Jump to content

shooting a narrative on the Canon 5D MARK 2


Daniel Carruthers

Recommended Posts

Im wondering if anyone has shot a narrative film on the Canon 5D mark 2 yet?

The only stuff Ive seen of the camera has been films with no talking.

I know you would need a seperate system for audio, just wondering if anyone has tried that yet?

I got a television pilot coming up in the summer,and 50% takes place at night on the streets.

And I could really use the high ISO the camera has to offer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

I've shot 3 x 2,5 mins narrative documentary bits for german television. The producer was really happy. The producion company shoots most of their stuff on P2 with Pro35 anyway so they knew what they were getting visually. The difference to the P+S was the ability to finally close the aperture. The 5D2 footage has no visible grain below 5000 ASA which i really prefer over the ground glass grain from all the image converters.

The non sync stuff frame rate was conformed to 25p with Apples cinema tools.

Other sync material was either processed in AfterEffects with a conversion tool (i have URL'ed the plugin here somewhere) or speeded up again 120% in FCP. With one talking shot the conversion looked ugly. I was keeping the slow version and the sound-guy went "Huh?!?"

We used a Sound Devices 702 recording the audio.

 

The 6400 ASA really comes in handy. You can shoot pretty much anything at 1.4 and shutter of 1/60 with no additional lighting at night on a street or in an appartment. That's the best thin about this setup. It looks like it was lit in half a days work, but actually wasn't lit at all, only available light.

Negatives: My camera gets a "hot pixel" above 5000 ASA though, so check your camera thoroughly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've shot 3 x 2,5 mins narrative documentary bits for german television. The producer was really happy. The producion company shoots most of their stuff on P2 with Pro35 anyway so they knew what they were getting visually. The difference to the P+S was the ability to finally close the aperture. The 5D2 footage has no visible grain below 5000 ASA which i really prefer over the ground glass grain from all the image converters.

The non sync stuff frame rate was conformed to 25p with Apples cinema tools.

Other sync material was either processed in AfterEffects with a conversion tool (i have URL'ed the plugin here somewhere) or speeded up again 120% in FCP. With one talking shot the conversion looked ugly. I was keeping the slow version and the sound-guy went "Huh?!?"

We used a Sound Devices 702 recording the audio.

 

The 6400 ASA really comes in handy. You can shoot pretty much anything at 1.4 and shutter of 1/60 with no additional lighting at night on a street or in an appartment. That's the best thin about this setup. It looks like it was lit in half a days work, but actually wasn't lit at all, only available light.

Negatives: My camera gets a "hot pixel" above 5000 ASA though, so check your camera thoroughly.

 

Thanks Oliver

 

Do you think it would be possible to record the sound on a mini dv camera? with a better Mic of course?

but say the camera was set to 30p to match the frame rate of the canon camera, would that work?

I dont know much about sound, I would just like to shoot some tests before the actual shoot.

and Im sure our sound guy will have his own professional recorder? but in the mean time I was hoping to use a small mini dv camera for sound then sinc up the audio later

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Daniel, you can use pretty much anything for recording the sound so a miniDV is just fine.

Please choose something with manual control over gain and a proper limiter. Otherwise you'll end up with just the same the 5D2 audio records internally.

 

okay thanks again oliver

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
Okay thanks

 

Also how would you go about converting the footage to 24p? could it be done in final cut pro, or do you need certain software?

And Ive heard its a pain to upload the footage in final cut pro? does anyone know the best solutions?

 

Hi,

 

It seems to work OK in FCP. I will know more in 10 days when the project is edited. I had a previousely unreported problem of image stutter, possibly sensor overheating as it did not happen in the morning. I used 6 cameras, more than 1 camera had the problem at some time but 1 camera had the problem a lot more than the others. Marching shutter speed between cameras was hit & miss, with fairly random results.

