parallactic-pictures
Active member
I have finished cutting together the first test footage I shot with the Canon 7D. This was a two hour test shoot we did on the fly at my buddy's house, while I was home for the Holidays with the camera. My friend (who is primarily a photographer) shot it. We had nothing but a $100 tripod, one light, and his wife acting in it. (after we annoyed the shi* out of her till she finally gave in).
My friend didn't like how clear the LCD made everything look, so he kept stopping down the f/s, hence increasing the ISO. At first, this seemed like a good idea, as it brought up our darkness levels and shadows. But again, this is when you're looking at a palm-sized LCD viewfinder. We didn't have any sort of live playback. We were rushing to get this done, as my co-director and friend had a party to go to. So it didn't occur to me to just run upstairs and grab my Macbook Pro and jack it in as a live monitor.
Therefore, a couple of things happened when I viewed the uncut footage later that week.
1. A lot of it was out of focus. I had to cut around most of this, but a few soft shots still snuck their way in.
2. The footage looked very 'noisy' when played at Full Screen. It looked almost like 16mm film. Sure, this was interesting looking, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. But hey, that's why they call it 'test footage'.
But something cool happened soon after: Since I knew I'd only be showing this stuff online, there was no need to have it full screen. And of course, when shrunk down to something like Vimeo or YouTube, those blacks became crushed, the contrast went up, and suddenly that noise didn't look so bad. Still, I learned a lot from this 2 hour test, and made a lot of mistakes I won't repeat the next time.
With that being said, I'd love for you to all check out the finished result. It's only 83 seconds long. I'd love any critique or feedback you can give me. Note to moderators: I posted almost this exact thing, as a reply in a thread in the Premiere sub-forum, since a bunch of awesome people were helping me out with the editing process on this. I can delete that post if you like.
Here's the test footage:
If you'd like to watch this clip properly, in HD, just go here: http://vimeo.com/8882064
My friend didn't like how clear the LCD made everything look, so he kept stopping down the f/s, hence increasing the ISO. At first, this seemed like a good idea, as it brought up our darkness levels and shadows. But again, this is when you're looking at a palm-sized LCD viewfinder. We didn't have any sort of live playback. We were rushing to get this done, as my co-director and friend had a party to go to. So it didn't occur to me to just run upstairs and grab my Macbook Pro and jack it in as a live monitor.
Therefore, a couple of things happened when I viewed the uncut footage later that week.
1. A lot of it was out of focus. I had to cut around most of this, but a few soft shots still snuck their way in.
2. The footage looked very 'noisy' when played at Full Screen. It looked almost like 16mm film. Sure, this was interesting looking, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. But hey, that's why they call it 'test footage'.
But something cool happened soon after: Since I knew I'd only be showing this stuff online, there was no need to have it full screen. And of course, when shrunk down to something like Vimeo or YouTube, those blacks became crushed, the contrast went up, and suddenly that noise didn't look so bad. Still, I learned a lot from this 2 hour test, and made a lot of mistakes I won't repeat the next time.
With that being said, I'd love for you to all check out the finished result. It's only 83 seconds long. I'd love any critique or feedback you can give me. Note to moderators: I posted almost this exact thing, as a reply in a thread in the Premiere sub-forum, since a bunch of awesome people were helping me out with the editing process on this. I can delete that post if you like.
Here's the test footage:
If you'd like to watch this clip properly, in HD, just go here: http://vimeo.com/8882064
