Stephen Mick
Totally Usable
Some of you may be familiar with the type of work I do, others may not. Basically, my niche is adventure-sport and travel filmmaking, generally focused on fishing and water sports. My goal with this post is to provide some "field intel" on using the 7D and related gear, and hopefully to offer some insights on how to use the camera as a tool in some particularly challenging conditions. I hope some of you find this information useful.
Background
The Assignment:
- Follow professional bass angler Casey Ashley on a journey into the Amazon basin to catch tucunaré, or peacock bass, a big, angry, colorful fish found nearly exclusively in the jungle.
The Gear:
- Two Canon 7Ds
- Canon 17-55 EF-S f2.8
- Canon 16-35 f2.8L
- Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS
- Tokina 11-16 f2.8
- Sigma 30mm f1.4 (Courtesy of the Wookie)
- 77mm Singh-Ray VariND Filter
- Canon BG-E7 Battery Grip
- Zoom H4n
- Sennheiser MKE-400 Microphone
- Zacuto Z-Finder and Tactical Shooter
- Manfrotto 755CX3 Tripod with 701HDV Head
- Nexto NVS-2500 Video Pro Storage/Oflload Device
- Four 32GB SanDisk Extreme III CF Cards
- Scott A2 10-Weight Fly Rod and Waterworks Large Arbor Fly Reel
NOTE: I did take other gear (wireless mic, intervalometer, small portable light, etc.), but as I did not end up using them, I did not include them here.
The Location:
- Brazil's Rio Negro, an enormous river deep in the Amazon, near the border of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia.
The Conditions:
- Hot. Hot. And more hot. Daily temperatures were in the upper 90s, with humidity in the 80-90% range. Shot mostly in full sun, with occasional cloud cover and the odd rain shower.
Field Report
Ergonomics
I start with this one, because for my style of shooting, it's absolutely key. There's no way around the fact that these HDSLRs are not designed as video cameras, but offer video capabilities as an "added bonus." And nowhere is this more apparent than in ergonomics. SLRs were made to grab single frames, or a series of frames, at a time, not for extended takes of hand-held shooting. And the weight distribution changes significantly depending on which lenses you have on the camera. Slap the 17-55mm on the 7D and you could shoot hand-held without a stabilizer. Swap the 70-200mm on there and you're asking for pain.
The key to making this camera work from an ergonomic standpoint is to use a rig that lets you have one hand free at all times. With the Tactical Shooter, I ended up using a number of different configurations depending on the lens I was using. This allowed me to always have a hand "at rest" while supporting the camera with the other hand and my shoulder. Whatever rig you choose, test it out at home before using it in the field. After a few days, I had pretty well dialed-in my stabilizer for maximum comfort and performance. But I wish I had spent more time in advance getting it rigged and balance for each of the lenses I was using.
Ease of Use
I won't spend a lot of time on this topic, other than to say that the 7D's menu system and button placement feels just about perfect to me. I switched back and forth between 1080p and 720p, and could easily do this in under five seconds. Camera functions are intuitive and clear, even for someone with "limited" DSLR experience.
Lenses
For the most part, I never took the 17-55mm f2.8 lens off one of the 7D bodies. For general-purpose shooting, this is a great lens. At 17mm, I was able to get great shots in close quarters on the water. And at 55mm, I was able to get close enough to action happening out on the water about 50 yards away. Now, you can't get super-tight with this lens like you can with the 70-200mm range, but for all-around shooting on the water, this was my go-to lens.
The boats we were shooting/fishing out of were very small. And this is where the Tokina 11-16mm lens really came in handy. At 11mm, you get a near-fisheye effect, making a monstrous river look even larger. At 16mm, the perspective "flattens" out to a more normal wide-angle view. The constant f2.8 aperture of this lens is really, really nice. It's no wonder this lens is so hard to find.
Some of the time, we were shooting from a "chase boat" to talent in another boat. This is when the 70-200mm lens got the heaviest use. I never found myself wishing for "more telephoto" than this lens offers on the 7D, and the constant f2.8 is really nice for shallow DOF accent shots. The downside is that this lens is a f'ing beast. It's really heavy, and as wonderful as the Zacuto Tactical Shooter is, it wasn't really much help with this lens. I wish I had taken my Varizoom DV Media Rig, but it was just too big to fit in my bag, and would have put me over the baggage weight limit. But even as big as the 70-200 is, the shots you can get with it make it worth the pain. The IS can be a bit loud, but usually the subject was so far away I wasn't really looking for good audio, just quality video.
