(The right) Prime Lens.

Out of curiosity, have you reset your camera to factory defaults? And have you tried it with any other lens?

It sounds suspiciously like your exposure compensation is turned way down, or your iris is stuck at it's minimum setting, or something similar. I can shoot daylight interior with the 18-55 kit lens at 200 ISO. Maybe 100 near the window.
 
Lol ^ them annoying caps!

Lol just an update though, I've been playing around with the prime, and one thing i am amazed at is the depth of field for close up objects. The blur looks angelic at 1.8 (3.5 looks just a tad too stale on the kit) and that is one very neat thing bout the Canon prime.

Overall, though, 50mm (= ~65mm) is a hassle though, I feel like the Sigma 35 1.4 would still be the perfect lens for me, I always find myself needing just a bit more picture and just one extra stop of light. For instance, I went into a gas station today and tried the prime...to get correct exposure, I had to have it at about 50s (I trust keeping it at 50 for video), 1.8a, and 200iso...not bad at all I guess, but I expected to get 100iso easily =\. The store was admittingly not the brightest one in the world, though.

I mainly just wish this camera didn't produce so much noise past 200/I wish it picked up light just a bit better internally. Like I said, I think Im gonna send it off, but I almost want to say i beleive digital DSLRs are sucky for video. Either way, I havent found anything that makes me feel like I want to jump for joy. I would have much rather had a 720p DSLR that had a revolutional noise/light system for video, than having a 1080p camera that has a bad one....but sad thing is, I dont think that first option exists, either.
 
Snapper123 said:
I mainly just wish this camera didn't produce so much noise past 200/I wish it picked up light just a bit better internally. Like I said, I think Im gonna send it off, but I almost want to say i beleive digital DSLRs are sucky for video. Either way, I havent found anything that makes me feel like I want to jump for joy. I would have much rather had a 720p DSLR that had a revolutional noise/light system for video, than having a 1080p camera that has a bad one....but sad thing is, I dont think that first option exists, either.
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Your camera is gathering as much light as a RED. If not more. It is gathering about 3 times more light than the Arri D20/D21. It is gathering more light that practically ANY film camera, and I can absolutely guarantee you it's cleaner at ISO 400 than film is. At least Kodak 5218.

Based on your comments, I am going to guess that you've never been on a large feature set. So let me allow you to look at a photo:

http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/January2009/RevolutionaryRoad/image1367.php

Roger Deakins is one of my inspirations as a cinematographer. He is know for his naturalistic lighting style and shooting things as though they were not lit at all. Please pay careful attention to the lighting in that scene. There is over 1k watts of fresnels being bounced into a subject less than 10ft away, and the camera is about 8-12ft from the subjects. He is likely shooting on 5218 which is ISO 500 speed film that most cinematographers rate at 320-400.

In order to get a CLEAN image, suitable for theatrical release, one of the worlds best cinematographers uses this much lighting to make his scenes look natural and noise free. The camera he is using is north of $100k. The lens on the front of it is likely in the range of $20k. And yet you want your little DSLR to perform as cleanly in 1/10 or 1/20th the light.

Take a lesson from the guys who make six figures to do this work. Light your sets properly and noise will never be a problem. And by the way, most of these guys are shooting F2.8 (T2.8) to F4.0 most of the time. The lenses typically perform best when stopped down a bit.

Best of luck with your filmmaking.
 
Can someone tell me what these extreme glitches are in this crop from a 1080P paused still? (circled in red.) Tilt your computer screen back and forth if you do not see the glitchy areas right away.

http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac77/buttercupblessing/Untitled123.png?t=1280580824

Please don't say "that's low light" unless you have a genius reason, like say, the camera doesn't even know which colors to pick up at such a low light, so it scrambles to at least form an image. Don't even say that either, though, as I took a photograph using the exact same settings and it looked 100% perfect with not a single tiny pixel even weird.

That video crop above is from a video that was taken of a wall that is lit by a strong morning sun, taken at 30s, 1.8a, and 100iso. To actually of had the correct exposure, the camera said I needed to have a 800iso, but that makes no difference when trying to pinpoint a glitch, although it may pinpoint wether my camera is not letting in enough light as it should be (like I said, the camera said I would have needed a iso of 800 just to replicate the natural light of the room.) But despite that issue, there's nothing even related to ISO that would be causing the glitches in the crop above, nor does it have to do with the camera's aliasing problems. I really just need an explaination!!!

