Thoughts on the 7d on a narrative shoot

mhood said:
Why would Barry want to write a book about a camera that he has described as "awful" and "unprofessional"? In fact, he has plainly said that none of the vDSLRs are up to his professional standards. I wonder why he even comes on this 7D forum at all...
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Because perhaps when you understand what the thing can do, you're then prepared to get the best results from it. I've gotten some very good footage out of the 7D. And I've gotten some very bad footage out of it too. It is not a product I would trust to a paying gig. Others will feel otherwise. It is not a product that performs consistently in a good fashion, and it can be awful. Sorry you don't like those words, but they're true.

It is priced appropriately.

It is very, very good for the price. When it's in its happy zone, it renders gorgeous imagery.

I, for one, will never advocate that anyone stick their head in the sand and just pretend, really really hard, that the problems don't exist. I will point them out so that nobody else gets surprised and bitten by them. If you find that offensive, you and I will just have to agree to disagree.
 
So you have donned a cap and spandex suit and are playing the role of the champion detractor of all things vDSLR? That's a good use of your professional effort? You've just said again that you wouldn't use a 7D professionally, yet you plan to publish a book that trains readers in the use of the 7D. That isn't disingenuous to you? Of course, you have every right to do whatever...that goes without saying. It just doesn't make much sense to me...that's all.
 
You seem to have a penchant for putting words into mouths.

I've donned the cap of pointing out when cameras might fail someone. I did it with long-GoP compression, and I did it again with rolling shutter, and now I'm doing it again with aliasing sensors. And every time, folks have screamed and complained, but in every case I stand firmly behind my words, and I believe it's fair to say that once the hype dies down and people settle in to using the products, they find out that what I was telling them was true the whole time.

And, I'm confident that will happen again.

Secondly, where did I say I was going to publish a book on the 7D?

Third -- whether it meets MY professional standards or not, has no bearing on whether it meets OTHERS' professional standards. And if people want to use a product professionally, I will certainly do what I can to help them understand the situations that they can get themselves into that would ruin a shot.

Because my focus is on the people, not the equipment. This is dvxUSER,com, not DVX100.com.

If you think that makes me a "champion detractor of all things vDSLR", I think you might want to re-examine your premises.
 
In all fairness, you didn't say you were going to publish a book about using the 7D. I was responding to another poster saying he was looking forward to your book about using the 7D.

I still feel it is disingenuous to critique the 7D beyond the conclusion that it is a camera you would not use professionally. What's your point?
 
The point is to show what it does, and what it doesn't do, so that people can make informed decisions about what they're getting into.

We have just emerged from a situation where there was nothing but unbridled praise for all these products, with nobody looking behind the curtain to find out what wizardry they were employing.

I looked. What I saw wasn't pretty. I pointed it out.

I always do that, and will continue to do so.
 
No book? :-(

Dang.

BTW, we screened the footage for the director and post FX guys, and everyone is *very* happy with the choice of camera, myself included. We just had to toss one shot out due to camera quirks: a whip pan with noticeable skew. I'll post some stills once I get them from the editor. There's even some green screen work which will be interesting.
 
Here are some screen grabs from the shoot, uncorrected.

Kit lens with a BPM #2:
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A chroma key shot should be interesting:
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The detail on this is amazing:
4055703735_d02fd1a70a_b.jpg


The low light resolving capability of this camera is amazing. This is well after sunset, I should not have been able to capture an image. We finished filming and called it a wrap, then these amazing red clouds came out. We decided to grab a post-martini shot. This was shot with the cheap 18-55 Rebel kit lens (f3.5) and an even cheaper .5 wide angle adapter attached to the front of the lens (hence the horrible chromatic abberations at the edge.) Take note this too is uncorrected:
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Barry,

I own 2 HMC-150 s. Do you think the canon 7d would be a suitable b-roll or 3rd camera for a 150 shoot? Would the 7d come close to matching with all cameras in 24p?

Thanks
 
7D has a very different look to the footage. It's a lot smoother and less gritty/"organic", more like HPX300 or EX1 footage (which is to be expected, it's CMOS and all). So I don't know how well it'll match up. Color-wise, it's not too shabby, you can tweak the colors enough in the 7D to get it reasonably representative, but it also depends on how much you want it to match. If you want to do a three-camera shoot and have it so that nobody can tell the difference between them, then no way, you'd need another HMC150 or HPX170 for that.
 
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