First time DSLR Shooter - Things to know

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ksduded

Active member
I have been a user of DVX100 and am planning to rent a Canon 7D with audio equipment to shoot an interview and some generic shots.

I have never used a DSLR before, and wanted to know whether the learning curve will be too steep?

What type of lenses I should definately carry, any tips on setting up the audio equipment etc.

Help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
 
This is a recipe for trouble. If you've never used anything but a DVX100, you're going to be over your head in a hurry.

Can you get your hands on the camera a couple days early to play around? If you are trying to learn to rig a DSLR AND Audio on a real shoot, it's too much.
 
I will have it for a few hours before the actual shoot. In the meantime I am tutoring myself through youtube videos. I want to get do's and don'ts or complete no's to see whether it will be doable.

Thanks for your input
 
eh. dedicated guy just to audio if you want that clean, and first time DSLR...ah prob not. there's shooters (including myself) that have been shooting for months and still run into new situations that create problems. Like fluorescent lights and shutter speed, I thought my 7D was damaged when I saw those yellow lines, or exposing, and when its safe to over/under expose... pulling focus is a pain, blah blah there's a lot.
 
You don't say how experienced you are on the DVX, or how professional your footage has to be.

I have over 60 on-the-job hours now on my T2i, and I am still making a lot of mistakes with it. IMHO, 60 hours is not a lot, especially with something that doesn't function like a proper video camera. On my first couple of interviews, I set up a second camera in case I made some serious mistakes. And I did. Such as not noticing that my recording stopped after 12 minutes, having forgotten cut and reroll.

Let us know how it turns out.
 
To OP. Coming from the DVX to a DSLR, what you really need to understand is how ISO works and how to use it.

Camera still has shutter, exposure and focus controls just like your dvx. Where you could trip is ISO and metering for proper exposure.

The other thing is you must know the operational controls of the camera - true of any camera. But in the DSLRS they arent laid out all sweet and nice for you.
 
ksduded said:
I will have it for a few hours before the actual shoot. In the meantime I am tutoring myself through youtube videos. I want to get do's and don'ts or complete no's to see whether it will be doable. Thanks for your input
Click to expand...

Maybe you could also get to a few stores and play with it hands on, ask sales people for help, learn to do some basics hands on in the store?
 
ksduded said:
I have been a user of DVX100 and am planning to rent a Canon 7D with audio equipment to shoot an interview and some generic shots.

I have never used a DSLR before, and wanted to know whether the learning curve will be too steep?

What type of lenses I should definitely carry, any tips on setting up the audio equipment etc.

Help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

As bluesgeek hinted at, the 7d stops recording when the files hit 4gb or when the sensor gets too hot, whichever happens first.

4gb threshold: roughly 15 minutes of footage (I've broken 18 minutes doing a time-lapse sunset)
Heat threshold: in the hottest, most humid (big factor) of settings, you can push the camera to 11 or 12 minutes before it will stop its current recording.

Now, if you're shooting indoors in a sit-down interview, you should be able to record for a while longer than the 4gb threshold may give you in terms of length, but you will have to pay attention to the camera, your current runtime, and when you should maybe take a break, give your interviewee some water, turn off the camera to let it cool for good measure, and then start the next ~15-minute segment.

If you're interview is more like jaywalking through the summer streets, and you're just doing short clips of people's replies to pop questions, neither heat nor the 4gb threshold should be a problem, but pulling focus by hand, as the 7d doesn't have live auto focus, will make your videos exceptionally shaky.

It really depends on what kind of interview you're doing. (I don't even know if my second example is defined as an interview...)

My one question is: Why did you want to shoot this on a 7d to begin with? For the HD? If it's a sit-down interview, HD wouldn't really be fully utilized here IMO.

Also just IMO, I think it is too steep a learning curve for even an interview. If you are set on using 7d's in future projects but don't want to buy one, rent one and practice shooting over the weekend. The knowledge from this forum will give you a GREAT start, but you will have to do the legwork. I also recommend walking/driving around town and finding things to shoot, like plants. Plants don't object to being shot. Starting out with an interview means working with people as your subject, and if you don't know said people personally, you will want to be professional and know what you're doing.

I hope that clears things up a bit. Feel free to keep the questions coming.



P.S. Tracking the video file size while recording:

There's only one way I know really to check your progress to the 4gb mark: In the Menu, set the quality of your stills to full RAW. When you start recording, you'll see numbers flashing and counting down in the upper-right of the digital screen on top of the camera, say, from ~600 if you're using a 16gb card. This number is the estimated amount of RAW pictures you have memory to take, so obviously recording video makes this number count down. Each tic is ~20mb, so just multiply the number of tics counted down since you started recording by 20 and that's roughly how big your video file is. Therefore, 4gb = 20*200, so before 200 tics you should consider stopping your recording before it stops it for you in the middle of your interviewee's sentence. There may be another way to track file size that I just don't know about...
 
Oh, like checking your gas mileage since your last fill-up!

@ ksduded, on my first few interview shoots, I remember many times having to apologize and say, we have to shoot that again.

Are you feeling lucky?
 
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