T2i What is going on? / Either me or my camera sucks

thehadgi

thehadgi

Active member
lol. I'm sure it's me. So what is wrong with the below picture/what am doing to give it such crappy quality?

still.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9079827/Photos/still.jpg


Not sharp, blurry and sh*t colors, (is that what aliasing is?), blocky, and couldn't do anything with colors in post.

550d w/ newest ML
Tokina 11-16 @ infinity f/22
Flaat 10 pic profile
frame grab from 60fps 1/4000th shutter speed

I don't know what to call the things that are making this look crappy, and I don't know what I'm doing that making this not look nice and crisp. I mean, the tokina is a nice lens, so can't be that right? Stills I take are great, but video thus far has all seemed to suffer the same type of look, even at 1/48 24p up around f/2.0.

Can a newbie get some help here :crybaby:
 
Well, you're shooting into the sun for starters. That'll wash colors out. Also, many lenses lose sharpness on the extreme ends of the aperture scale... f/22 on the Tokina is going to soften the image.

At 60fps, that means you have to be shooting in 720p. 720p mode with Canon EOS cameras is notoriously bad by comparison to 1080p... it makes aliasing and moire worse.

Side note: it's important to understand shutter speed, frame rate, and aperture in relation to video vs. stills. You should keep your camera set to 1/60 shutter speed for HD video (1/50 if you're in PAL territory), unless you want the "Private Ryan" effect (use a higher shutter-speed) or you're shooting 720p60 for slow-mo in which case you'll want to go to 1/120. If you're shooting under natural light (read: sun), then you can use the ML shutter speed function to hit 1/48, but under artifical light you need to match the electrical system in order to avoid strobing artifacts.

Again, lenses are sharpest in the middle aperture range (generally 5.6-8), so stay there unless you need shallower DoF. If you cannot get proper exposure at 1/60 and the desired aperture and ISO (read: overexposed), then you need ND filtering.
 
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Ah, ok gotcha. Thanks! I'll go and try that tomorrow. I was shooting at 1/4000 because I was thinking of going for twixtor for some slow-mo stuff, obviously a waterfall was a terrible choice.

Ok, don't shoot in sun, if I have to get a ND filter; and unless I'm using twixtor I don't need that fast of a shutter.

Looks like I'm going to have to keep practicing... I haven't gotten great final renders yet so I need to think about lighting and some post stuff more I guess
 
Here's what I'd suggest:

Ditch the Flaat picture style for the time being. Focus on getting proper exposure and a clean look in-camera, and working with light. Once you've got the hang of it, then you can introduce yourself to picture styles and post-production grading.

If you're outdoors, keep the sun to your back unless you want to silhouette the subject (in which case you stop down to expose for the sun/sky). Most of the time, you'll want your key light source to be behind the camera and toward the subject, or at least off to the side... either way, not pointing back toward the lens.

And don't sweat it too much... these things take time and lots of practice. If you jump in too far, too soon, you may miss something. it's better to master basics of shooting before you star messing around with post... if you cannot get a clean image in camera, no grading in the world is going to fix it.
 
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Flat picture style ungraded will give that image.
If you have to shoot flat, grade some saturation and contrast in it to bring back the colours, you also have to sharpen it in post.

Dont bother with flat picture styles, just try neautral.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I was all in a rush to try to justify myself reaching for ye ol credit card and buying an fs-700. But I'm guessing based on the above shot it's not going to automatically make me a pro... ha :-(


-Also, I thought shooting flat was good? Allowing more flexibility?
 
Don't shoot flat
& NEVER shoot at f/22

I would suggest reading a lot and doing more tests ..... The camera is fine you are just not using it correctly.
 
thehadgi said:
I was all in a rush to try to justify myself reaching for ye ol credit card and buying an fs-700. But I'm guessing based on the above shot it's not going to automatically make me a pro... ha :-(
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It's good that you acknowledge that. Too many beginners put stock in the idea that the gear is what makes a professional shooter or cinematographer or videographer. Money buys plastic, metal, and glass. It doesn't buy knowledge, experience, or talent; those must be earned through practice and learning.

Don't put yourself into an $8k credit hole for this. A "pro" will be able to work with most any tool given him/her. When you hit that point, then it may be time to consider investing in a higher-end camera... you know, when your skills are earning the income to pay off the investment.

thehadgi said:
-Also, I thought shooting flat was good? Allowing more flexibility?
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There are two schools of thought: get your look in-camera and use color correction and grading in post only to finesse, or shoot flat and use post to resurrect all color and contrast information and to create the final look.

The former is the traditional way, and uses everything from choice of lens (for color renditionand sharpness) to choice of film stock (for grain and color reproduction) to lens filters (for colors and effects) in getting the desired look. Post-production correction is used only to make slight adjustments where necessary and to even the images out across the edit. The benefit of getting as close as possible to your desired look in-camera is that you maximize the information you get in the field with a compressed codec and minimize the amount you have to push the codec in post (which is where the weakness of highly-compressed codecs really comes out).

