Wide shots quality

F

fuen

Active member
Hi,

I know, there must be a lot of topics about this, but i can't seem to find any recent one.
You hear always about DSLR's being used even on big budget shoots, and i love using my 550D. But sometimes the footage is really, réally bad. Just unuseable. And the bad thing is that it's unpredictable which shots will look good and which won't.

Look at this shot:
http://danielmybucket1.s3.amazonaws.com/MVI_9167.mov-2.jpg

You must agree with me that it's just horrible. Even in 720p it's almost unuseable. And i know trees with a lot of detail are hard (i noticed everything else gets kind-of blurred a little, which works fine on most objects, but it's also why skin loses every detail on the Canons), but with the DSLRs being used that proffessionally, i have the feeling i almost must be doing something wrong?
 
What lens/f-stop/iso are you using?

Are you focusing manually?

The trees look a little soft, throw in the canon aliasing and you get that weird, too-contrasty crunchiness that lots of digital cams deliver, even for stills.

Have you done the basics - lower sharpening and saturation in-camera, before you shoot?

For starters, take your lens, set it at its widest, and do some tests at each f-stop; set the shutter so you have the same exposure. You may find shooting everything at 2.8 is too soft.

Next start collecting scene setting files and load them into your camera and test each of those - keep in mind many of those require grading to look good.

I stuck your image in Photoshop and sharpened the lower half of the frame, pulled some saturation out and crushed up the shadows a bit, it was big improvement - most DSLR shoots I've done require a fair amount of tweaking to make 'em beautiful.
 
Honestly, this is why I hate the Canon footage - what in the world is this? This image looks like it was stretched from some small 640P video. There is no way in the world an official production would use a shot as blurry as this, and then projecting that onto the bigscreen to boot, it makes this technology really seem like a joke. If the GH series is much better at this, I'd love to switch.
 
Although the footage doesn't look fantastic quicktimeX absolutely destroys your quality as well. Makes everything much softer and does something funny with your color and saturation as well
 
Snapper123 said:
Honestly, this is why I hate the Canon footage - what in the world is this? This image looks like it was stretched from some small 640P video. There is no way in the world an official production would use a shot as blurry as this, and then projecting that onto the bigscreen to boot, it makes this technology really seem like a joke. If the GH series is much better at this, I'd love to switch.
Click to expand...

A poor workman always blames his tools.
 
This is what I blame my camera for doing:

ddvzsdsdv.png


In a Red One world, these two shots would look 95% alike. Now apply this type of quality loss to a wide nature shot like the one above, and you have yourself a horrible shot, which is exactly what happened. It's not just wide angle, far away stuff either, this Fruit Of The Loom sticker comparison was photographed-then-recorded at only about 4 feet away.
 
I've done gorgeous shots for TV Spots with the little T2i, turned on comedy central and there it was. But you have to choose what you're shooting and set the camera accordingly. Just did another broadcast spot with it - but I used an HMC150 for the key talking head shots and the T2i for the product stuff.

It's an imperfect tool but can do luscious & lovely stuff with a look that (I find) you really have to go to film to get otherwise. But you have to decide at the conceptual & storyboard level if it's right for your shots.
 
Start at the basics with this shot:


You have captured an image that both contains sky during the daytime and deep shadows. This way, way exceeds the camera's dynamic range, which is about 8 stops. This exceeds most cameras dynamic ranges. The only medium that could handle this kind of shot is film, which has more than 13 stops of latitude. Without a polarizer, you cannot pull this shot off without clipping on one side of your histogram.

In the shot, it seems like you exposed for one of the middle-tone trees, which crushed your blacks and blew out your sky. If you want this shot to work, either re-frame it to avoid deep shadows or to avoid bright sky, or expose for one and not the other. To that, exposing for and focusing on the sky can add style and beauty to your shot, but exposing for the shadows and letting the sky blow out white and blocky is a tell-tale sign of a consumer camera or of an amateur.

You say you shot in 720p? Well, the half million pixels you're not using is also hurting your image quality.


These cameras have to be nurtured like every other camera. You cannot simply take the body and lens and go point in any direction with the expectation the shot will work itself out. Like music, great shots are composed.

On any set with a competent DP and camera crew, Neutral Density filters and Polarizers are part of the camera package, and they are used frequently to control exposure, since shutter is typically set to 180-degrees, the f-stop is fixed to achieve the depth of field the DP wants, and the ISO is as low as possible. (In case you did not know, polarizers will help bring the level of the sky down about 2 stops without adjusting the rest of the image; ND filters will bring down the light level of the entire image.)

Also, we need to look at workflow? What settings do you manipulate on your camera while shooting; which have you set before shooting? E.g. Picture Style, Custom Functions, etc. To what do you transcode your footage before editing/grading? What software(s) do you use to grade your footage? Do you use any "massaging" software like NeatVideo or even 5DtoRGB, for that matter. What is your final output? Theatrical? Home video? Web? DVD for a client?

ALL of that matters in the process of shooting with not just T2i's or 7D's, but with ALL cameras. I mention this because there are entire editing farms that massage and manipulate the footage to get it to look great, but that's achievable in part because it was shot right.


Do not feel bad if you are starting out. It took me 6 months to even get the hang of the 7D because it was such a new animal to me, and I just started shooting seriously at the time I bought it.