I see a lot of people asking whether or not Image Stabilization (IS) is important. It is, period. I found myself leaning on the 17-55 and the 70-200 most of the time, simply because of the IS. This shoot was, to me, the definitive test of whether or not IS helps when shooting video, and let me tell you, it does. It allowed me to shoot hand-held at 200mm and still get smooth shots, even from a small boat running 40mph across choppy waters. In ten days of shooting, I used my tripod twice, both times for interviews. Everything else was handheld, and the IS performance allowed me to get shots I could not have gotten without it, for sure.
For shooting on the boat at night, the Sigma 30mm f1.4 was the go-to lens. Even in situations with very little ambient lighting (like one fixture on an outdoor boat deck), I was able to shoot without ever going above 1250 ISO.
As great a lens as the 16-35L is, it never saw much use, simply due to the lack of IS. Some will say that at those lengths IS really isn't necessary. To them, I say spend a day shooting what I shoot and then see how you feel.
All in all, the lenses delivered great images under some very, very difficult conditions.
Audio
For almost all of my shooting, I used the Sennheiser MKE400 connected directly to the 7D. Sure, AGC is not a good thing, but when you're shooting for 8-10 hours a day, syncing that much double system sound, even with something like PluralEyes, is a no-go. And to be perfectly honest, the audio from the Sennheiser/7D sounds perfectly fine for "field shooting" where ambient sound and limited dialog is the goal.
I did have a wireless microphone system with me, but the days I had planned to use it (with the Zoom) ended up being rainy and windy, not a good combination. I also had a Tram TR-50 lav that never came out of my bag for the same reasons.
For interviews, I used the Zoom H4n, with built-in mics only, placed close to the talent, with the Sennheiser MKE on the 7D for backup/reference audio. The Zoom audio is certainly cleaner and "warmer," but the sound straight from the 7D is completely "usable," even with the AGC enabled. To be fair, in the jungle there's quite a bit of ambient sound (bugs, birds, water), so the AGC was really not being "triggered" at all. But regardless,
Where the Zoom really earned its keep for me was in recording wild location sound. Having good, clean sound effects and wild sound is a key element in being able to create a quality sound mix, and to be honest, it's often one of the things I neglect to do on shoots. But the Zoom is so easy to use, it makes recording these kinds of location sounds a snap. And if it's easy, it's more likely I'll do it more often. I can't recommend the Zoom highly enough.
Accessories
Get a Z-Finder (or something like it). End of discussion. This is an absolute necessity.
Get something to put the camera on, even when shooting handheld. It just makes life easier. Whether it's a SpiderBrace, a DVRig or some home-brewed shoulder mount, it's an investment that will pay off with better footage and greater comfort.
I just picked up the Canon BG-E7 battery grip a few days before the shoot, and I really like it. I especially like having the option of using "AA" batteries to power the 7D. One night, while camera batteries were supposed to be charging, the boat's power had gone out. So I woke the next morning to only two fully-charged batteries. I loaded six lithium "AA" batteries into the grip and had plenty of power for a full day of shooting. It does add a little bit of weight and bulk to the camera, but I actually think the grip makes the camera easier to hold.
The tripod I used was chosen simply for its light weight and easy leveling. I can't say enough good things about this piece of gear. For an inexpensive travel tripod, it's a great choice.
A lot of people ask about which CF cards to get. My SanDisk Extreme III 32GB cards worked flawlessly through the entire shoot. Never a dropped frame. Never a dip in bit-rate. Just ten days of reliable performance, which I what I expect from my gear.
Workflow
Each night, I would offload the raw footage from the CF cards to the Nexto NVS-2500 storage unit. We did have power on the boat we were sleeping on, so I didn't have to use the battery pack for the Nexto. Every single card was copied and verified successfully, with not so much as a dropped frame or bad clip. I was even able to hook up the NVS-2500 in "drive mode" to review footage right off the drive. I can't overstate how nice it is to be able to review raw footage right off the cards without having to transcode or even import footage (a la P2 or SxS). With a card reader, I was easily able to review clips in QuickTime Player on my laptop. At the end of the shoot, I backed up all of the footage to an external G-Drive for safe keeping.
A RANDOM NOTE: One of the biggest problems that most people don't think about in conditions like these is condensation. If you keep your gear in the room with you, keep the air conditioner off and the windows open. Or find a secure place outside the room to stow your gear. Otherwise you're risking losing a considerable amount of shooting time, and quite possibly even damaging your camera and lenses. The point: don't forget about these things in the field, or they'll bite you in the ass.
