just about to buy my first dslr

A

Andrew C

Active member
okay, i am used to my hv30 and sgpro combo which can definately produce beautiful results. I recently made a music video which got watched by a record label who have contacted me about making a video for one of their upcoming artists. I said yes (ofc) but my main problem is my hv30 and sgpro setup. it is quite annoying which i found on a recent shoot and the calibration is annoying because i like to film with a hv30 and a raynox and the sgpro eats up so much damn light.

So my conclusion to this problem was to buy a 7d but then i saw the recent release of the 550d (t2i) which got me intrigued. It is much cheaper (and has similar video shooting capabilites to the 7D), it allows me to buy some nice glass and hopefully keep my hv30 (i would sell my SGpro with fd lenses).

I am thinking of purchasing the 550d with a 32gb card, EF 50mm 1.8 lens (gotta have a prime, the 1.4 is just too expensive for me atm) and a Tamron 17 - 50mm 2.8 VC lens to accompany me on the shoot. What do you guys think? Any opinions to my lens choices, camera choice etc would be great. All that stuff should come to about £1k, (the price of the 7d)

Cheers

Oh and by the way, does the t2i have a built in flash like the 7d?
 
Sounds like a fine kit- you want to add a tripod, microphone, filters, etc. There's many posts asking this question already on this forum- read through those for more tips.

Noah
 
Sounds good.

I'm coming from a HV30 as well. I'm gonna purchase in a month. Yes, it does have built in flash, but its recommended to get an external flasher so you can bounce it off walls and such
 
NoahK said:
Sounds like a fine kit- you want to add a tripod, microphone, filters, etc. There's many posts asking this question already on this forum- read through those for more tips.

Noah
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Yeah i already have a nice tripod along with a videomic, lights and a zaza slider ;) Filters, good point, i'd need an ND to shoot wide open outside which i am sure i will do.
 
The 2 major draw back with T2i is that you can not adjust white balance in kelvin, you can only manually white balance or use the preset, the ISO increment is full stop, not 1/3 like 7D, if you are shooting video and want a certain dof and want shutter at 50th, the 1/3 increment iso will give you closer to the right exposure on the 7d or less noise like if you need iso 1000 or 1250 you can do that, with the T2i it jump from 800 to 1600 and to me 1600 is border line noise. So if those 2 features is important to you then get the 7D, it is also better built.
 
PSA1 said:
The 2 major draw back with T2i is that you can not adjust white balance in kelvin, you can only manually white balance or use the preset, the ISO increment is full stop, not 1/3 like 7D, if you are shooting video and want a certain dof and want shutter at 50th, the 1/3 increment iso will give you closer to the right exposure on the 7d or less noise like if you need iso 1000 or 1250 you can do that, with the T2i it jump from 800 to 1600 and to me 1600 is border line noise. So if those 2 features is important to you then get the 7D, it is also better built.
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yeah, this shows me how limited my knowledge is to dslr filmmaking. the whitebalance isn't that much of an issue seeing as i am used to the hv30 which uses presets or push (not kelvin).

The 1 stop iso seems quite irritating to be honest but i think i could live. i'm not sure if i can justify the extra £450. Plus, this is going to be a learning curve and seeing as this is a more entry level dslr than the 7D, i think this could ease me into this new technology. If i do get comfortable and want the new features, i could always upgrade but knowing canon, they could bring out a new one next week. I am not sure though, i might just take the plunge and get the 7D...

I can definately control the shutterspeed independantly of everything like iso and aperture, correct? (hv30 is a pain and the manual control is quite limited)

Also, how do you make sure there is no gain? Do you just keep the ISO under 1600? (n00b questions i know)

Thanks for the info so far
 
Andrew C said:
I can definately control the shutterspeed independantly of everything like iso and aperture, correct? (hv30 is a pain and the manual control is quite limited)
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Yes.

Also, how do you make sure there is no gain? Do you just keep the ISO under 1600? (n00b questions i know)
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"Gain" is another word for signal amplification. Every ISO value higher than the native ISO of the sensor is therefore a level of gain. Let's say that the T2i has a native ISO of 100. That means that all of the other ISOs are gain values.

Of course, the higher the gain, the greater the amount of noise. Unfortunately, nobody here will be able give you any reliable advice on what ISOs to use in order to maintain an acceptable level of image noise. For some, anything above 800 is too noisy. For others, 3200 is acceptable. It's all very subjective. You'll have to test the camera to determine what level is acceptable to you.
 
Gain and ISO are pretty much the same thing but using different units. Before gain, there was just ISO. I don't know who's smart idea it was to switch from one logarithmic unit to another for no good reason.
 
shaocaholica said:
Gain and ISO are pretty much the same thing but using different units. Before gain, there was just ISO. I don't know who's smart idea it was to switch from one logarithmic unit to another for no good reason.
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There is a good reason. It's the same reason why the Avid editing suite uses a paradigm and terminology taken from the flatbed editing world: It's so that old school professionals and enthusiasts would be comfortable migrating to a digital system.
 
So whats the reason for video cameras using dB gain? Many sciences use the dB scale but none of the visual ones until video came along. If lighting and exposure equipment all use stops, why change?

I personally don't really like the ISO scale anyway. Its getting ridiculous with values like 102,400.

If the industry is going to measure things in stops, then just use absolute stops/EVs.
 
I'd suggest getting two 16 gig cards versus one 32 gig card. There are a lot of advantages to doing it that way. Like being able to dump one off onto a PC while you shoot on the other. Those cards are really small and easy to lose or misplace and are expensive to have everything riding on just one card. Plus they often charge more for a 32 gig card versus two 16 gig cards, so you'll likely save some money. Just my thoughts.
 
