I’m passing through Los Angeles on the way to Peru for an assignment. Yesterday I spent the day at a meetup at Birns and Sawyer’s store in Hollywood organised by Jared from Cinema5D. Also present were the guys from Teradek who I had a chance to speak to about the new Cube. They demonstrated the new little encoder box for sending wireless video direct from a DSLR’s HDMI port. Check out the video.
Den Lennie of the F-Stop academy, who is producing my soon to be available training DVD, has made this short video about the Canon 60D. It certainly looks like a great addition to any news shooting kit.
This is what he had to say:
Whilst speaking about DSLR Video at the International festival of Photojournalism in Perpignon France last week, I was able to ‘borrow’ a 60 d for 30 mins and shoot this hands on overview.
It’s very robust and feels very much like the 7D in the hand. The articulated screen is the big improvement but it is also very solid and not at all flimsy.
Takes All SD card types SD, SDHC, SDXC.
Same batteries as 5D Mark II and 7D.
But for timelapse you need the mini jack plug on intervalometer.
My overall impressions were very high. Same LCD screen as 550D/Rebel T2i and I believe same sensor but improved processing.
While at the event I was invited to sit in on a round table discussion with Canon Inc designers and product developers and they are really listening to the needs of film makers. I made a suggestion to have geared lenses on the L series and also to add IS to more lenses.
I’m grateful to The Ambassadors, Thorsten Milse, Gary Night, Frits van Eldik, Michael Nichols, Paolo Pellegrin and Ziv Zoren for allowing me to join them and bring the views of the DSLR Film maker to our hosts. I also would like to thank Canon Europe for inviting me to comment.
My thanks also top Brian Worley at Canon Europe and Dave Newton from eos-network.com for shooting the video for us.
In a fortnight that saw activity from all the major manufacturers Canon have launched their new 60D. It sits in the range above the 550D but below the 7D and 5DmkII in price, it has an 18 megapixel sensor and uses SDHC/SDXC cards. The camera was leaked as featuring an articulated screen ahead of its launch – this is a really nice addition for news video shooters. In addition it features manual video and audio controls much like the 5DmkII. Another great feature is the mode dial lock that will stop you inadvertently coming out of manual control – something I’ve been asking Canon about for a while. On paper at least this camera looks like a great option for those looking for a mid level DSLR with video, hopefully I can get one soon for testing.
Canon PR photo of the 60D
To quote from Canon’s press release:
EOS Movies: Full HD video with complete control
Offering photographers the freedom to go beyond stills, the EOS 60D captures 1920x1080p HD video with a variety of user-selectable frame rates, including 30, 25 and 24fps, as well as 720p video at 60 and 50fps. Movie Crop mode is also available, recording with the central 640×480 pixel area of the sensor to create an effective magnification of approximately seven times the focal length of the lens.
Full manual control in Movie mode allows photographers to employ their own exposure and focus settings and take advantage of the effects achieved from Canon’s wide range of EF lenses. An external stereo microphone terminal and the ability to adjust sound recording level ensures the audio track recorded matches the visual quality of the video, capturing broadcast-quality sound.
For those who want to share images with friends and family, an integrated HDMI port is compatible with Consumer Electronics Control (HDMI-CEC), allowing video and images to be viewed on any compatible HD-ready TV and controlled via the TV remote.
The company also launched a new fisheye zoom lens, a L series 70-300mm f4-5.6 zoom and a updated range of telephoto L lenses including the 300mm f2.8L IS II, 400mm f2.8L IS II, 500mm f4L IS II and 600mm f4L IS II.
You can download the full Canon press release here
I’ve been using Pluraleyes since it first came out, to sync separately recorded audio from my Zoom H4n or Tascam DR-100 audio recorders with video from Canon DSLRs. This was because the Automatic Gain Control (AGC) on the camera’s mic input led to noisy and somewhat lo-fi unpredictable results – instead I used a ‘dual sound’ system. Simply I recorded audio on both the camera and the recorder and then use Pluraleyes to automatically align the video with the ‘bad’ camera audio track with the one from the recorder in the Final Cut Pro timeline, this is done automatically without the need for a clapperboard or timecode. You then delete the bad audio and use the recorder track instead.
Although you can now get a pretty good audio recording directly into a 5DmkII, after Canon finally gave us manual audio control with firmware version 2.04, they failed to give us the same manual audio controls with the 550D, 7D and more annoyingly the flagship 1DmkIV. There are several useful audio devices from Juicedlink and Beachtek that use tones or noise to try and defeat the AGC – but the end result is in my experience not quite as good as the dual sound method, so with my 1DmkIV and 550D I still regularly use Pluraleyes. Even using a 5DmkII there are still audio quality advantages using a separate recorder although perhaps not in a breaking news environment.
The latest Beta version of Pluraleyes 1.2 aims to make the syncing process for DSLR video even easier thanks to a ‘replace audio’ option which actually creates an output sequence in Final Cut Pro that automatically replaces the ‘bad’ audio with the recorder audio without the need to go in afterwards and delete the ‘bad’ track like the previous version.
From the Pluraleyes press release the details of the changes are:
1. Option for a single output sequence, to better organize long series of clips
2. Replace audio option—great for DSLR video with external audio
3. Support for locked tracks, to keep specific clips in place through the sync
4. Improved multiclip handling for subclips and in/out points
5. Several bug fixes
More detailed explanations of the new features can be found on this page.
The great Mr Philip Bloom and F-Stop Academy also posted a good intro to the original version of Pluraleyes a few months back.
I’ve been finding out as much as I can about the video mode on the Canon Eos1DmkIV. Here’s the latest info I’ve received from Canon Europe.