 

Stephen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

To avoid image stutter and jumping of frames:

a.) Shoot in "exposure simulation" and M (anual) mode (avoids some automatic modes during rec.)

b.) Use lenses with manual iris control (i.E. Nikon, Contax, etc. with EOS adaptor) - the Canon lenses may change the aperture during recording

c.) Lock with * to avoid ISO or shutter changes

d.) Use CF cards with a data transfer rate of >30MB/sec. (i.E. SanDisk Extreme III or IV)

 

I don't have any jumping frames in the recording. If playback is stuttering it may also be your PC hardware. The H264 quicktimes do need dual core with proper graphics to play without stutter in Full HD. Don't blame the cam or CF card for this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
To avoid image stutter and jumping of frames:

a.) Shoot in "exposure simulation" and M (anual) mode (avoids some automatic modes during rec.)

b.) Use lenses with manual iris control (i.E. Nikon, Contax, etc. with EOS adaptor) - the Canon lenses may change the aperture during recording

c.) Lock with * to avoid ISO or shutter changes

d.) Use CF cards with a data transfer rate of >30MB/sec. (i.E. SanDisk Extreme III or IV)

 

I don't have any jumping frames in the recording. If playback is stuttering it may also be your PC hardware. The H264 quicktimes do need dual core with proper graphics to play without stutter in Full HD. Don't blame the cam or CF card for this.

 

Hi,

 

If only life was so simple. I am talking about a random camera fault, we have 500 clips, about shots 15 have the problem. 1 Body is responsible for most but not all of those clips, that same body produced over 80 clips with no issue. We could see the problem whilst recording. We were shooting 18 hour days.

 

Stephen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd just like to add a cautionary note about speed. Just because you can shoot at 6400 doesn't mean you should. At these speeds, digital is a thousand times better than film ever was, but just because you don't get huge grain doesn't mean there aren't any fallbacks.

 

Remember, at this speed you're far over the chip's actual sensitivity, so you have a lot of complex algorhythms "guessing" what is there. Colors really start to suffer.

 

So if you can shoot in a situation where you otherwise wouldn't, great, but I'd caution against overdoing it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is the fastest "real world" results I could find with an internet search. . .

 

http://photo.net/sports-photography-forum/00QwJR

 

Sorry, it's a football still, not the same DSLR either, but you can see how pronounced the noise is at 8,000 EI. This would probably have a far more problematic effect at 24/25/30 fps. Wouldn't be as bad as push-processed film though. Oh, and it is the shot of the guy in the orange that is 8,000. Forgot there were other photos on there.

 

Just wanted to point out that "grainless" is only true technically. There may not be grain, but there certainly is a noise & color penalty.

 

Also, one final note, I see this all the time: If you want to "speed" do it right!

 

400 500 640 800 1000 1250 1600 2000 2500 3200. . . add a zero and repeat. Only *amateurs* (or scientists that know what they are doing and are going smaller than 1/3 of a stop, to which I don't think anything on this forum applies) use numbers like "6000" or "12,800" or "15,000". Remember, only pros get away with "speeding" B)

Edited by Karl Borowski
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Things said are to minimize problems. I can truely imagine that things like this can happen. I've had the camera stopping recording once.

It may also come from fragmenting the CF card so it'd be best to not delete any clips. So it's probably a wise decision to format the card in the cam prior to shooting new stuff. If you delete clips some sort of fragmentation may occur.

@ Stephen

Did this occur on one camera and different CF cards because it might be that the CF was either too slow or fragmented?

@ Karl

I think that staying below 3200 ASA is wise, but i've shot with 6400 ASA on the 5D2 and the noise wasn't there except for 1 hot pixel.

If you compare the 6400 ASA with a 1/60 shutter and full open stop to classic Vision3 500T 35 mill negative Kodak stock you're probably getting away with lesser grain on the 5D2. I have processed a lot of 2K scans in 12 bit color depth.

I'd be interestion to know how the HD 1080p is generated from the 21 megapixel sensor. For movie mode I think that interpolation (merging i.e. 4 pixels into 1) isn't happening in the 5D2 as this would mean an incredible graphics power done from the DIGIC4.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It may also come from fragmenting the CF card so it'd be best to not delete any clips. So it's probably a wise decision to format the card in the cam prior to shooting new stuff. If you delete clips some sort of fragmentation may occur.

 

For burst shooting with my D3 I format each card (Extreme IV Ducati) twice in camera before shooting. And deletions can cause fragmenting, yes.

 

Not quite an analogous situation, but FWIW

 

-Sam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
@ Stephen

Did this occur on one camera and different CF cards because it might be that the CF was either too slow or fragmented?

 

On 2 cards all scan disc Extreme IV, takes or part takes were not deleted, the cards were formated in camera after being copied.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...