General Noob help?

[joelanplz]

Okay so I have recently purchased a Canon 700d (i hope this is in the right category)
My dad filmed the clip above in the automatic setting for film at 720p 50fps and I understand that you should edit the settings manually beforehand but i'm really disappointed
with our previous camera (Powershot SX1 IS) the automatic video was alot clearer and it doesn't make sense that a newer camera is worse performance wise
How can i make the video as clear as possible and why are the lines so jagged?
are we doing something wrong?

 

[charliemcdanger]

Others may explain it better but you're seeing a common problem with DSLR video, called "aliasing." It gives straight edges the jagged appearance you're seeing. Canon seems to be slower than other folks in addressing this, and the fact that your new camera has a higher-megapixel sensor (18 mp vs. 10 mp) actually makes things worse in this respect, because it is skipping more pixels when creating HD video. However, there are a few things you can do to lessen the problem.

1) Learn to use the camera in manual mode. If you shoot with the aperture wider open (smaller f number), you can keep the important part of the scene in focus, while all the unimportant background/foreground stuff will be slightly out of focus. Not only will this make your video look better generally; it will also get rid of a lot of annoying aliasing.

2) Use a tripod. The aliasing gets much more distracting when the camera is wobbling around.

3) Try to shoot from angles that don't involve a lot of thin, straight lines...particularly in a diagonal direction. Once you know the sort of thing your camera doesn't react well to, you can often avoid it just by resetting your angle slightly.

4) This might sound counter-intuitive but go into picture styles and lower the sharpening.

Good luck!

 

[Imamacuser]

Also lower the shutter speed to a 100th of a second and adjust your aperture and ISO in conjunction with ND filters to reach the proper exposure.

 

[Ebrahim Saadawi]

The image is a lot sharper at 1080p, you say you shot this at 50p 720p which makes the image much softer and gives moire jaggies but of course allows for slowmotion. So unless you are shooting for slowmotion set the camera to 1080p.

The Canon DSLRs are not very sharp and they do have the aliasing/jaggies, but they do produce beautiful looking results with shallow DOF (blurry backgrounds) and wonderful colour rendition, which is suited for shooting beauty work, things like short films and music videos, but for sports as your clip shows, they are not great I am afraid and even some point and shoot cameras (and now even smartphones) deliver better results compared to a Canon DSLR, sharper, with higher frame rates for slowmotion , less aliasing/moire and less rolling shutter artefacts.

 

[Stab]

Don't shoot wide shots at the 720p/50 fps setting. The camera is simply not able to put out good looking / aliasing free / detailed shots in that mode.
Change to 24 fps at 1080p. You will get much better and cleaner results.

If you really want 50 fps, you have to change to Panasonic or Sony.

 

[ectobuilder]

Avoid 720p at all times. No camera today does it well. Modern image sensors are optimized for either 1080p @ under 60p or 4K @ under 60p.

The 70D does pixel binning with weak anti-aliasing so that camera will alias even at the optimum setting, although not as bad as 720p.

The bigger brother of the 70D is the 7D Mark II and 5D Mark III and those handle aliasing way way better in the optimum setting.

The sharpest 1080p camera is the Sony A7S however. That thing is incredible!

With regards to your "newer camera" reference, it is funny to note that even though Canon does launch "newer" cameras, they tend to be all outdated one way or the other. The only thing "new" in the 70D is the Dual Pixel AF system. Everything else in Canon cameras is very outdated. They are running their business in denial. To see what a "newer" camera should do, you really need to look at what Sony is doing.