I’m off to a music festival at the weekend as a guest – with full backstage privileges - of one of the bands. I have friends in the band, go to most of their gigs and have taken the odd snap using my G10 and, inspired by this, I’ve been asked if I can take some video for their website. No problem said I as my 7D takes excellent video. Well, that was by reputation and not personal experience as I’ve never seriously used its video function – nor any other DSLR come to that.
But how difficult can it be? Well, after a few days playing I find it’s far more difficult than I’d ever imagined!
Shutter speed has to be twice frame rate which for me will be 25fps = TV of 1/50.
Auto focus is unusable so I need to manually focus.
The screen is nearly impossible to view in sunlight so focussing and composing is a matter of crossing fingers and hoping.
Received wisdom is to NOT use auto ISO but to set at the lowest possible (100 in my case).
Received wisdom is to NOT use zooms with variable aperture (all my zooms are)
Aperture is whatever you can get away with to satisfy that 1/50 shutter and ISO 100 but, as it changes with the available light and degree of zoom and if too open the DOF becomes too shallow focussing will suffer I can’t see myself sticking to it.
Present thought is to use set the aperture to whatever I need for the DOF and ‘balance’ the exposure with Auto ISO. It may get grainy (7D remember) but I suppose that’s preferable to overexposed and/or out of focus.
I do have a variable ND filter but this only fits my 15-85 and neither of the primes (EF 28 2.8 and EF 50 1.8) I expected to be using at night.
As if this wasn’t enough the onboard mono mic captures all the camera sounds so I’ve had to invest in a Rode videomic.
A massive learning curve here and I wish I had more time to experiment.
Cheers,
John
But how difficult can it be? Well, after a few days playing I find it’s far more difficult than I’d ever imagined!
Shutter speed has to be twice frame rate which for me will be 25fps = TV of 1/50.
Auto focus is unusable so I need to manually focus.
The screen is nearly impossible to view in sunlight so focussing and composing is a matter of crossing fingers and hoping.
Received wisdom is to NOT use auto ISO but to set at the lowest possible (100 in my case).
Received wisdom is to NOT use zooms with variable aperture (all my zooms are)
Aperture is whatever you can get away with to satisfy that 1/50 shutter and ISO 100 but, as it changes with the available light and degree of zoom and if too open the DOF becomes too shallow focussing will suffer I can’t see myself sticking to it.
Present thought is to use set the aperture to whatever I need for the DOF and ‘balance’ the exposure with Auto ISO. It may get grainy (7D remember) but I suppose that’s preferable to overexposed and/or out of focus.
I do have a variable ND filter but this only fits my 15-85 and neither of the primes (EF 28 2.8 and EF 50 1.8) I expected to be using at night.
As if this wasn’t enough the onboard mono mic captures all the camera sounds so I’ve had to invest in a Rode videomic.
A massive learning curve here and I wish I had more time to experiment.
Cheers,
John
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