P.S. I did this experiment because I see the same type of glitching in the shadows and colors of every video I've ever done, so I figured I'd take a video of an entirely low light area to see if it is free of glitch, and it shows exactly what I thought it would.
 
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And that is....normal? I'd be different if that stuff didn't appear in my videos every time the camera sees a black object, a shadow, the color blue/brown, a fine detail ect ect...it always looks so pixelated, and it doesn't even look the same as noise. Always looks like huge fricken squares.

And again, if this is normal, can someone explain how this video was shot (especially since this video is using higher ISO's?):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk3-XKsnWCs

In this short film, the creators are saying they basically were practicing and that nothing fancy was done. If most, I'd say the blacks were somehow crushed, or they just had a good preset. Overall though, this video was a big inspiration to me to buy the T2i because my filmmaking style is just like this (in the video, they didn't use set lighting, only a couple lights that occurred naturally). But in this video, I've tried extremely hard to spot anything near what my camera does in these same light settings, and I can't find a single thing. I know for a fact that my specific camera would not be able to shoot a video like this, yet that's what I bought the T2i for. If someone had $6,000 to spend on lighting and lenses, why in the world would they buy a T2i and at least not a 7D, or even a MarkIV27B? C'mon.

So yeah, that video above looks perfect without the people behind it really doing absolutely anything to it, either on set on editing wise. The only thing I even see is minimal noise on the boxes and walls that actually happens to look like film noise (completely different from my T2i.). I'd even say this was filmed at definatly 800ISO or above. Overall, the T2i/7D they used is COMPLETELY different from mine OR they somehow stumbled across a highly advanced preset. Because I know from looking at my own footage, the objects may look beautiful, but it seems impossible to get rid of that 'mask of glitch' that stays over the footage, and even beyond that, the noise levels are extreme.
 
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I don't know what is going on with your camera, that is for sure. Here is an example of what I can shoot with my T2i, just off the cuff. This was shot with a Nikkor 50mm F1.4 pre-AI lense, at f2.8, shutter speed of 1/50th ISO 800. Shot at 1080 24P, and screen shot exported from FCP 7 as a JPEG. No post manipulation was applied. The incident light meter reading, at the smiley face, was 5 footcandles taken with a Sekonic L-398. Yes, there is noticeable noise, but give me a break. It is hardly representative of what I could achieve if I were to light a scene to ISO 800. The off white wall in the back ground is lit with a 40 watt (output) 2700 K CFL bulb from 3 feet, the frontal light is from a 55 watt (output) 5500K fluorescent work light, bounced off my office back wall and wood grain closet doors from 12 feet.

T2itest01000722.jpg
 
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Snapper123 said:
And again, if this is normal, can someone explain how this video was shot (especially since this video is using higher ISO's?):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk3-XKsnWCs
Click to expand...

That youtube vid you are linking is not shot at high iso's. I only needed to watch the first 20 seconds - look at the contrast.
That's strong lights, flagged. The author's description even says its a stopped down lens.
Stopped down! There you go ... sums it up.
 
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In the above picture, I set the exposure, by first setting the shutter speed, 1/50th/sec and the ISO, of 800, and then used the camera's internal meter to set my exposure. I use manual lenses, so what I do is set up a shot, switch the main control dial to the manual and adjust my aperture until the exposure meter, in the bottom left of the eye piece (or live view on the LCD) is in the middle. I have my exposure metering set to spot, so once I have set my exposure, I can move the center spot around the frame and see where the exposure of the rest of the frame is at, as shown with the exposure meter. If there are large differences in exposure in my frame, I make the proper adjustments to expose the shot the way I want. If I am unsure, I will shot a still shot, or short video clip, and look at it on the LCD, and/or view it with the histogram. Once I am sure of my exposure. I shot the clip.
 
