DSLR For Video 1st Impressions

Recently I jumped on the Canon 5D band wagon. I had an opportunity to try out a Canon 5D and 7D side by side at an Andrew Tinker concert. It was an interesting test. The venue was pretty much the worst possible situation for trying to shoot video – an excellent test for these cameras. The stage was dark and there was no place for me to put a tripod for a nice safe wide shot.

Tom Post shot on the 7D with a small shoulder rig and a 24-70mm lens. I was shooting handheld on a 5D with no rig on a much wider lens. It was literally our first time shooting with DSLRs.

We set up a flat picture profile on the cameras using Stu Maschwitz’s advice because I intend to color grade the shoot. We also recorded a feed off the board plus stereo mics for the crowd using a Zoom H4n. Because of how dark it was we ended up shooting at 3200 ISO – quite a bit higher than I had wanted to – but Andrew was the first of three bands (Shurman and Blues Traveler followed his performance) so the lighting guy wasn’t really going all out.

Comparisons between the 5D and 7D

The 5D way outperformed the 7D – primarily because of the larger sensor size on the 5D.  Grain was noticeably more apparent at the higher ISOs with the 7D.  The control locations on both cameras are very different and the menu layouts had enough difference for Tom and I to scratch our heads a few times trying to hunt down some critical setting.  All in all they both performed very well.

Post Production

I transcoded all of the footage to ProRes422 and used PluralEyes to sync the audio and video in post – it’s pretty much an essential tool in the new world of DSLR video – especially if you shoot with multiple cameras.  Once everything was synced it was a piece of cake to cut everything as multiclips.  Color grading was performed in FCP using the three way color corrector.  I’m not overly impressed with the grad-ability of the footage – it’s a bit more contrasty than I had anticipated (although more light on the stage would have helped a bit) and it’s very compressed… but for the entire rental costs being less than $300 for the shoot I can’t really complain.

I’ll post some clips in the next few days once the audio is sweetened a bit.