I decided that over Christmas I would get some experience of shooting video on a DSLR as opposed to using a DV camera shooting to tape, or my iPhone 4s' shooting highly compressed H264. The University has just bought a number of Canon 600D's a remarkable camera at an extraordinary price-break at £450 (with kit zoom lens 18 - 55mm) it shoots in Full HD (1080p) with an ISO range of 100 - 6400. It has a swing out articulated screen, is light and easily portable.The standard lens is rather slow (f3.5 to f5.6) so I also borrowed a 35mm f1.8 lens and a 50mm f1.8 lens. I thought that these would work better under the low light stage conditions I was likely to encounter.
13th Dec 2012. The Louisiana, Bristol.
Setting up the camera in advance I was faced with using the automated video settings or using my own. I shot the first gig using the auto settings for the sharpness, contrast and colour. Since I expected the auto audio settings to be bad under gig conditions - the levels would tend to 'pump' as the gain is increased and decreased with variation of ambient levels. So I switched the audio settings into manual and made a guess at a level - reducing the record level to about 25% of it's range. I figured this would be sufficient. I didn't realise that I wouldn't be able to monitor the audio levels while the view finder was 'live'.
There first thing I noticed was that exposure is set up quite differently. I could select the video settings for frame rate and frame size. Exposure was then balanced by manually setting the aperture (f number) and varying the ISO. There were intervals of 64, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400. That's a doubling of light or 1m stop =/-. There was a fair bit of light so the ISO was set at 200 to ensure great quality. But it meant that I was shooting 'wide open' at f1.8. So the DOF was very shallow and the focus critical. The camera allows the use of the digital zoom as a form of 'expanded focus' which was useful to check the focus point, but it wont operate while recording. (Unlike the Z1 for example).
I only had the 50mm for this gig - and I wished I had a wider lens. It was difficult covering the 3 piece band.
(direct from camera, auto settings and incorrectly manually set audio. Compressed by Media Encoder using HD YouTube setting)
I know from the exposure level that I wouldn't have got much video with the iPhone but I thought the Canon 600D images were really excellent. However the colours were rather over the top and the focus seemed 'soft'. So I tweaked the User Preset to increase the sharpness and decrease the colour saturation. I'd shoot again. Sadly the audio was 'over recorded' in the loader sections of the songs so that particular recording was ruined. Although the quality and frame size meant that stills grabbed from the timeline were very useable.
Sample frame grabs from first Louis footage (1080p). These are unprocessed grabs. Normally I would Photoshop them to set levels etc.
30th Dec 2012. Moles Cafe, Bath.
The next gig was in Bath at Moles cafe. There was one central light that slowly changed colour. The light levels varied by about a stop or so. I shot Big Green Uncle at 200 ISO and Alfred at 400 ISO. This time I had the 35mm lens, which I knew from taking stills at the venue previously, would be well suited to cover the bands. I had also read up more on camera settings and I had learnt that the contrast setting needs to be set at zero - to avoid the highlights burning out. The colour level needs to be reduced by about 30% and the sharpness should be left at zero. Sharpness and colour should be added in post. It's much more flexible and will avoid 'moire' which is a common DSLR artifact. Rather than recording a 'perfect' video the idea is to record a 'flat' video image that then offers a recording of the greatest range possible. The look or grade is then added in Post. I found this very useful video on YouTube. It covers these points well.
(DSLR tutorial)
Big Green Uncle. As mentioned above, they were quite well lit - except from the colour changes. I struggled with the focus on this. I was wide open at f1.8 at 200 ISO. I would have been better dropping to 400 ISO and stopping down abit.
Next up was Alfred. The split lead singers were a problem since they were both 'out of the light'. Only George the drummer was in the light. So I had to set the exposure on the singers - and Joe camera right - was almost a stop darker than Frank. Plus the light kept rotating and changing too. I set the ISO at 400 to give me more exposure and stopped down slightly. The aperture can be set in fractions of a stop, unlike the ISO which is always whole steps.
In order to edit and do the post on the DSLR footage I experimented with Premier Pro. I had a copy of The Editor's guide to Adobe Premiere Pro and I worked through the book with the provided video and my test recordings. It was great to bring the material directly from the SD card into the Mac. The book recommends making a disk image of the card as a master copy. The files are then opened from the disk image and copied into the working Project folder. So the material ends up being in 2 places. A master copy and a working copy. It's still a quicker workflow than FCP's requirement to convert to ProRes which triples the sizes of the rushes. That makes 4 times the storage issues!
9th Dec 2013. By way of comparison here is some video footage shot previously at Moles on an iPhone 4s - using the FilmicPro iApp. This has been the 'standard' way I have filmed Stevie Jo's gigs. Quick, easy and very portable. Generally fine for YouTube upload.
High Def playback on my old Mac Pro was stuttery. The machine struggles to playback 1080p - it also lacks loads of headroom on it's hard drive, which doesn't help. But it was workable, just. Exporting the colour corrected footage took ages since it also compressed it down fro YouTube upload.
I wasn't happy with my CC work. There is a setting in Premiere that smooths the effect over a range of frames which I had needed to select. So as a result there is an undesirable flickering effect. I didn't do much in the way of CC. There was a large range in adjustment that could be made. The Shadow/Highlight filter in particular was stunning. It allowed me to boost the mid range and balance the exposure slightly. The scopes worked well and I was attentive to the luma values - raising the values around the 60% value without removing the lighting effect visible at the time.
Original uncorrected footage.
With Shadow/Highlight filter applied. (Too much)With Shadow/ Highlight filter reduced slightly to deepen the shadows but preserving highlight detail.
A second attempt to colour correct the Alfred Footage. Having learnt my lesson, the colour correction on this export works better with no flicker effect.
4th Jan 2013. The Louisiana, Bristol (again).
Having practiced at Moles I then got another chance to shoot at the Louis again. This time I had the 35mm lens and was using my newly understood User Preset. I would set the audio much more carefully this time.
Sadly Stevie was suffering with a very sore throat so musically the gig wasn't as good as the first. But from a camera point of view the recording was technically better. The audio levels were fine - albeit low quality from the small/cheap on board mic. The lens was ideal. I noticed that there was half as much light as previously, so instead of shooting at 200 ISO I shot at 400 ISO. I also decided to underexpose slightly so see how that affected the grade in Post. If also offered me slightly deeper DOF so the focus wasn't so critical.
So on balance:
- the settings on the camera need to be configured to produce the widest range of expsure and colour values
- the onboard audio is not as good as the video quality
- with one camera the ideal lens is probably a 35mm or equivalent. Which 2 cameras, the second camera should probably have a 50 or 80mm or equivalent
- the workflow with Premier Pro and for DSLR is quite different to FCP 6 and 7 and DV cameras such as the Sony Z1 and PD 170
- a simple way to cover a gig like this would be with 2 cameras. A wide (35mm) and a clorser camera (50mm) with a quality sound feed from the mixer. This would be post synced later on Ingest
I need to learn more about colour correction in CS6. There are 3 ways of doing this, in Premiere, After Effects and Speedgrade. Too many choices! The control of workflow and media management is even more critical using this type of format and recoding equipment. The 600D represents extraordinary value for money against a camcorder. But it needs a range of ND filters, a handful of SD fast large cards, fast lens and some form of stabilisation. I used a monopod - a device that I have loved for a long time! The great news is - it works brilliantly with a DSLR.
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