Thats the thing, see, im not testing this camera for how it produces picture when you have a perfect light set up, im testing it to see the specific blockage that happens in contrast scenarios, involving blacks, blues, creams, greys, ect ect. And I can specifically say that my footage looks like its been transcoded to youtube 15 times. It still has a blockage mask even in extremely well lit outdoor shots, and you do not use set lighting outdoors. The only time it goes away outdoors is if I use superflat, but if I change the sharpness or other things at all, the overall blockage on the detail appears. At this point, Im not concerned about noise anymore, i discovered that it was blockage and not noise that i was seeing.
 
Snapper123 said:
Thats the thing, see, im not testing this camera for how it produces picture when you have a perfect light set up, im testing it to see the specific blockage that happens in contrast scenarios, involving blacks, blues, creams, greys, ect ect. And I can specifically say that my footage looks like its been transcoded to youtube 15 times. It still has a blockage mask even in extremely well lit outdoor shots, and you do not use set lighting outdoors. The only time it goes away outdoors is if I use superflat, but if I change the sharpness or other things at all, the overall blockage on the detail appears. At this point, Im not concerned about noise anymore, i discovered that it was blockage and not noise that i was seeing.
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How are you viewing your clips? Are you transcoding them before viewing them? If you are getting these "Blocking" artifact when you pull the .mov files straight off the card (and viewed with QT Player), then there is something very, very wrong with that camera. Now we all have to deal with aliasing and moire, but what you are describing sounds like some kind of compression artifact and I have not seen anything like that (outside of shi**y compression for the web).

Now, if the .mov files right off the card are cool, then you would need to look at your transcoding workflow.
 
Oh no it's straight from the card lol. In all honest, like I've been saying, it's never 'severe', but it is noticeable to my eyes, and it makes my footage look harsh and not 'real'. I mean, at the end of the day, cameras were invented to capture our surroundings just as much as they were made to be used in film (and I feel like this is especially true for the T2i, as they seemed to have marketed it for press and journalist photographers.)

Basically, the times that it is most severe is when an object is actually blurred, and not in focus. You can see lines and harshness all in the blur. Here's two screen shots of 1080P files that show this, one filmed at if I remember correctly 6400 (with good noise ratio in the spots that are in focus, actually!), and one filmed at I think 200 or 400. Both exhibit the exact same problems; extreme harshness in the blur. I feel like this is the 'blockage mask' I'm seeing. Why would aliasing, or even the line technology, show up in the blur? It's not like its tiny lines either, it looks like huge 1cm columns.

http://i26.tinypic.com/13z1ut2.png
http://i32.tinypic.com/2ajxvnq.png

Both photos saved in PNG so no quality loss whatsoever from the original screenshot

Here are some others (photobucket may have lowered the quality slightly, but I know tinypic doesn't.:
http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac77/buttercupblessing/Untitled123.png (the photo from page 2 or 3)
http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac77/buttercupblessing/Untithhbhxbled.png

This one is a screen shot of the 640P crop mode .
http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac77/buttercupblessing/IMG_1ddd117.png

Here's a general test of footage, which shows tons of aliasing problems as well as low quality loss (I once raised the gamma on this photo as a test and it was HORRIBLE what showed up on the screen shot:)

http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac77/buttercupblessing/T2iVideoQuality.png

Keep in mind these are all PNG files taken straight from the native 1080P files in quicktime player. Also keep in mind all of these were shot with SuperFlat, with the first couple being shot on a new CineGamma preset I downloaded. They were also shot using a Class 10 memory card, with all the settings on camera that I have read in 100% professional blogs. But at the end of the day, I'm telling you 100% that these screenshots represent 100% of what I'm seeing when the videos are playing on my QT player at 100% full size. It actually looks a bit better when I resize the player to 720P, as the blockage gets smaller and harder to see. I don't even really mean the slight speckling, I mean that I see very horizontal/vertical looking harsh stuff even in my ISO 100 videos, when the objects are blurred!

Now, in all honesty, is there any slight chance this could just be my computer doing this? My family has a 1080P tv and I tested my camera out on that with a HDV chord I bought, and it looked pretty bad too, so....I don't think it is...
 
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Ahhhh,

Now I see what you are getting at.

You know what that is? It's called digital photography with a camera with low resolving power. Welcome to the world of sub $50k cameras.

If you'd like to improve upon what you are seeing, and still have some ability in low light, I can give you a very short list of cameras that will solve your issue.

