Comparing Video: a $600 Galaxy Note vs. a $3500 Canon 5D Mk III Is Pretty Surprising

I guess a few years back this title would have made me laugh. How are those even comparable. Some were courageous enough to ask how they compare and analyze the resulting footage. And by some I mean cinematographer Alec Weinstein.

I mean the Canon 5DmkIII was used in shooting Black Swan, Captain America and House and it costs about $3500 without a lens, while the Galaxy Note 3 costs $600 and was used to shoot…. well…. cute cats and babies. It does however sports a 4K resolution.

The video is set up pretty cleverly, the lighting is not very challenging – all bright daylight; focal length has been adjusted, and shutter was matched at about 1/200th .Each shot is a few seconds, see if you can spot which shot was taken with which camera. Some are not that trivial to figure out.

Alex concludes that while the 5DmkIII has lots of superior functions, the Note 3 is coming on top with resolution and has a surprisingly acceptable image, as well as out of the box macro, and about 84% less wallet hit.

Here are my two takes from the video:

• Both the highlights and the shadows on the 5DmkIII hold up better, even at those biased setup. This is not surprising considering the difference in sensor size.
• Resolution on the Note is definitely better and that is not a big surprise considering it is shooting 4K. The surprise is that you can see that even on youtube’s crappy compressed resolution.

Alec, however is way harsher:

…Really these cameras: it’s not comparing apples to apples here. [They] are used for two very different things. But this does highlight the fact that the arms race to 4k is in full swing, it is now enabled in …. …. phones which is pretty unbelievable I’m still in kind of a disbelief.

The conclusion that I come to is that sadly the Canon 5d mark 3 as a video camera is nearing the end of its useful life because its image doesn’t even hold up against a cell phone anymore

Do you agree?

[Galaxy NOTE 3 versus 5D Mark III – 4K in a cell phone via Slashdot, thanks for the heads up, Illy]