It has essentially the same video frame rates and data rates as the 7D but with a 1.3x crop factor. These rates include 1080/24p/25p/30p as well as 720p/50/60p. The ISO in video mode is ISO 100 to ISO H3 when shooting in manual mode (with custom function C.Fn I-3 setting enabled). Auto ISO is also available.
The audio remains the same as the 7D with no additional manual controls – such a shame. The 1DmkIV shares the same higher audio frequency range and sample rates as the 7D, besting the 5DmkII.
The 1DmkIV also shares the 4gb file size limit of the 7D and 5DmkII. This is due to the size limit of FAT32 file system.
Also missed is the opportunity to shoot to both card slots at the same time, sadly the 1DmkIV can only record to one card at a time. Also absent is any cropped sensor mode in video, surely this will come – but not yet it seems.
There is a new wi-fi pack for the camera but no new audio accessories like an XLR box as some had speculated. Looks like we’ll be using Beachteks, Juicedlinks and audio recorders like the Zoom H4n for some time to come.
In order to start video recording you need to press the FEL button or you can activate it tethered using a computer and EOS utility. It seems there is no option for IR start/stop like the 5DmkII and 7D, but I need to confirm this.
This is my short film from China’s huge national day parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the people’s republic.
The challenge was to come up with something different with so many different Chinese and international media covering the event from every angle. After waiting half the previous night for a pass and then catching only 3 hours sleep in the press centre lobby, I got put on a stand with a hundred odd of my media collegues including the likes of the BBC, Reuters, AP and AFP so there was no point doing the same as they were.
Messing around waiting for the parade to start with my Rolleiflex next to the BBC's Quentin Sommerville
Chinese media with long lenses at the ready to shoot their leaders
I decided to shoot the whole video on D-SLRs using a combination of time lapse and slow motion. The 7D was equipped with an adapted Nikon 300mm f2.8 lens and a 1.4x convertor set at 720p/60 and then slowed down to 25fps in Final Cut Pro. The 5DmkII and Nikon D700 were both mounted remotely high up in the air, one atop a big studio light stand, the other in a Manfrotto super arm clamped to a lampost, both also had tilt and shift lenses fitted.
Shooting with my 7D, Zacuto Z-finder, Nikon 300mm f2.8 and 1.4x convertor and Sennheiser MKE400 mike.
It was a quite hot for an October day in Beijing and I think this coupled with my heavy use of the 720p movie mode caused my 7D to overheat a lot. The camera would flash a red warning on the LCD and three times the camera overheated so much that it decided to stop me filming. This is documented in the user manual which also states that overheating can also cause the image quality to degrade. In future I’m going to being more with me to protect the camera from the heat.
This said the footage I did get was amazing and is only lightly adjusted for colour and contrast, otherwise its pretty much how it came out the camera.
You can see video as it originally on the Guardian here
There is an great tutorial on timelapse processing from Eos-network here
To see some astounding Timelapse work check out the work of Tom at Timescapes[caption
This is the latest video I’ve finished for the Guardian website. As per usual it is shot on a 5DmkII, but has a few cut away long shots by my assistant using the super little JVC HM-100 camcorder. As this was a live show and not set up especially for me I had to keep the rig mobile while running the camera was mounted on a small custom Redrockmicro rig with a Zacuto Z-finder 2 and a Fader ND filter for exposure control. A high shutter speed was chosen to try and get that ‘Saving Private Ryan effect’. Also in this case the depth of field was moderate, shooting about f5.6 of f8 most of the time so I was using the 5DmkII instead of a handycam mainly for its size, weight and wide angle lens coverage rather than shallow depth of field look.
In the action sequences the rolling shutter effect is clearly visible. This effect is demonstrated here by f-stop academy supremo Phil Bloom.
So my question is this, for news shooting does the audience really care that there is a bit of rolling shutter? this is not a feature film or a drama and so the audience expectation of quality is lower, they are used to seeing camera phone footage and bad DV on the news these days anyway. If I were shooting a feature like Slumdog Millionaire this would clearly be unacceptable, but I’m not.
I like many others complain about this a lot to the likes of Canon and Nikon, but the reality is for the type of work I am doing I don’t think the viewer cares. Your thoughts please?
Matt Jasper, a cameraman for the UK’s Channel 4 news, picked up his Canon Eos7D this weekend and promptly rigged it up with some cool toys so he can use it for ENG. He’s planning to blog here about the experience of changing from a big, heavy ENG camera to a 7D rig, stay tuned. Here’s a quick video we did as his first instalment.
Products from Canon, Redrockmicro, Genus, Zacuto, Zoom, Sony and Pinknoise systems.
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the audio cable I use between my Eos7D and my ZoomH4n or Sony PCM-D50 audio recorders. It’s not as some have suggested just a 3.5mm jack to jack cable, but instead features a -25db PAD, it is essentially a carefully made cable with a resistor that attenuates the output. This reduces the output volume of the audio recorder to a more friendly mic level input that the 5DmkII or 7D can cope with. I had it specially made by John McCombie at Pinknoise systems in the UK, he specialises in audio bits and bobs. You can contact him at pinknoise1@gmail.com
Warning, it does NOT defeat the cameras in built AGC but it does give as good as the standard camera can give without using a hack like Magiclantern for 5DmkII from Tramm Hudson. You can of course record on the recorder as well and use the cable to provide a nice clean guide track for later syncing in your editing software. The amazing Pluraleyes software for Final Cut can of course be used to automate this.
Another thing, the Zoom H4n shares its line out with the headphone socket so there is no way to monitor with headphones when using this cable. Maybe someone can make a suitable y-splitter cable. The alternative is to use a recorder like the Sony PCM-D50 with its separate line out and headphones jacks, with this combo you can monitor too. Sadly the Sony does not have XLR sockets, seems you can’t have it all.