Background
The Assignment:
- Follow professional bass angler Casey Ashley on a journey into the Amazon basin to catch tucunaré, or peacock bass, a big, angry, colorful fish found nearly exclusively in the jungle.
The Gear:
- Two Canon 7Ds
- Canon 17-55 EF-S f2.8
- Canon 16-35 f2.8L
- Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS
- Tokina 11-16 f2.8
- Sigma 30mm f1.4 (Courtesy of the Wookie)
- 77mm Singh-Ray VariND Filter
- Canon BG-E7 Battery Grip
- Zoom H4n
- Sennheiser MKE-400 Microphone
- Zacuto Z-Finder and Tactical Shooter
- Manfrotto 755CX3 Tripod with 701HDV Head
- Nexto NVS-2500 Video Pro Storage/Oflload Device
- Four 32GB SanDisk Extreme III CF Cards
- Scott A2 10-Weight Fly Rod and Waterworks Large Arbor Fly Reel
NOTE: I did take other gear (wireless mic, intervalometer, small portable light, etc.), but as I did not end up using them, I did not include them here.
The Location:
- Brazil's Rio Negro, an enormous river deep in the Amazon, near the border of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia.
The Conditions:
- Hot. Hot. And more hot. Daily temperatures were in the upper 90s, with humidity in the 80-90% range. Shot mostly in full sun, with occasional cloud cover and the odd rain shower.
Field Report
Ergonomics
I start with this one, because for my style of shooting, it's absolutely key. There's no way around the fact that these HDSLRs are not designed as video cameras, but offer video capabilities as an "added bonus." And nowhere is this more apparent than in ergonomics. SLRs were made to grab single frames, or a series of frames, at a time, not for extended takes of hand-held shooting. And the weight distribution changes significantly depending on which lenses you have on the camera. Slap the 17-55mm on the 7D and you could shoot hand-held without a stabilizer. Swap the 70-200mm on there and you're asking for pain.
The key to making this camera work from an ergonomic standpoint is to use a rig that lets you have one hand free at all times. With the Tactical Shooter, I ended up using a number of different configurations depending on the lens I was using. This allowed me to always have a hand "at rest" while supporting the camera with the other hand and my shoulder. Whatever rig you choose, test it out at home before using it in the field. After a few days, I had pretty well dialed-in my stabilizer for maximum comfort and performance. But I wish I had spent more time in advance getting it rigged and balance for each of the lenses I was using.
Ease of Use
I won't spend a lot of time on this topic, other than to say that the 7D's menu system and button placement feels just about perfect to me. I switched back and forth between 1080p and 720p, and could easily do this in under five seconds. Camera functions are intuitive and clear, even for someone with "limited" DSLR experience.
Lenses
For the most part, I never took the 17-55mm f2.8 lens off one of the 7D bodies. For general-purpose shooting, this is a great lens. At 17mm, I was able to get great shots in close quarters on the water. And at 55mm, I was able to get close enough to action happening out on the water about 50 yards away. Now, you can't get super-tight with this lens like you can with the 70-200mm range, but for all-around shooting on the water, this was my go-to lens.
The boats we were shooting/fishing out of were very small. And this is where the Tokina 11-16mm lens really came in handy. At 11mm, you get a near-fisheye effect, making a monstrous river look even larger. At 16mm, the perspective "flattens" out to a more normal wide-angle view. The constant f2.8 aperture of this lens is really, really nice. It's no wonder this lens is so hard to find.
Some of the time, we were shooting from a "chase boat" to talent in another boat. This is when the 70-200mm lens got the heaviest use. I never found myself wishing for "more telephoto" than this lens offers on the 7D, and the constant f2.8 is really nice for shallow DOF accent shots. The downside is that this lens is a f'ing beast. It's really heavy, and as wonderful as the Zacuto Tactical Shooter is, it wasn't really much help with this lens. I wish I had taken my Varizoom DV Media Rig, but it was just too big to fit in my bag, and would have put me over the baggage weight limit. But even as big as the 70-200 is, the shots you can get with it make it worth the pain. The IS can be a bit loud, but usually the subject was so far away I wasn't really looking for good audio, just quality video.