Keep shooting. You will understand composition, frame, and light in time, but concentrate on working within the limitations of your camera instead of pushing them too far and then trying to troubleshoot.
 
jscottprice said:
Start at the basics with this shot:


You have captured an image that both contains sky during the daytime and deep shadows. This way, way exceeds the camera's dynamic range, which is about 8 stops. This exceeds most cameras dynamic ranges. The only medium that could handle this kind of shot is film, which has more than 13 stops of latitude. Without a polarizer, you cannot pull this shot off without clipping on one side of your histogram.

In the shot, it seems like you exposed for one of the middle-tone trees, which crushed your blacks and blew out your sky. If you want this shot to work, either re-frame it to avoid deep shadows or to avoid bright sky, or expose for one and not the other. To that, exposing for and focusing on the sky can add style and beauty to your shot, but exposing for the shadows and letting the sky blow out white and blocky is a tell-tale sign of a consumer camera or of an amateur.

You say you shot in 720p? Well, the half million pixels you're not using is also hurting your image quality.


These cameras have to be nurtured like every other camera. You cannot simply take the body and lens and go point in any direction with the expectation the shot will work itself out. Like music, great shots are composed.

On any set with a competent DP and camera crew, Neutral Density filters and Polarizers are part of the camera package, and they are used frequently to control exposure, since shutter is typically set to 180-degrees, the f-stop is fixed to achieve the depth of field the DP wants, and the ISO is as low as possible. (In case you did not know, polarizers will help bring the level of the sky down about 2 stops without adjusting the rest of the image; ND filters will bring down the light level of the entire image.)

Also, we need to look at workflow? What settings do you manipulate on your camera while shooting; which have you set before shooting? E.g. Picture Style, Custom Functions, etc. To what do you transcode your footage before editing/grading? What software(s) do you use to grade your footage? Do you use any "massaging" software like NeatVideo or even 5DtoRGB, for that matter. What is your final output? Theatrical? Home video? Web? DVD for a client?

ALL of that matters in the process of shooting with not just T2i's or 7D's, but with ALL cameras. I mention this because there are entire editing farms that massage and manipulate the footage to get it to look great, but that's achievable in part because it was shot right.


Do not feel bad if you are starting out. It took me 6 months to even get the hang of the 7D because it was such a new animal to me, and I just started shooting seriously at the time I bought it.

Keep shooting. You will understand composition, frame, and light in time, but concentrate on working within the limitations of your camera instead of pushing them too far and then trying to troubleshoot.
Click to expand...


Do you have some material I can look at, as you seem to know a lot

thanks
 
Just give me an Alexa. I'll prove it can take much more horrible pictures than this example. Obviously must be a crap camera.
 
I'll put my bet on the lens

in fact, I'll go much farther: I think it's the kit lens, stopped down way too much, where it becomes unbearably soft:
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/...meraComp=474&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=5


edit: maybe I went too far, other lenses show the same problem, including my beloved tamron 17-50 f/2.8, and, to a lesser degree, the canon 17-40 f/4L:
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/...meraComp=474&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=6
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/...meraComp=453&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=5

so maybe it's just a matter of not going beyond f/8...
 
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Wow, thanks for the reply's everyone!

I did shoot in 1080, neutral picture style, then transcoded with 5DtoRGB with 1.8 gamma flag, then just opened it on QuickTime. Sharpening does help a bit, but it still looks really, really pixelated.

I've been working with DSLR's for about two years now, and i consider myself to generally know shooting with DSLR's pretty well, however there's always plenty to learn.
99% of the footage i've shot with the 550D's looks great, totally usable for productions, especially when there's even just a little depth-of-field which gives the illusion of a much better quality recording. I also agree the shot isn't really done well (this was a test, shot wasn't really used), but i don't think that is of importance here.

To my eye, it's _clearly_ the codec which is lacking here. No matter how crappy footage you shoot, then you would just supposed to get a bad shot, but still ok quality-wise, where this just isn't supposed to happen to footage that's labelled '1080p', even not in worst-case scenario (which it about-ish is here; trees, detail, soft, not properly exposed).

The fact that you have to be careful to not to push the codec to it's limits (not the camera) just isn't right, i think. I don't think you can just point and shoot and the image will work itself out, however, you are supposed to have a good quality (not looking) image that hasn't worked itself out. If that makes any sense at all :P.
 
It's not the codec. That shot is obviously shot with a too stopped aperture. This creates the softness + huge amounts of aliasing. What we're your detail settings?
 
Isn't a stopped down aperture supposed to generally give a sharper image? Detail settings were neutral, would be even worse on normal.
 
fuen said:
Isn't a stopped down aperture supposed to generally give a sharper image? Detail settings were neutral, would be even worse on normal.
Click to expand...

No, there is a sweet spot. beyond that it got worse. Have a look: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/50-comparison/f-stops.htm

Snapper123 said:
Honestly, this is why I hate the Canon footage - what in the world is this? ...There is no way in the world an official production would use a shot as blurry as this
Click to expand...

Look at "24" (especially the first and second season) they sometimes use worse material than that.
 
Oh, but we didn't get that far down. I think about 1/4th of the range? (? idk, :somewhat, to get more in focus).
Again, i don't say the DSLR's are bad, far from that. But sometimes, they cán be really bad. Look at video's at YouTube and Vimeo, download the originals. All wide shots are not quite as good as you wish them to be (especially in nature; trees.), and the image i posted is an extreme example. However, i'm really interested in what to do to minimize this effect, because i'm kind of scared to shoot stuff like that right know.

And yes, it's also all relative. It's not bad bad bad, but it's not as good as you wish it to be. And when you're shooting your own short film, for example, 'good' often isn't good enough, even though it is.
 
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