Does anyone know if the Canon EOS M3 offers clean HDMI out?

[puudutus]

If not. Which model in a similar price range does? I need to be able to output clean 1080p via HDMI and the camera must have a micrphone input.

[kvbarkley · Accepted solution]

I don't think you can. At the very least you are going to get the red tally dot.

[crpike · Accepted solution]

We did a shoot today with two cameras, one recording internally and the other recording on an Atomos.   The atomos footage came out with a darker exposure, but post production we adjusted it. The two results are very similar, but it does look like the Atomos has a little more data,  and I am guessing that with postproduction work the Atomos footage will come out a little better.   Pixels that were blown out on the camera recording seem were not blown out on the Atomos.    

But....The issue we have now is that the camera LCD screen on the Canon EOS M3 shuts off at 3 minutes (that is the longest setting possible).  When the camera LCD shuts off, the HDMI shuts off.   Then the Atomos says "no input detected".   Hence, we are limited to recordings of 3 mintues.   If we turn the LCD back up, by pressing the shutter button, an overlay appears.  In any case, the whole purpose of having this Atomos recorder was to mount the camera in a place where we can't  reach it.

So we are at  an impass.   Any advise?  Chris

[puudutus]

Unfortunately I have no advice to help you. The infromation you gave is very helpful for me since it pretty much rules out the M3 as an option for my intended usage.

I am not aware of any hacked firmware versions for the EOS M3, but there might some that I don't know of?

[kydimos]

You CAN get clean HDMI, but as mentioned the EOS M3 shuts down the HDMI signal / LCD display after 10 sek. to 3 min. even with ECO mode turned off. It makes no sense to use an HDMI adapter with the current firmware. As stated in the manual: “The [Display Off] setting is applied even if you set [Auto Power Down] to [Off].”!? 

You might be able to get a positive result with an alternative firmware as CHDK? But this is only under development for the EOS M3 and is opensource and not endorsed by Canon. But the CHDK team has made some progress on an intervalometer and other thing for the EOS M3. 

The potential with the EOS M3 high quality, small form factor, mirorless was great. You can fit a lot of alternative lenses due to the mirorless design and use it for astrophotography an so on. But unfortunately Canon has crippled the firmware on the EOS M3 and has wrecked this otherwise nice camera. No tethering, no porting, no nothing!