Canon 7D: Is there a good book out there for this camera regarding filming?

S

szimmer

Well-known member
Hello,

My wife got the Canon 7D 2 months ago. The pictures are excellent but we have not spent too much time on the video aspect of it yet.

Are there any good books and/or tutorials out there that explain how to get good results on filming video with the Canon 7D?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

thanks,

Simon
 
Yeah, the price of that video is outrageous. I'm surprised he'd charge that much knowing how many free recourses there are out there.
 
Yeah it is indeed not cheap as a tutorial but really unequaled if you want to get up to speed fast on the 7D.

Noah
 
I'll directly answer any questions you may have about the 7D For Free. Just PM or post here.

I shot the world's first feature on a 7D. I shot the world's first 5D feature a little over a year ago before it even had direct manual control. There is also a lot of good information on www.cinema5d.com, and there should be some info in stickies on threads pertaining to 7D.

to give you a fast rundown:

7D shoots in the following formats:
1920x1080 @ 30fps (29.97)
1920x1080 @ 24fps (23.98)
1920x1080@25fps (only if you select pal region in the menus)
1280x720 @ 60fps
1280x720 @50fps (pal menu again)
It records these in an H.264 format in a quicktime wrapper. While you can edit these files, they are very CPU intensive. This would suggest the use of transcoding to another format for editing. I recommend the use of Mpegstreamclip (it's free at www.squared5.com - mac and pc format available)

If you're used to using ND filter switches on a camcorder, then you will be surprised there is no such option built in (or maybe you won't). A good solution is ND filters (and a polarizer can be nice outdoors or to kill reflections. nd .6, nd .9 and a polarizer is a good basic setup.

Native ISO's (those with the least noise) have been tested to be 160,320,640, and a "safe" top end is 1250. Of course you can go higher, but its fairly easy to see rolling noise creep in at 1250. Past that and you easily find grid or pattern noise which is fairly ugly, and noise reduction in post can help, but 1250 is my personal MAX.

settings to turn off or adjust:
turn off Auto Lighting Optimizer it's in one of the red wrench menus. this artificially remaps your levels to be flatter, but causes all kinds of problems in video mode.

turn your metering timer to 30 minutes

turn power saving auto shut off to OFF (if you're like me)

turn your LCD brightness to Fixed (instead of variable) and set it to 2 or 3 if you want to consistently match the gamma of a Mac or PC monitor in a fairly dark room (check yours to compare).

You may find canon glass to be obnoxious for repeat focusing and other cinema style shooting. If you do - get some vintage Nikkors or Contax Zeiss or Olympus (or really whatever you want that has a native mount to EOS adapter). I like the adapters with af confirm from a company called Roxsen on Ebay. Inexpensive for what they do.

Audio: Recording clean audio to camera can be a pain. For really basic outdoor field recording the R0de Videomic is good and basic and sits in the hotshoe. There is no native way to adjust audio gain levels. Magic Lantern is a homebrew firmware mod (not out for 7D yet) that allows many adjustments and refinements to the camera. Hopefully should be out soon. He's probably waiting for the next round of Canon firmware updates to do a release.

White balance: Because the camera subsamples pixels instead of downscaling a full raster image, it's very important to have a good white balance depending on the scene. I used to only use presets, now I white balance to a card in difficult mixed light scenarios where I want skin tones to be "normal" using the preset by taking an AWB still of a white card in the lighting and then sampling that for the preset. AWB will make your video do rainbow tricks if you are panning around in mixed lighting and color.

Histogram and Highlight Alert: Learn to read the histogram to get an idea of where your exposure is sitting. I use Highlight alert sometimes to see what's clipping. If you are spending money on an external monitor - I can't recommend a Marshall LCD70P hdmi enough. You can find them fairly cheap for what they are. What they lack in true resolution they make up for ease of calibration,accuracy as well as ability to use false color, peaking, and frame guides. SmallHD is also another great LCD with high resolution and makes a great client monitor if client or director is over your shoulder.

Lenses: Rent or test before buying. I'm a huge fan of my Contax Zeiss set. Nikkors are also great. If you want autofocus for your stills I'd recommend Tamron, Sigma, Tokina and canon. Some people will slam me for denouncing Canon Glass. Test what works for you and then post a new topic in the forums to share what you like.

Picture Styles Menu: This is your friend. I personally don't like the Standard preset. I do like Neutral and Portrait for shooting humans, but I turn the contrast all the way to the left- test it and see what works for you. Sharpness one notch up from all the way to the left works pretty darn well on the 7D. Saturation: I usually go between 1 and 2 left of the center point. If I'm doing night work and I HAVE to use iso 1250 or higher I'll combat noise by taking saturation to -3, this is an artificial work around,but it seems pretty good sometimes.

Moire, aliasing, and the worsening of it in 720p:
Moire and aliasing can be a problem when shooting high frequency detail.
This can be combatted with filtration: try a variety of softening filters (schneider classic softs, Tiffen Pro Mists or Black Pro Mists and others affect the contrast, micro contrast and resolving power of the sensor to reduce moire or jagged edges.

Shutter Speeds: If you are aiming for a conventional looking sense of motion, the rule is generally to take the Frame Rate and Multiply it by 2: so, 30 fps=1/60s shutter. 24fps=1/50 (closest to 1/48) shutter and so on. Test it yourself and see what you like depending on the project. Different shutters can seem to help or aggravate jello cam aka CMOS skew depending on the type of motion.

Image Stabilization: Can help or hurt depending on your operating style and what you're shooting. Testing is necessary on a case by case basis.

The great thing about forums is that they are a free resource to share information. No need to buy anything when you can learn from and share with everyone here.
 
Last edited:
NoahK said:
Yeah it is indeed not cheap as a tutorial but really unequaled if you want to get up to speed fast on the 7D.

Noah
Click to expand...


Yeah, but if I had a bunch of questions about the camera, I could just ask them here and get all the answers I need. Plus there are video tutorials all over youtube.
 
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