Importing still photos into FCP

[rc444]

Hi everyone,

This question involves concerns both editing and camera. I hope I've got the right forum as I was told off for posting in the wrong forum last time

I'm shooting a martial arts doco. The doco consists of moving footage and stills.

I'm hoping to import the stills into FCP. I'll first convert them to .TIF in photoshop to make them easier to manage on the timeline.

I have a Canon 6 MP digital camera. It lets you select what picture size to film in, I'm not sure what size I should set the camera to. What size should I shoot the original pictures at? The settings are:

* Wide - 2816 x 584 pixels
* Small - 640 x 480
* Medium 2 - 1600 x 1200
* Medium 1 - 2272 x 1704
* Large - 2816 x 2112

Which picture setting would yield the best quality when imported into FCP? FYI, I am editing at PAL SD 16:9 dimensions.

Finally, if you wanted to set a custom letterbox size, say you shot in 4:3 and you wanted to mask it at 2:35:1, what menu do you go to?

Thanks for your help.

rc444.

 

[NoahK]

Well it depends if you want to go full frame or zoom into the photos. I'd shoot highest quality and resize to within 2x the pixel dimensions in FCP- i.e. 720x576. This might help:

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_ps.html

Noah