60D Footage Using Neutral Density (ND) Filters

W

wjm

Well-known member
Hi all. I shot some stuff over the weekend with my daughter. Used some Dolica ND filter from Amazon (.3 .6 .9). About $44.00 for the set.

This is all shot with a Canon 70-200 F4L IS on a Canon 60D with a .9 ND.

VIDEO HERE

In some cases I had to go down to 1/60th and F5.6. Pretty much F4 1/50th for al the rest. Sometimes the ISO wanted to creep up (indoors) but never above 800, and I'm quite okay with that. I recently purchased NeatVideo, which is amazing, but not used in this shot. What NV can do to ISO 3200 footage astounds - I feel like I have a new camera.

CC and grading gets very hot towards the end - looks better in FCP so I might have to tone it down a bit with a mild broadcast safe filter.

Anyway, thanks for watching. Would appreciate feedback.
 
Very cute young lady...Looks like she may have a lot of potential for acting.

Nothing wrong with using an aperture of f5.6 in a situation like this, you can get a nice selective focus under the right conditions. Soft light, plenty of distance between subject and background, and fair amount of distance from camera to subject.

Looks pretty good to me. I have that same lens without IS and love it. Just need to use it more.
 
Thanks, Martin.

I caught your ridiculously beautiful MIR-24M footage on Vimeo.

Apparently I need a slider now. Thanks for that... ;-)

Love the vintage glass. I have a nice EF Mount converted Minolta 58mm 1.2, and an optical adapter for some other old minolta mount glass. Dreamy wide open, nice and sharp one stop down. A beautiful look, hard to replicate in post or with newer more perfect glass. Seems to help with moire and aliasing.
 
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Bruce Foreman said:
Very cute young lady...
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She's just edited that way. :-)

Yeah, I'm not a slave to wide open, but it does have a distinct quality that, if used moderately, can be appealing blah blah blah okay I am a slave to wide open. This video's sole purpose was to see what wide open daylight shooting using NDs is like from the standpoint of workflow while shooting, and what the resulting footage might be like - codec benefits from blurry bacground, etc. Also I just wanna get it out of my system.

So, me likey the ND filters on the 60D. I have other crappier solutions for these lenses (ahem... cokin!), but the Dolca filters appear to not degrade the image at all, though I didn't do any with/without tests. At the ultimate video resolution of the Canons, cheap glass NDs are all good. YMMV.
 
Really nice footage, talented subject and intriguing locations.

Would definitely agree the footage gets a lot hotter towards the end, and a bit too saturated for my tastes (her skin tones go a little bit too orangey...) but it's something you're aware of!
 
Nice clip.
So this is basically an ND8 filter used here? Does it exhibit the usual magenta color cast of cheap Chinese ND filters? I find this magenta cast quite frustrating.
 
I disagree and say this was not edited to my liking.The music starts rite away and we don't see the girl till the .03 second mark and when you do it just looks rough.

After that I see a whole bunch of dark scenes with some bad jump cuts once you get outside then it just ends abruptly, in my opinion I did not like it at all
 
I thought it shows massive promise and while a bit oversaturated in places, shows just what these types of filters can add to our bag of tricks.

Thanks for posting wjm! It has me seriously looking into some ND filters for my 17-35L as it is always grabbing way too much light for anything outdoors at f2.8 - f4.

Cheers,
Pete
 
Calomile said:
Really nice footage, talented subject and intriguing locations.
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Thanks, Calomile. My brother actualy created the huge door in the video. Don't remember who created Humpty, but he's charming.

I sure wish you guys had addresses in your signatures so I could check your stuff out!
 
kostas said:
Nice clip.
So this is basically an ND8 filter used here? Does it exhibit the usual magenta color cast of cheap Chinese ND filters? I find this magenta cast quite frustrating.
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Thanks, Kostas.

You know, I haven't noticed any cast, but these clips were shot in (shudder) auto WB so it's possible the cam neutralized it. In more controlled tests, I'll have another look. They seem pretty neutral to me, but we'll see when I need to stack a couple, which I will HAVE to do with my 1.2 minolta in sun.
 
vision_filmz said:
I disagree and say this was not edited to my liking...
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I agree with all your points. It needs one more pass at least. Really just a test of the NDs, though.

Thanks for watching and the honest critique. I would like to see some of your stuff if it's online to view, because it sounds like you have a good eye for this.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone!
 
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