Decided to go the T1i route for now

Kit Hannah

Kit Hannah

Veteran
So, I decided on the cheap way - T1i' Has worked out surprisingly well, especially because we only need 720p for what we'll be doing with it. We plan to get a much nicer camera in the future, but this will do for now.

The whole system thus far has been relatively inexpensive compared to a 5D setup.

Here's a list of what we have:
Canon Rebel T1i
18-55 Kit Lens
5 batteries
16Gb SDHC Card
Redrock Micro Deluxe Matte Box
Redrock Micro Mount (for H4N)
Cavision RS-15IIM Rod Support / Base Plate
Zoom H4N Recorder


Already had:
Tripod
Microphones
Headphones
Monitor

Still need to get:
Follow Focus
More Rails & attachments of other accessories

Basically, we have spent about $2200 thus far on the system. Although, we did already have some things


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Nice setup!
Havn´t looked into the T1i as an 5D alternative yet, could you give me a short roundup?
720p would be enough for my needs too, how is the image quality compared to the 5D?
And how good are the stills in comparison?
What attracts me the most to the 5D, is that it has the fullsize sensor without crop on the lenses for stills - this would probably be the last DSLR I would have to buy ;)
 
I've seen some footage shot with it and it appears to be seriously underrated and it surprises me that so many people use the inferior D90 just because it shoots 24p. What's the bit-rate shooting 720p?
For the money though I would have probably chosen the pentax K7.
 
squig said:
I've seen some footage shot with it and it appears to be seriously underrated and it surprises me that so many people use the inferior D90 just because it shoots 24p. What's the bit-rate shooting 720p?
For the money though I would have probably chosen the pentax K7.
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You know, Squig, I was a Pentax guy for a long time. It was really appealing to me, but it was an additional $500 over the T1i. We just decided we didn't "NEED" to spend another $500 and that it would be better spent on accessories.

It's a great camera for the small productions we do.
 
Spartacus said:
Nice setup!
Havn´t looked into the T1i as an 5D alternative yet, could you give me a short roundup?
720p would be enough for my needs too, how is the image quality compared to the 5D?
And how good are the stills in comparison?
What attracts me the most to the 5D, is that it has the fullsize sensor without crop on the lenses for stills - this would probably be the last DSLR I would have to buy ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks man. It works great for us. Footage looks really good! Audio quality is pretty bad, that's why we got the Zoom H4N., super clean audio!

If you want to spend the money on the 5D, I think it is a great choice, depending on what you're doing with it. We just didn't need it. We would also like to see what kind of new models will come out with better / advanced features. This works great for now.
 
Doesn't T1i lack manual controls? I would suggest one but the manual controls are kind of important for repeated performance.
 
Kholi said:
Doesn't T1i lack manual controls? I would suggest one but the manual controls are kind of important for repeated performance.
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You hit the nail on the head, Kholi. But for us, it's all good. not worried about it.

We purchased it to do local HD Commercials for small network of televisions we have in some facilities here. We do maybe 1 or 2 a month, and they are really pretty easy, low budget gigs. Clients are happy to just have a commercial. The bigger clients usually just provide their own spot and we uprez it to fit our screens. Not ideal, but it works out okay.

We also got it to do a few small web videos with and take some product photos. The 5D was not justifiable for us (as much as I wanted it to be the camera). It's a good compromise for the time being.

Manual controls are not a big deal for what we need the camera for. That's it. Maybe later we'll need something, but at that point, we'll just upgrade when the new latest and greatest model is out that does everything we need it to.

Kit
 
Nik Manning said:
Looks sharp! Anyway to turn the sharpness down?
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Yeah, I thought the same thing.

The first panning shot almost reminded me of putting on an "unsharp mask". That was pretty much the settings out of the box. Let me see if I can play with anything to make it better.
 
my custom setting-

neutral
sharpness 0
saturation -2
contrast -4

that's on the MKII of-course dunno how that will translate to the T1i

so what's the H.264 bit-rate?
 
squig said:
my custom setting-

neutral
sharpness 0
saturation -2
contrast -4

that's on the MKII of-course dunno how that will translate to the T1i

so what's the H.264 bit-rate?
Click to expand...

OK, I will roll with those settings for the weekend and see how they turn out. The T1i does have those adjustments on them.

As for the bit rate, supposedly it's not published information, so the short answer is I dunno. I looked around to see if I could find an answer, but nada nowhere. If I run across something I will post it up.

And by the way, Nik, the earlier video was shot with the "standard" setting, which had a sharpness value of +3. Hopefully bringing that down a few notches will help out too.

Kit
 
Thanks for the footage...

We just added the T1i to our 2 HMC150's and we are eager to see what it can do.
 
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