The latter was popularized by the "digital film" revolution. With the introduction of 24p miniDV through the DVX100, there was suddenly an availability of a "motion picture" or "cinematic" look for the masses. With it came a slew of in-camera picture profiles to emulate all sorts of film stock and genre looks, but there were folks who decided to shoot as neutral as possible and use things like Magic Bullet to emulate their favorite genres. The DV codec can only go so far in post, and the in-camera settings made possible some pretty cool looks. Of course, if you screw it up, you're stuck with what you've recorded.

Enter the HDSLR era, and the ability to super-customize the picture profiles, and suddenly there were cheats to the loss of dynamic range (as opposed to film) that created the method of shooting extremely flat. Suddenly, the conversation about in-camera picture profiles for anything else was all but gone. Again, it's pushing a codec pretty hard in post. The plus side of shooting flat and grading later is that you can preserve a little more DR, but at the expense of straining the codec.

Choose wisely. I'd suggest that you save shooting flat for times when you know you'll be doing some pretty intense grading. But if you master the art of getting your images to look right during production, you won't need to do so much in post.

And don't forget: there are still nifty white-balance tricks to use in-camera. I think a lot of folks have forgotten about this. Try WB through CTO or CTB gel, or through another color gel, to get some wacky color shifts.
 
Ok so I guess that means some experimenting, figuring out what I'm look I'm going for and what/where I'm shooting. I thought shooting flat everywhere would let me pick any look I wanted in post, but I guess in my case I need to think more about lighting, situation, exposure, etc and get that nailed down because until then regardless of what style I shoot in it won't look good? I think I'll try out the neutral setting, scene set up, and think more about what I'm shooting and then test out how far I can go in post (if needed). And I always thought shooting flat always automatically gave you way more flexibility in post on matter what; good to know that it depends on what I'm shooting and what look I'm going for.

Looks like I got a longer road than I thought originally, eh? :/

One thing I noticed yesterday is that my footage seems to look a lot better on my roommate's 48 inch plasma TV than it does on my ASUS 24'' monitor. Is that good or bad?
 
thehadgi said:
And I always thought shooting flat always automatically gave you way more flexibility in post on matter what; good to know that it depends on what I'm shooting and what look I'm going for.
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Flat only works to preserve things that are normally lost in these digital image sensors, specifically DR. It will not absolve you of the need for good lighting and proper exposure. Look at it this way: if it won't look good with a normal picture profile, there's no way it'll look good flat.

thehadgi said:
Looks like I got a longer road than I thought originally, eh? :/
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But learning can be the fun part! Experiment. Play. Make mistakes. The journey is the destination, right?

thehadgi said:
One thing I noticed yesterday is that my footage seems to look a lot better on my roommate's 48 inch plasma TV than it does on my ASUS 24'' monitor. Is that good or bad?
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I wouldn't worry about that. Without reference to how each of those displays is set up, there's no way to know what's actually going on. Plus, it depends on how you're watching on your Asus monitor... I assume that's your computer display? If you're watching within your NLE, it's not accurate. Also, if you're playing back with QuickTime Player, it's not accurate. In professional edit suites, video is sent to a separate output that feeds a high-end, calibrated color monitor that may also have scopes attached (waveform monitor and vector scope). That's the only guaranteed way to know what your picture will look like in the end. But you should also learn how to read the scopes in your NLE, assuming you're using software that includes them. That can help your post-production process immensely.
 
Personally I consider "flat" to mean "near-log, with no in-built s-curve". Which is a thing I want because it makes grading a lot easier: if you want a different s-curve than the one that's in-built in your footage, you have to fight with that in-built curve, to counteract it and at the same time add the one you want. If your footage is near-log, adding the s-curve that you want is a lot easier. On the other hand, many people think about "flat" as meaning "with more DR". But I don't like that use of the term: I would call that "wide" or directly "with lots of DR"; with my definition of "flat", there's "flat" with lots of DR and with very little DR; and there's "not-flat" with lots of DR too.
 
Look up diffraction. (using the lens more closed than F8)

Resolution - check some charts of the cam at 720

Do you have a front filter - lots of ghosting

Is the lens clean :)

ISO to get you 1/4000 at 22 ?

Learn about how a flat profile and an 8bit compressed camera is only done by the clueless

Here you have multiple factors in play, like everything that can possibly make a camera look bad.

And btw, shooting with the sun on your back is only appropriate 5% of the time.

