7D Canon 7D: C2 vs Manual - Shooting Video

lxjordanxl

lxjordanxl

Active member
Hey guys,
I recently shot a video at night with my Canon 7D but when I got to the location and tried to shoot manually and use my Cine style profile, the picture was just really dark and didn't look very nice. I tried to bump up the iso but the picture looked like crap because it was too noisy. So then I decided to switch to to the C2 profile because I read that you could shoot video in 24fps. The picture at C2 looked vibrant and great and the ISO and grain wasn't very-noticeable at all. The question I have for you guys is: when you shoot at night do you think its ok to use the C2 profile instead of manual? I know i can't use my cine style technicolor like i can in manual, i can't set my shutter speed at double the frame rate, and it doesn't give me a lot of room in post to get a nice grade, but it seems like it's much more brighter and handles low light the best? Sorry for the amateur questions lol
 
Oh ok, but why was the picture so good in low light and how did it keep the ISO at such a low level? How would I check the settings so I could adjust them the same way in manual?
 
Yeah what problably happened was that your shutter speed was set high in manual it should be set at 50 shooting 24 fps. I only really use those C1,2,3 settings. You can program one for photos one for 24 fps and one for 60 fps. The lower the FPS and shutter speed the lower the light that you can shoot in but you usually want to follow the 180 degree rule.
 
ACtually the shutter speed was set at 50 in manual and at the lower possible aperture and yet the picture was still very dark. Must be some setting that in C2 that makes the picture look bright and vibrant at night without much noise. Who knows lol
 
Ricky Perrone said:
but you usually want to follow the 180 degree rule.
Click to expand...

That 180 degree bit wasn't really a "rule". It was "what you got" with a rotating disk shutter used on early film motion picture cameras. Half of the disk was "cut out" to allow exposure, and the other half left "solid" to mask or cover the film while the next frame was being pulled into place. Since the frame rate was 24fps (the best compromise between economy of film consumption and the slowest frame rate at which persistence of vision worked for most folks) you got the supposedly "magic" shutter speed of 1/48th per second. You just "got it", on that shutter there was no "setting it", nothing to set.

The "cutout" was 180 degrees so that was a 180 degree shutter.

Later cameras had a "variable" opening, close it down halfway and you had a 90 degree shutter angle and a resulting shutter speed of 1/96th second, close it down halfway again and you had a 45 degree shutter and a shutter speed (or duration) of 1/196th second but by that time you were likely beginning to get a staccato or strobing effect on motion.

The "motion blur" at 1/48th second was more pleasing and looked more natural so that's where the "180 degree rule" thing came from.

So now we have electronic scanning of the sensor (no mechanical devices) with no way of (or need) setting any "shutter angle". We can set more shutter speed options but we still have the "strobing" with motion at higher shutter settings to deal with but on most gear no way to set a true shutter speed of 1/48th second. Fortunately there is no real difference in rendition of motion between 1/48th and 1/50th second which we can select.

And in NTSC regions where we are advised to select 1/60th to avoid interference patterns from artificial lighting, that 1/60th is still close enough to 1/48th that motion blur is not affected. So for us in this digital age the 180 degree bit is irrelevant. The "rule" of the shutter speed needing to be 2X the frame rate also does not apply as a "rule". Again it was "what you got" with the rotating disk mechanical shutter. 1/60th in NTSC regions (to be in synch with power line frequency of 60Hz if artificial lighting is in the scene) or 1/50th in daylight gives us essentially the same "motion blur" per frame they used to get with the 180 degree cutout on the rotating disk shutter with it's resulting 1/48th second.

In the motion picture industry the whole game is about to change dramatically (already started) with "The Hobbit" being shot at 48p and several producers/directors looking at 60p for their next productions. The "HOLY of HOLIES", 24fps may have just gone out the window for future "films". Up until the recent changeover to digital projection in theatres modern film projectors were projecting each frame twice to get rid of the "flicker" that gave some patrons headaches (my wife and daughter were among those) so what we have been seeing in those theatres has been 48fps even tho the film was shot at 24fps.

Our local cinema complex here has changed over to digital projection and the result on the screen looks much smoother, the mechanical aspects are gone, there's no "flicker" effect at all. I saw the film "2016: Obama's America" a few weeks ago and even though some footage was shot at 24fps, projected digitally the effect was noticeably smoother with the transition from frame to frame being incredibly smooth. Previews of "coming attractions" (not yet released features) were stunningly smooth.

The whole "game" is changing.
 
Bruce, I was just trying to keep it simple. This guy doesn't understand his camera yet, which is fine, but bombarding him with technicalities he really doesn't need to know about at this point doesn't help him. As far as the hobbit shooting at 48fps, I think 48 fps looks terrible, it requires much more light and is not so much a game changer as it is a directors style choice. Our consumer video cameras have shot higher frame rates for ages and that is a big part of what made those images look so different than the ones you see in movies.
 
Hey guys,
Here is the video that I was talking about: http://vimeo.com/50959803

When it gets to the lit up tree scene, the picture is very vibrant and the colors looked great (C2 Mode, 24fps). When I tried to the same in Manual mode it was extremely dark---I was at the lowest aperture, shutter speed was as low as I could get it to, tried turning up the ISO but that looked really grainy. Like I said, for some reason the C2 mode gave my such a better picture that Manual couldn't. Why is that?
 
Nice video, theres just a setting thats different in manual, you just have to figure out what it is. Theres no real rason to shoot in manual anyway. C1,2 and 3 are much more convenient because you can set your camera up the way you want it and have it saved, still manual but much more convenient.
 
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