T2i Newbie - shooting with T2i for girlfriend proposal - pls help!

N

nyik

New member
Hi everyone,

Was recommended by a friend to this forum, hopefully you guys can help me out. I'm a video/photo newb, so please bare with me. I'm sure I'll learn tonnes from you all.

I've been shooting with the T2i on a greenscreen. When I take a look at the footage on my desktop, it's almost like watching Youtube at 360p, and not 1080p. It's not very sharp.

Is it the way I shot the video? Is there some setting on the T2i that I neglected to set? When I take a look at the video setting, it says 1920x1080 - so is it at 1080p or not?

For post production, I'll be using Premiere and AE. Based on whether or not the video still looks blurry, I may end up playing the video on an iPhone vs on a tv or something, just so it looks sharper on a smaller resolution.

Lots more questions to come, thanks for reading.

Cheers,
nyik
 
T2i is not the camera for green screen. Sorry. :( It may be one of the "worst" choices for green screen. It's GREAT at other things. I LOVE mine...but...it has it's limits like all cameras. I'm NOT SAYING you can't do it....it's just not one of it's strong points. :( Sorry. But, welcome to DVXUser! Good luck.
 
Thx HHL.

I can't do anything about the green screen now. Just need to make lemonade out of lemons I suppose. :(

However, even outdoor footage doesn't seem sharp.

Could it be the lens that I was shooting with? I was using the 18-55mm that comes with the kit. Photos with this lens turns out amazingly clear though...
 
The T2i might not be the best camera in the entire world, regardless of price, to do green screen work. However, it can definitely be done, and done well. If this is the camera you have, don't let people tell you what you can't do with it, try it out for yourself and see.

Having said that, if your videos look like 360p YouTube videos, something is very wrong. Your videos aren't going to be as sharp as your still pictures, but they still should look pretty good.

The kit lens should be fine. I've done tests with it up against some other Canon lenses, and for video it looks pretty similar to my other lenses, with no appreciable differences in quality. The limiting factor is usually the video mode itself, not the lens.

This might be obvious, but make sure you're taking videos of nice looking subject matter. If you just play with the camera indoors at night, or take it out on a severely overcast and gloomy day, it's not going to look as good as some of these clips people put on Vimeo. Also, use manual mode for more control over the camera.

And good luck! I hope she says yes :)
 
something is definately wierd about your veiwing. it should not like like 360p youtube. check to see if you are playing back full res display in premiere. also what kind of monitor are you using??
 
...and check it frame-by-frame - are you getting too much motion blur? Or were you just out of focus - remember, the AF for video on the T2i is pretty much useless. But things can look sharp on the LCD but not really be in focus. that's part of the reason why viewing hoods & monitors are a big subject round here.

Zoom in on your footage and look for grain in the shadows & midtones; grain will be in focus regardless of other factors.

As for green screen - yeah, the T2i is very difficult to key, and in my experience you have to design your shots around that. I stuck a long tutorial on one of these threads, I'll dig it up if you're interested.

That said, this video has multiple keyed shots, all done on the T2i - but you'll notice they are dark scenes with lots of smoke and soft focus:

 
AF is useless?? :O

#1:

Ok - so when shooting photos, I use manual, and the red dot flashes when I use the viewfinder which tells me it's focused. Is it the same with video?? The way I focused the shot was hold down the shutter button halfway. The lens will adjust and a red rectangle will appear and beep. I thought that this was the same as the red dots in photo mode. Once I got the red rectangle, I let go.

#2:

I can't reshoot some of the footage. They were taken on location by renting out a local music hall. Fortunately, I'll be putting the keyed footage in the background. Even so, is there a way I can sharpen them up a little? Is there a sharpen filter in Premiere/AE just like Photoshop?

@MC - I came across a fstoppers tutorial on keying with the T2i, which is basically what I was going to try. I'll see if it keys ok. If it keys ok, that's great - I'm more concerned with the sharpness at this point.

Thx!!
 
nyik said:
AF is useless??
Click to expand...

Yes, I would say that AF is useless shooting video on the T2i - unless your subject and camera are totally static.

I can't speak for premiere, but AE has several sharpening options; FCP does as well so I'd guess any decent NLE has something - try sharpening after your key, and before. But what makes keying with Canon's DSLRS so hard is the aliasing - the weird unnatural sharpening which rears its deformed, nasty, conceived after three bottles of vodka next to chernobyl, three-eyed head on keys. So maybe sharped your final keyed shot?

Successful keying on the 2ti - to me anyway - is mostly based on very even lighting of your green screen (since screen gain seems to boost the crazy white aliasing outline). Use best practices - garbage mattes, holdout mattes, etc - and watch for hard funky edges.

Your deal isn't a broadcast spot for a paying client (hey, it's just the rest of your natural life and potentially the mother of your children, but it's not, like, a "client") so you should be OK... every gig's a learning experience, right?? Best of luck!!! Seriously, marriage, family, all of that.. it's much bigger than which chip or codec makes for a good comp, so I'll chime in with my best wishes for ya!
 
Out of interest what do you have the the sharpness set at,a lot have it right down but i have mine near the centre and my PQ is sharp enoough for me without looking artificialy sharp.
 
@flinty - what's PQ? There's a way to set the sharpness on the T2i itself besides the autofocus/manual focus?

@MC - thx! I know it's for someone close, and a good effort is all that's needed. But I want to do a good job. Plus, I get to learn something in the process.

I played around with AE and QT Pro. I had two sets of footages, one that was shot with the "Daylight" white balance, and one with "Neutral" (I think). Anyways, the "Daylight" footage was much more green overall than the "Neutral" footage. This made keying very difficult.

However, I found out that in QT Pro, I could export with filters. So I put a couple of colour filters in there, primarily hue and saturation. This changed the green screen itself to more of a turquoise colour. All of a sudden, now keying became more manageable in AE, and I was able to make use of the Daylight footages. I was so happy when I got one to key properly, because almost 70% of my footages were in Daylight mode.

Anyways, please let me know if there's more I can do or if this would work fine.

Cheers.
 
nyik said:
@flinty - what's PQ? There's a way to set the sharpness on the T2i itself besides the autofocus/manual focus?

@MC - thx! I know it's for someone close, and a good effort is all that's needed. But I want to do a good job. Plus, I get to learn something in the process.

I played around with AE and QT Pro. I had two sets of footages, one that was shot with the "Daylight" white balance, and one with "Neutral" (I think). Anyways, the "Daylight" footage was much more green overall than the "Neutral" footage. This made keying very difficult.

However, I found out that in QT Pro, I could export with filters. So I put a couple of colour filters in there, primarily hue and saturation. This changed the green screen itself to more of a turquoise colour. All of a sudden, now keying became more manageable in AE, and I was able to make use of the Daylight footages. I was so happy when I got one to key properly, because almost 70% of my footages were in Daylight mode.

Anyways, please let me know if there's more I can do or if this would work fine.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

PQ as in picture quality,the sharpness setting has nothing to do with the focus you set it with all the settings on your chosen picture profile,i use neutral, while on the setting in menu you can set the saturation sharpness contrast etc, its all in the manual.
 
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