NOCTURNE of Events

Canon has proudly placed Nocturne on their website, echoing the up-down-up pattern Reverie experienced last year.

Astute ProLost readers will have noted that Nocturne has always been viewable on my YouTube account, since Canon never asked me to take it down, just Vincent.

As you will recall, Nocturne is a short film shot entirely in available light using two pre-release Canon 1D Mark IV HDSLRs.

Vincent Laforet wrote about the film here and here, and has a fresh update here, along with a behind-the-scenes video edited by Joseph Linaschke.

My making-of post is here.

The 1D Mark IV is starting to show up in peoples’ hands and looks to be a rockin’ solid action SLR with the autofocus that Canon shooters have long wished for. As I wrote here, it is undoubtedly $5,000 worth of stills camera. It’s probably not $5,000 worth of HD video camera, unless you very specifically need the unmatched low-light performance.

Which you very well might. It’s obviously awesome.

Just remember that the Mark IV has no ergonomic concessions to video shooting—not even a dedicated video start-stop like the 7D has. And while it has greatly reduced rolling shutter skew (Nocturne is ample evidence of this), the video aliasing/moiré is no better than that of the 5D Mark II (something you can also see in Nocturne).