1. RED One with M-X chip
2. Arri Alexa
3. Sony F35
4. Panavision Genesis

Unless you're willing to pony up for one of those, you had better get used to what you are seeing, because it will be quite normal for you. The GH1 with the new hack, will exhibit better quality than you show here due to it's bit-rate. It's possible if you put a nano-flash or some other external recorder on a camera with HDMI out and one that has a large sensor, you could remove some of these obstacles.

But you're trying to sit at the champagne table with beer money right now my friend.
 
This is why I shoot in 1080p but I release only in 720p with my 7D for this reason. It at least covers up some of the artifacts (but definitely NOT all).
 
I think one thing I'm gonna do, I'm going to make a short film in this department store I know of. Department stores have plenty of light, there should not be a problem, and to help the skin tones and any harsh reflections on the face, I'll use reflectors, diffusions, lens filters, and tricks of the trade. I'll make something that is truly professional, and if it comes out great, it comes out great.

Before I do that though, what would be one good preset to use to get a fairly cinematic color tone and one that'd also make the blacks pretty black, and I don't know, just deep colors and depth. I just want to record this particular project 100% all-camera, I don't want to do any post processing or color changing in post, I just want to see what is the absolute clearest, prettiest, great colored, high quality videos I can get from this camera without any post help at all. Oh yeah, also, what would generally make the facial shape perception look better, using a 50mm prime and standing a bit farther away, or using a 35mm prime and standing a bit closer? I always feel like I get the best perception shots at 18-35, but I honestly have not tested this out on many faces yet (and this short film idea I'm doing, it's going to have a human subject lol.)
 
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Snapper123 said:
I think one thing I'm gonna do, I'm going to make a short film in this department store I know of. Department stores have plenty of light, there should not be a problem, and to help the skin tones and any harsh reflections on the face, I'll use reflectors, diffusions, lens filters, and tricks of the trade. I'll make something that is truly professional, and if it comes out great, it comes out great.
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Tricks of the trade eh? What tricks of the trade do you know? I'm going to guess that you don't really know any.

A department store has ample lighting. That's true. But any decent cinematographer would run the other direction in a hurry, because of the MASSIVE undertaking it would be to rebulb a department store with lights suitable for photography or filming. The CRI of lighting in most department stores, customers often have to walk outside with merchandise to see what the actual color is. This statement is akin to saying you're going to shoot under sodium vapor lights with reflectors and diffusion and see if it comes out well.

Snapper123 said:
Before I do that though, what would be one good preset to use to get a fairly cinematic color tone and one that'd also make the blacks pretty black, and I don't know, just deep colors and depth.
Click to expand...

This does not exist. The closest is shooting standard, but you have to know what the heck you're doing to not blow it on the high end, and not to crush the blacks. It demands care, and understanding of lighting control.

Snapper123 said:
I just want to record this particular project 100% all-camera, I don't want to do any post processing or color changing in post, I just want to see what is the absolute clearest, prettiest, great colored, high quality videos I can get from this camera without any post help at all.
Click to expand...

While I admire your desire to do this, you're talking about doing something people with a mastery of the craft have. Based on your posts over the past week, I'd say you're a good 10 years from getting solid and repeatable results this way.

Snapper123 said:
Oh yeah, also, what would generally make the facial shape perception look better, using a 50mm prime and standing a bit farther away, or using a 35mm prime and standing a bit closer?
Click to expand...

I am going to suggest to you that you take a good basic course in photography. And I am NOT saying that to be condescending in the least. I recommend that same thing to many people who come to video without a good background in photography. You'll get a TON out of a course like that at your local community college. I studied photography and journalism for many years and those lessons all translated directly to video work. It would answer questions like you've had here, and others you've asked recently.

Frankly, I think you've made a poor selection of camera. It sounds like the GH1 would be much better suited to your needs. Especially a hacked one. Thye Canon camera demand to be well shot, and they are best when shot with an idea of going to post. I wouldn't dream of trying to do professional level video work on them without post.

Snapper123 said:
I always feel like I get the best perception shots at 18-35, but I honestly have not tested this out on many faces yet (and this short film idea I'm doing, it's going to have a human subject lol.)
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