S
 
Stu Maschwitz's Prolost Flat profile for Canon DSLRs is very flat, this is its light response function:
neutral_4.jpg

I think we're talking about different "flat" here, if you mean "flat" as in "with lots of DR", then of course a profile that gives you 14 stops of DR on an 8-bit codec would be a bad idea if your scene only requires 9 stops of latitude; and still I'd think it would be great to have at hand for extreme cases where you actually need 14 stops of DR and can't do anything about it except expand your latitude or crop at the edges.
 
Now, looking back at the original picture...

* 1/4000s is way too fast, unless you want to get an extremely stroboscopic effect, avoid this, stay with the 180º rule, or close to that
* f/22 is way too narrow, diffraction will kill any sign of sharpness in your image
* sun in frame will wash out your colors, avoid it if you're not looking for that effect

I suggest you read through all of this: http://www.similaar.com/foto/tuten/index.html
 
Samuel H said:
Now, looking back at the original picture...

* 1/4000s is way too fast, unless you want to get an extremely stroboscopic effect, avoid this, stay with the 180º rule, or close to that
* f/22 is way too narrow, diffraction will kill any sign of sharpness in your image
* sun in frame will wash out your colors, avoid it if you're not looking for that effect

I suggest you read through all of this: http://www.similaar.com/foto/tuten/index.html
Click to expand...

The OP wanted a high shutter to use twixtor.
Indeed difraction is a killer
The loss of contrast with a point source in shot depends on..
Filters
Cleanliness
Quality of lens

S
 
morgan_moore said:
Look up diffraction. (using the lens more closed than F8)

Resolution - check some charts of the cam at 720

Do you have a front filter - lots of ghosting

Is the lens clean :)

ISO to get you 1/4000 at 22 ?

Learn about how a flat profile and an 8bit compressed camera is only done by the clueless

Here you have multiple factors in play, like everything that can possibly make a camera look bad.

And btw, shooting with the sun on your back is only appropriate 5% of the time.

S
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Not sure how to check charts? I'm guessing this would involve downloading some photography chart and printing it out, and shooting it with my cam and comparing it?

And the iso was only probably at like... 160ish given the sun was pointing right at me.

Shooting with the sun at my back is only good 5% of the time :huh: Boy that confuses me now


Samuel H said:
Now, looking back at the original picture...

* 1/4000s is way too fast, unless you want to get an extremely stroboscopic effect, avoid this, stay with the 180º rule, or close to that
* f/22 is way too narrow, diffraction will kill any sign of sharpness in your image
* sun in frame will wash out your colors, avoid it if you're not looking for that effect

I suggest you read through all of this: http://www.similaar.com/foto/tuten/index.html
Click to expand...

Definitely going to keep to 180 for everything that won't go through twixtor. Which should've included this shot, as there was no reason to use twixtor for this waterfall. Knowing what I know now, if I need a fast shutter for slow motion, I'll make sure I got proper lighting and shooting a medium aperture for max sharpness. In this case for slow-motion, now I'm thinking I should bring the sharpness back up in-camera? Had it turned way down based off some recommendations for flat profiles in general.

Thanks guys for all the help, I know I'm probably asking a lot of newb questions but all this really helps. And Sam thanks for all your work on the flaat styles, even though maybe I'm not utilizing them right I'm excited to be using them eventually! :beer: I've read through your stuff a bit but I'm going to check out that link you gave me.
 
Samuel H said:
Stu Maschwitz's Prolost Flat profile for Canon DSLRs is very flat, this is its light response function:
neutral_4.jpg

I think we're talking about different "flat" here, if you mean "flat" as in "with lots of DR", then of course a profile that gives you 14 stops of DR on an 8-bit codec would be a bad idea if your scene only requires 9 stops of latitude; and still I'd think it would be great to have at hand for extreme cases where you actually need 14 stops of DR and can't do anything about it except expand your latitude or crop at the edges.
Click to expand...

And my last question (for now) is, so youre saying that if I'm shooting a scene where all objects in my scene can be captured in a smaller range DR-wise, it makes more sense to have a profile that captures more color information in-camera (or not?), since the camera's codec will probably do a good job in a more limited DR?
 
Hey Samuel, speaking of shooting flat, I was shooting with flaat 2 for the first time the other day and noticed a lot (I mean, a LOT) more noise in the darker reds/maroons than I usually see. Any comments on whether flaat had anything to do with it, or should I keep looking for other factors?
 
thehadgi said:
Not sure how to check charts? I'm guessing this would involve downloading some photography chart and printing it out, and shooting it with my cam and comparing it?

And the iso was only probably at like... 160ish given the sun was pointing right at me.

Shooting with the sun at my back is only good 5% of the time :huh: Boy that confuses me now
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The 7d (a camera I had but similar to yours) is pretty rubbish in 720 mode particularly on demanding wide scenes.

You could test yourself by filming a dollar bill or google canon T2i resolution chart in 720 video mode or suchlike

If your ISO was 160 it was not your issue

Another poster said 'shoot with the sun on yur back' - I think that is bad advice

S
 
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