
Samuel H 6:21 pm on February 15, 2012 Permalink
wandering around the web, I found this again today, so I thought I could post an update to my thoughts on picture styles: unsatisfied by the noise with CineStyle, and with the difficulty grading Marvels Cine, I ended up creating my own suite of picture styles: Flaat 1 through 4:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/flaat-picture-styles/index.html
N Dadabhoy 8:20 pm on August 9, 2012 Permalink
Thanks so much for sharing your test. I am about to shoot a feature film myself and we know we will be doing a film out, so we are currently debating whether or not to shoot on the 5D. Unfortunately we do not have the budget to do a similar test, so I would love to know how you felt once you saw the film print projected, and anything else you learned from the process.