It Donned On Me

Thanks for the comment. This was actually our first film shot on the 5D - in fact this was prior to the firmware update which provided manual exposure control, which made matching two cameras and getting consistent exposure extremely difficult.

All the problems people have mentioned with the 5D are absolutely true. However the tendency (especially by those most vocal about the problems) seems to be to treat them as dealbreakers in terms of using the camera as a serious video tool. The reality is they are simply factors to take into consideration when choosing the appropriate tool for a particular job - and personally I find the advantages of the 5D generally outweigh the negatives. We've shot 6 short films on the 5D so far (only 4 are public yet) - 3 docs, 3 fiction pieces. I've also shot a lot of short corporate work on it - all told nearing 40 hours of footage this past year. Overall the shortcomings of the camera have been relatively minor annoyances.

Most of our audience is obviously online, but all of our short film projects have been projected for audiences as well and the response has been very good. The number one response from on-camera subjects seeing their footage for the first time - which I've heard countless times this year - is 'wow - it looks like I'm in a movie!' It's hard to say exactly what causes that but it's not something I ever recall hearing when shooting with the XHA1 (which has largely gathered dust this past year).

It's certainly important to know the technical limitations of the equipment before you start shooting, but I think it's also important not to let the technical limitations become creative limitations. The audience, in general, aren't video engineers and aren't looking for technical flaws - they're looking to be entertained and/or moved emotionally when they watch a video. Creating films that do that is much harder than working around the minor technical limitations of any camera, so we plan to spend much more time working on that (actually making films) than worrying too much about the camera.