I didn't see ny mention of a loupe - a must have item for critical focus and the stability an extra point of contact provides. Either a Z-Finder or an LCDVF would be my recommendation. I would also follow the 2 CF card suggestion above.
 
shaocaholica said:
So whats the reason for video cameras using dB gain? Many sciences use the dB scale but none of the visual ones until video came along. If lighting and exposure equipment all use stops, why change?
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My guess would be that television broadcasting was seen as akin to (and perhaps an outgrowth of) radio broadcasting, i.e. apart from the film world. And we all know that in the radio world, signal gain is measured in dB. But the other major reason is that television was an entirely different sector than anything that came before it. It competed with the cinema, but its purveyors weren't seeking to replace the movies.

Digital editing suites and digital cameras were positioned as alternatives to their film forerunners that were supposed to replace said forerunners. Professionals and enthusiasts were pressured to migrate to the new technology in order to stay relevant and in-demand. So imagine the outrage if the creators of the technology attempted to thrust a new paradigm and terminology onto them.

As a vendor of the technology, how are you going to convince your target demographic to adopt and switch to your product? The only chance that you're going to sell your digital camera to a die-hard, old-school photographer is to show that it works basically the same way as a film camera, but with all of these extra niceties and conveniences. He/she is not going to understand how to expose with dBs but will understand ISOs. Imagine if you were arbitrarily going to use shutter angle (like on a movie camera) instead of shutter speed to represent exposure time on your digicam. What photographer's going to want to buy that? (Incidentally, some digital cinema cameras actually do represent exposure time as degrees rather than fractions of a second, and the reason is the same as what I've said so far.)

Is there any surprise that the top NLEs today are very similar in their user interfaces and functionality? You're not going to persuade an editor to switch to Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro if your software doesn't work anything like his/her trusty Avid.
 
Okay thanks for all the info although I think I am a little confused. Is there actually any way of monitoring the gain or do you just have to do it with your eye? Because with my hv30, I can actually monitor how many db I am adding which I find so helpful. Would I just need to know what the native iso is of the sensor and then every increment of iso above the native value will add a certain amount of noise to the image?

Basically: I always shoot with 0 gain on the hv30 and am wondering if it's possible to do this on the 550d. By the sounds of it, you are saying it's subjective (which it is, depending on your acceptable amount of noise) but what if I want to shoot with absolutely 0 +gain (iso) for absolutley 0 noise. Hope that makes sense??
 
Yes, Andrew, it's actually much easier to control on the DSLRs on the HV30. You want no noise...you set the camera to ISO 100 and use fast lenses or lots of light! But they also do fairly well at higher ISOs (more gain), also. You control it, however!
 
Andrew C said:
Okay thanks for all the info although I think I am a little confused. Is there actually any way of monitoring the gain or do you just have to do it with your eye? Because with my hv30, I can actually monitor how many db I am adding which I find so helpful. Would I just need to know what the native iso is of the sensor and then every increment of iso above the native value will add a certain amount of noise to the image?

Basically: I always shoot with 0 gain on the hv30 and am wondering if it's possible to do this on the 550d. By the sounds of it, you are saying it's subjective (which it is, depending on your acceptable amount of noise) but what if I want to shoot with absolutely 0 +gain (iso) for absolutley 0 noise. Hope that makes sense??
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It's very simple. The base ISO is 200. If you set ISO to 200, you will be essentially at 0dB. Goes something like this:

ISO 200 - 0dB
ISO 400 - +6dB
ISO 800 - +12dB
ISO 1600 - +18dB
ISO 3200 - +24dB
ISO 6400 - +32dB

Unless you have AUTO ISO selected, the ISO/"gain" will not change on you and in any case should be displayed on the LCD. You should try some of the ISOs higher than 200. The T2i will be a lot less noisy than your HV30.
 
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Andrew C said:
Basically: I always shoot with 0 gain on the hv30 and am wondering if it's possible to do this on the 550d. By the sounds of it, you are saying it's subjective (which it is, depending on your acceptable amount of noise) but what if I want to shoot with absolutely 0 +gain (iso) for absolutley 0 noise. Hope that makes sense??
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I hate to break this to you, but no camera will give you "absolutely 0 noise." Gain doesn't introduce noise to your image. Gain amplifies the whole signal, and in the process, it amplifies the noise that was already there.

With the HV30, you've become used to a pretty much point-and-shoot method of exposure. With a DSLR, you'll need to learn how manual exposure really works. There are three factors: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Shutter speed controls motion blur, and in general, you'll want to fix it at 1/60th (as Barry recommends, to avoid flickering problems with ballasted lights). Aperture controls depth of field, and in general, you'll want to keep it at a low f-number, or else you won't have very shallow DOF. So that leaves ISO as the factor that you'll want to manipulate most often. A low ISO value of 100 or 200 is fine for a daytime exterior, but it's useless for low light. When you go indoors, you'll be forced to use a higher ISO or add lots of light. Personally, I don't see the point of bothering with extra light fixtures when even high ISO values are quite low-noise. Trust me, you won't see the noise at all up to ISO 800.

I wonder about your paranoia regarding image noise. Have you seen Slumdog Millionaire? That movie won the Oscar last year for cinematography, but it had the noisiest footage that I've seen in a studio production in years.
 
Yes I am very much used to controlling the shutter, exposure and aperture to get the image I desire. The only thing that was starting to confuse me was the introduction of iso but that has all been cleared up. I am not that bothered about noise, I just wanted to find more info about the manual control and how to control the level of gain. Plus with my current set up, I need so much light to reduce the gain so that is probably why I'm a little paranoid. That will not be the case with the dslr cams. I can't really afford super fast lenses but I think until I have saved money, the 1.8 prime and the 2.8 zoom should suffice. And no I have not seen slumdog yet. I really should get round to watching it :)

Thanks guys
 
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