studio1972
Well-known member
Not sure if this has been noticed already, but I haven't seen it mentioned.
First some background. I received my 550d this morning, it is going to be my second cam to my hmc151 for weddings and corporate videos. Previously I've had several chances to borrow my other half's 5dII and I've used it for shooting small clips (such as guests chatting/drinking at a wedding reception).
A simple technique I've used it to put the 5d in manual 1/50 f/1.4 with a 50mm lens and use auto iso to maintain correct exposure. This works quite well as the ISO settings are only 1/3 of a stop apart, so the camera can get the exposure within 1/6 of a stop of what it thinks is correct exposure. I never use auto settings on my HMC, but on the 5d it helps as the manual controls aren't so great for video.
Now the interesting bit.
I feared that the 550d would not work in this way as the ISO values are full stops apart, which might result in ugly stepping of exposure up and down, and an inability to get the exposure correct. However, when I tried it out, I found that it seemed to work just as well and as smoothly as the 5d. So I checked the manual. It seems that for both stills and video, auto ISO will select values at 1/3 stops, just like the 5d and 7d. It doesn't display these values as you take the picture, but for stills you can see it in the data that is displayed when you play back the image.
From what I can tell, this only works with auto ISO, so it's no good if you want to control your exposure manually. Still very handy for some people though.
First some background. I received my 550d this morning, it is going to be my second cam to my hmc151 for weddings and corporate videos. Previously I've had several chances to borrow my other half's 5dII and I've used it for shooting small clips (such as guests chatting/drinking at a wedding reception).
A simple technique I've used it to put the 5d in manual 1/50 f/1.4 with a 50mm lens and use auto iso to maintain correct exposure. This works quite well as the ISO settings are only 1/3 of a stop apart, so the camera can get the exposure within 1/6 of a stop of what it thinks is correct exposure. I never use auto settings on my HMC, but on the 5d it helps as the manual controls aren't so great for video.
Now the interesting bit.
I feared that the 550d would not work in this way as the ISO values are full stops apart, which might result in ugly stepping of exposure up and down, and an inability to get the exposure correct. However, when I tried it out, I found that it seemed to work just as well and as smoothly as the 5d. So I checked the manual. It seems that for both stills and video, auto ISO will select values at 1/3 stops, just like the 5d and 7d. It doesn't display these values as you take the picture, but for stills you can see it in the data that is displayed when you play back the image.
From what I can tell, this only works with auto ISO, so it's no good if you want to control your exposure manually. Still very handy for some people though.
