Canon's 5D Mark II could shake-up the camcorder market

Footage from the USA is making some digital video experts wonder if Canon's 5D Mark II could actually be better than a £15,000 digital video camera.

"From what I have seen the results are amazing, but we wont know for sure until we get our hands on one," said Nigel Cooper from DVuser. "The footage shows amazing low light performance and a superb 35mm depth-of-field not often found in small video cameras."

The footage was shot by Vincent Laforet and on his website he says Canon's model performs better than many expensive video cameras.

"It produces the best video in low light that I've ever seen at 1080p.   A top commercial film editor who regularly edits RED camera footage and has seen the raw footage from the 5D MKII says the 5D MKII is far superior to the RED camera in terms of low light performance," said Vincent.

"It may revolutionise the video camera market," suggested Nigel.

The camera is fitted with a 1920x1080 sensor and according to Richard Shepherd, Canon's European Product Specialist for Digital DSLRs and EF lenses when you film you will be "using the whole sensor."

"This makes me question why Canon and other manufacturers have not released a compact 1920x1080 full HD camcorder with a 35mm chip and superb low light capabilities for around the £2500 mark," said Nigel.

The downsides are the camera can only record 12 minutes of HD quality footage, not feature film length but enough for a photojournalist to capture news on.

"A lot of photojournalists are now asked to shoot video and they don't want to be carrying lots of equipment," explained Richard. "This was the natural evolution of the camera."

Of course the footage from the camera will need to be compressed as it records at 30fps not the standard 25fps for PAL, but this isn't putting Nigel off.

"If the footage stands up to compression and still looks fantastic and there are no other major catches then I personally will be buying one."

ePHOTOzine will be reviewing the camera to see if it can really stop digital video users spending thousands of pounds on a video camera.