I see a lot of people asking whether or not Image Stabilization (IS) is important. It is, period. I found myself leaning on the 17-55 and the 70-200 most of the time, simply because of the IS. This shoot was, to me, the definitive test of whether or not IS helps when shooting video, and let me tell you, it does. It allowed me to shoot hand-held at 200mm and still get smooth shots, even from a small boat running 40mph across choppy waters. In ten days of shooting, I used my tripod twice, both times for interviews. Everything else was handheld, and the IS performance allowed me to get shots I could not have gotten without it, for sure.
For shooting on the boat at night, the Sigma 30mm f1.4 was the go-to lens. Even in situations with very little ambient lighting (like one fixture on an outdoor boat deck), I was able to shoot without ever going above 1250 ISO.
As great a lens as the 16-35L is, it never saw much use, simply due to the lack of IS. Some will say that at those lengths IS really isn't necessary. To them, I say spend a day shooting what I shoot and then see how you feel.
All in all, the lenses delivered great images under some very, very difficult conditions.
Audio
For almost all of my shooting, I used the Sennheiser MKE400 connected directly to the 7D. Sure, AGC is not a good thing, but when you're shooting for 8-10 hours a day, syncing that much double system sound, even with something like PluralEyes, is a no-go. And to be perfectly honest, the audio from the Sennheiser/7D sounds perfectly fine for "field shooting" where ambient sound and limited dialog is the goal.
I did have a wireless microphone system with me, but the days I had planned to use it (with the Zoom) ended up being rainy and windy, not a good combination. I also had a Tram TR-50 lav that never came out of my bag for the same reasons.
For interviews, I used the Zoom H4n, with built-in mics only, placed close to the talent, with the Sennheiser MKE on the 7D for backup/reference audio. The Zoom audio is certainly cleaner and "warmer," but the sound straight from the 7D is completely "usable," even with the AGC enabled. To be fair, in the jungle there's quite a bit of ambient sound (bugs, birds, water), so the AGC was really not being "triggered" at all. But regardless,
Where the Zoom really earned its keep for me was in recording wild location sound. Having good, clean sound effects and wild sound is a key element in being able to create a quality sound mix, and to be honest, it's often one of the things I neglect to do on shoots. But the Zoom is so easy to use, it makes recording these kinds of location sounds a snap. And if it's easy, it's more likely I'll do it more often. I can't recommend the Zoom highly enough.
Accessories
Get a Z-Finder (or something like it). End of discussion. This is an absolute necessity.
Get something to put the camera on, even when shooting handheld. It just makes life easier. Whether it's a SpiderBrace, a DVRig or some home-brewed shoulder mount, it's an investment that will pay off with better footage and greater comfort.
I just picked up the Canon BG-E7 battery grip a few days before the shoot, and I really like it. I especially like having the option of using "AA" batteries to power the 7D. One night, while camera batteries were supposed to be charging, the boat's power had gone out. So I woke the next morning to only two fully-charged batteries. I loaded six lithium "AA" batteries into the grip and had plenty of power for a full day of shooting. It does add a little bit of weight and bulk to the camera, but I actually think the grip makes the camera easier to hold.
The tripod I used was chosen simply for its light weight and easy leveling. I can't say enough good things about this piece of gear. For an inexpensive travel tripod, it's a great choice.
A lot of people ask about which CF cards to get. My SanDisk Extreme III 32GB cards worked flawlessly through the entire shoot. Never a dropped frame. Never a dip in bit-rate. Just ten days of reliable performance, which I what I expect from my gear.
Workflow
Each night, I would offload the raw footage from the CF cards to the Nexto NVS-2500 storage unit. We did have power on the boat we were sleeping on, so I didn't have to use the battery pack for the Nexto. Every single card was copied and verified successfully, with not so much as a dropped frame or bad clip. I was even able to hook up the NVS-2500 in "drive mode" to review footage right off the drive. I can't overstate how nice it is to be able to review raw footage right off the cards without having to transcode or even import footage (a la P2 or SxS). With a card reader, I was easily able to review clips in QuickTime Player on my laptop. At the end of the shoot, I backed up all of the footage to an external G-Drive for safe keeping.
A RANDOM NOTE: One of the biggest problems that most people don't think about in conditions like these is condensation. If you keep your gear in the room with you, keep the air conditioner off and the windows open. Or find a secure place outside the room to stow your gear. Otherwise you're risking losing a considerable amount of shooting time, and quite possibly even damaging your camera and lenses. The point: don't forget about these things in the field, or they'll bite you in the ass.
Did you end up catching any peacocks of your own? That has been my dream trip since I started bass fishing.
