7D Film Time

umuima

umuima

Active member
I'm looking into buying a 7D to film a short, and I'm wondering how long the camera can film on the highest quality before a drive is full.
And for people who do film on the 7D, do you just have a bunch of drives ready to swap when you run out?
Also, how long does the battery last while filming?

Any tips on these matters would be greatly appreciated!
 
I can only answer two of your questions currently, but here you go:

1) The 7D shoots around 10 minutes of footage in any one take, regardless of how large your card is. This is partly to do with regulations in the EU and avoiding some unnecessary tax or some such crap reason. 10 minutes will take up around 4gb at 1080p24. Nothing is stopping you from pausing the filming for a few seconds whilst you start a new clip. (In all honesty, you'd have had to have done this on film anyway - and it's unlikely you'll be doing 10 minute takes in a short film, so this really shouldn't ever be a problem.)

2) I would suggest having at least 2 compact flash cards on you if you're doing any serious filming - this is if you have a card reader and laptop on set with you to dump all the contents of the card off and then erase it. Otherwise you'll be looking at as many cards as you deem necessary for the amount of time you spend filming. If you're out in the middle of no where all day without a laptop then you're going to want to get as many cards as you can. The same goes for batteries!

3) I can't tell you exactly how long the battery life is, though I would imagine it's around the 2 hour mark on a full charge. Having more than 1 battery and a charger on set is obviously going to help dramatically if you're shooting a lot.
 
Thanks so much for the info! So you get around 40 mins of footage per card?
I'm assuming 16gb is the max card, or is there a 32, 64, etc?
 
There are 32 gig cards, and probably 64 for a hefty price. But you still need a card that is fast enough. I believe minimum is something like 8 or 10 mb/s.
 
It's Mini - SD right?

Also, can I shoot with older lenses that have manual iris / focus on them, or do they have to be digital lenses?
 
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There's lots of debate over brands and cards etc. I've ended up springing for a card by a company called Calumet (the equivalent of B&H here in the UK/Europe) because it was one of the fastest UDMA cards I could find. It's 305x speed, which will easily be able to capture video.

I've heard that the minimum speed you should be buying is 133x. Below that you run the risk of not being able to get your data on the card and you'll have problems on your hands like compression artefacts and stuttering.

Ian-T said:
Ha...trust me...I'm not complaining. Eye Wub My 7D!! :)
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Haha sorry you thought I was accusing you of complaining! I was merely saying that for the purpose of narrative film making these cameras are more than adequate!
 
umuima said:
Is there a best brand to get the Flash cards from or are they all the same?
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Here's a general breakdown on the CF card info.

Michael Olsen said:
Flashcards

Before we get into this...Please understand that mb/s and MB/s are very different things. mb means "megabit". MB means megabyte. There are eight bits in one byte, so 1 MB is eight times larger than 1 mb. Using them interchangeable can, has, and does cause a great deal of confusion.

The Canon manual says on page 149: "When shooting movies, use a large-capacity card having a read/write speed of at least 8MB/sec."

That is really not very fast at all! Virtually any CF card you buy off the shelf should exceed that spec.

I and many others believe, however, that there should be a little bit of room for overhead - often times a card that claims to write at 45MB/s only write at 40MB/s, for instance. So I believe it is definitely wise to use something faster than 8MB/s.

I personally use a Kingston Elite Pro 32GB 133x card which writes at 20MB/s. That's more than twice as fast as the fastest the camera can put out information - at least according to Canon (and who should know better?). I've never experienced any problems with it in terms of dropped frames.

However, a Canon employee did issue a statement that people should use UDMA cards to avoid various artifacts. I believe, at the time, some people were having trouble with stuttering, excessive chroma aliasing, and dropped frames, etc on the 5D Mark II. Unfortunately, I have yet to understand how exactly that works. In my mind if the camera is really outputting at a maximum of 8MB/s, then anything that actually writes at over 8MB/s should be sufficient to record it. Canon has never come forward and explained this in any technical capacity, nor have they publicly stated that the camera outputs at anything higher than 8MB/s. And, at least for me, that is the case. No dropped frames, no unexpected aliasing, no unusual stuttering.

Others, however, take that warning very seriously with or without a more in depth explanation of what's actually going on. These individuals would definitely say to grab the fastest thing you can afford to buy. After all, it certainly won't hurt you and can make your offloads a lot more pleasant.

In my opinion, anything over 133x buys peace of mind.
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Specifically to the point of your question, there are "brands" and off-brands. Lexar, Sandisk, Kingston...these are all brand-names within the memory market. In my opinion, buying off brand can be perfectly fine, just purchase from a reputable site and read the reviews for products...don't just look at the stars. Some nutters give a product 4 stars, then write "Really really fast! Works perfectly! But broke after 2 weeks."
 
I just bought some sandisk ultra (NON-UDMA) 8 gig cards at Walmart, and they worked fine for some test shooting I did yesterday.

Says they are 30MB/s*

They were only $40

I was looking for some UDMA, but they didn't have any, and best buy was like $198 for their UDMA.
 
Umuima,

Firstly, welcome to the world of DSLR filmmaking.

Secondly: are you planning on buying or renting the 7D. If buying, I can't recommend this company highly enough:

Calumet Photographic in Hollywood.
http://www.calumetphoto.com/

If you are using a Mac computer for your post work, and it has a firewire 800 port, spend about $50 and get the firewire 800 UDMA CF Card reader from Calumet. You might be thinking $50 for a card reader?! but it's fast and works GREAT, and is cheap for what it can do.

I'd also look at their house brand Circular Polarizer and ND filters, especially if you plan on doing any day exterior work.

Prices may not be the lowest on the body, but you will at least be treated well. Everyone will try to upsell you on expensive SanDisk or Lexar cards. My personal preference is to use either 16gb or 32gb Transcend or RiData Cards. All of the ones listed as 133x-300x or 233x in the case of the ridata are UDMA compliant and work well with my 7Ds.

This place has good deals on the CF cards:
www.mydigitaldiscount.com

note: I am not affiliated with either place, just been happy with service and prices from both.

Finally, feel free to PM me or email me for any questions you may have about filming with the 7D. I've used it extensively.

Have a good one!
 
Green Hornet said:
I just bought some sandisk ultra (NON-UDMA) 8 gig cards at Walmart, and they worked fine for some test shooting I did yesterday.
Says they are 30MB/s*

They were only $40

I was looking for some UDMA, but they didn't have any, and best buy was like $198 for their UDMA.
Click to expand...

I’ve been using the 4 gig version of these cards from Wal-Mart for the last 3 weeks. No issues here at all.
 
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