First Major Shoot with 5d Mark III 2 days later....Answer my ?s...pls

payal_choksi

Well-known member
Hi all,

firstly I got my 5d mark iii last week and am in love with the camera, though I am still learning it.

I have a shoot 2 days later and I am pretty excited to use my new 5d mark iii. Although I have not mastered the camera yet, but before I go I would like to ask few questions.

1. I would be mainly concentrating on 3 things while shooting...a. Focus b. Exposure & c. white balance. Anything else required while shooting?

2. Though I would prefer to use custom white balance, I would like to know how reliable is Auto-White Balance?

3. Most important point for custom white balance. I would be shooting in a large room and would like to take a wide shot. The room will have lights in the centre and I don't have a good zoom lens (I have 24-105 f4). I would be standing at some distance to get the wide shot.
Now for custom white balance, if I am shooting at wide angle in a room and the main lighted area is in the centre, how do I get the white balance considering that the white paper (required for white balance) needs to cover the entire lcd of my cam for custom white balance. Should I physically move myself to the centre of the room and take white balance there and then move back to my place to take the shot?

I would really appreciate if you could please answer these questions and give your suggestions which would help me shoot good video.
 
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If you're not going to shoot raw with it, consider getting the latest stable build of Magic Lantern. It really is a great tool that can help you a lot with waveform, peaking etc.

The learning curve is not too steap, so... just saying.
 
D. Composition
E. Audio
Auto WB is reliable but manual is better, before you start to shoot make sure the light in the room is to the level of during the shoot, go up there and manual wb it then go back to your position.
 
If you're not going to shoot raw with it, consider getting the latest stable build of Magic Lantern. It really is a great tool that can help you a lot with waveform, peaking etc.

The learning curve is not too steap, so... just saying.

i won't be shooting raw. but which version of magic lantern should i install? and how do i install it on my mark iii? can anyone please direct me to instructions page or video of installing magic lantern?

...How is audio being handled for your shoot?

for the audio part i would be using the built in microphone of mark iii and for interview i have a mic which i will use. the original audio captured during the shoot will not come in the final output since the output will have music and voice-over.

D. Composition
E. Audio
Auto WB is reliable but manual is better, before you start to shoot make sure the light in the room is to the level of during the shoot, go up there and manual wb it then go back to your position.

the shooting conditions would be cloudy so i am expecting sunshine as well as cloudy light. what should i do in such conditions?
 
for the audio part i would be using the built in microphone of mark iii

Which is useful for syncing in post, but usually the camera's built-in mics are not good enough for anything else.

and for interview i have a mic which i will use

So you are going to use a lav mic? Or a boomed hyper-cardioid mic? Or a boomed higher end shotgun mic that can be used indoors?

I'm asking only because audio quality is more important than your video image, so you have to make sure you get good audio during your shoot.
 
Don't you think you're injecting too much risk for a major project by installing a firmware hack two days before the production? If something goes wrong you'll spend much of that time in recovery mode.
 
Don't you think you're injecting too much risk for a major project by installing a firmware hack two days before the production? If something goes wrong you'll spend much of that time in recovery mode.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought of this....
 
I would NOT install Magic Lantern 2 days before an important shoot and most importantly, the first time shooting with a new camera. Start reading the manual now, you have a lot to learn and a short time to learn it.

Magic Lantern is in serious state of flux right now, the nightly build (compiled for you) versions are still running on the 2012 firmware version 1.1.3. I'm not going to go into all the "magic" needed to get this running on your brand new 5D3 version 1.2.3, just don't do it yet. They, the Magic Lantern devs, are working on porting it over to latest firmware 1.2.3. Just be patient and wait for it, especially since you are not wanting to shoot raw video.

I highly recommend custom white balance. You will probably need to get closer to the light source to do this with the 24-105L. You don't need to cover the entire area of the screen to white balance, you just need to fill the spot metering circle in the center of the optical viewfinder and take a reference image. I always shoot a raw still for this. If you have a real white balance card that would be best, but a white paper will be better than nothing. Just keep in mind that white paper is NOT the best white balance reference.

Good luck.
 
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