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February 2, 2012 Comments Closed

How to Shoot Good DSLR Video

lately there has been an explosion of people hitting the scene with dslr cameras they saved up for months in order to buy or their parents blessed them with a nice christmas gift. Its great to see but sometime you have some that jump the gun and think they need to profit from their new purchase immediately. They start doing production work and music videos for people with out knowing one thing about their camera and they end up putting out some pretty wacky work that not only puts the artist in jeopardy, but yourself and any future jobs. The question is, do you want to step out with game changing work or have a bunch of stuff thats going to have your future clients considering someone else for the value of their money? I know, you have to start somewhere and your not going to be your best at the start but theres a certain foundation that needs to set, certain rules, techniques, etc.

last july i picked up my 7D and although it wasn’t my first dslr, it was my first that shot video. I decided yeah, i spent a lot of damn money on this camera and even more on lenses and gear, i wasn’t going to call up every artist i know saying “hey dude let make a video, i won’t charge you a lot” without knowing the basic fundamentals of this system. you’ve got to think about it, D. Rose didn’t go out and buy a pair of Jordans and a $70 Spalding official game ball and started looking for agents so he can become the player he is today. It takes time, practice, and progression.

I thought id take some time out and share with you guys some tips that i have learned in the past 6 months. It’s a long read but you will definitely learn some stuff here.

1. Picture Styles

Picture styles are whats tells your camera how to process your image. The goal is to obtain latitude by shooting a flat, neutral picture which looks very blah in your viewfinder but when its color corrected and graded it, you’ll be pushing an image quality that can be compared to a camera thats shooting 4k like a RED or a Arri Alexa.

Here’s an example of a flat picture that has been graded:

It’s all about getting as much latitude possible. What’s latitude? its flexibility to work your image in post to whatever look your going for. Best way to explain latitude is you have a half empty glass of water (shooting flat with latitude) and you want to put more water into it to completely fill this glass up to the top (color grading, effects, looks, adjustments, etc), you will have enough room to do so without spilling over. Now say if we start with a full glass of water (not shooting flat, with no latitude) and we try to fill up that glass with more water (grading, effects, etc), whats going to happen? You are going to over flow that glass and make a mess. Thats what latitude is and why it is important to shoot a flat image. You will have a much clearer image that results in higher definition. The one downside to this is that, the footage must be color corrected/graded and that might take some time to learn how to master, but its not impossible.

How do you set up your Canon to shoot a flat? its simple:
1. Go to your menu
2. Scroll over to picture style
3. Select User def. 1
4. Hit info
5. Set your levels to the picture below

Another tip, and this varies on your camera, is to turn off highlight tone priority. This options prevents your image from over exposer but when your shooting flat, its best just to keep that off and correctly setup your image so it isn’t blowing out. This can be changed is your custom function settings.

2. Frame Rates

When shooting video work that needs that “woah” look and feel, shoot 24P! Theres other options like 30p and 60p but ill come back to those in a little.
Shooting 24p gives you that movie feel we all love and it just looks amazing. i couldn’t tell you how many videos I’ve seen messed up because they didn’t shoot them in 24p, it irks me! lol

Ok back to 60p and 30p, those are better for more conventional recordings and fast action like sports because you capture more motion, its more “frames per second”. You can also do it for slow downs in music videos by doing a 60p to 24p conform, it just takes some setup and dedicated shooting to get whats going to be slow downed. For an example of this check out my SMOKE video.

3. Shutter Speed

This is real important and simple so pay attention! unlike when taking photos, you DO NOT change the shutter speed in order to get a lighter or darker picture, this is video and we are not working with a shutter thats going up and down. The amount of light coming into the camera is varied by the aperture which we will cover in bit.

So whats going to vary our shutter speed and why does it matter? your frame rate! the rule of thumb is to have your shutter speed 2x whatever your frame rate is. Since i shoot in 24p, my shutter is going to be 1/50th of a second. in reality it should be 1/48th but Canon’s don’t have that shutter speed option so you go to the closest one possible.

If you were shooting in 60p your shutter would be 1/120th and if your shooting 30p, the shutter would be 1/60th. This is important because doubling your shutter creates the smoothest image flow, any higher would create a stuttering effect and any lower will give it a ghost trail effect which looks bad.

4. ISO

This is a real simple step. When it comes down to picking an Iso speed, theres something called Native iso which is what’s native to the camera’s sensor.

Native Iso starts at 120 and doubles up. i usually don’t go past 1250 because the noise build up becomes too noticeable. The best thing to remember when your picking Iso’s is that when you shoot native, you get a better image quality. When you don’t, your using a boost or washed down version of a native iso causing a loss in image quality.

5. Aperture

Back to the hard stuff. Aperture is whats going to vary the amount of light thats coming into your camera and also vary your depth of field. The more open = the more light and shallow depth of field, more closed = less light and more in-focus everything will be. As we said in the shutter speed section, aperture is whats going to give you more or less light hitting your sensor. In many cases, people will open their aperture more when they need more light than boosting up iso which is not a good move because lenses are not as sharp when they are fully open. So whats my tip? never shoot wide open, always bump iso up just a little.

Say if your in a situation where you need less light. You’ve already lowered your Iso and brought up your aperture super high but now you lost your shallow depth of field. This is where one of dslr’s handiest tools comes in, a variable neutral density filter. A vari nd filter is like an adjustable sunglass for the front of your lens, it screws on like a filter because it is a filter (lol) but as you twist it, it gets darker and gives you more stops. YES, YOU CAN SHOOT AT F/5.6 OR LOWER OUTISDE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SUMMER!

A variable nd filter is awesome but expensive. This is one of those things you don’t want to go cheap on because it slaps to the front of your lens and a cheaper one will give you a unsharp image and causes headaches later. A good one will range between $200-$400 depending on the brand and filter size.

6. Exposure

Over exposing your image is a bad thing, when you over expose you get those white bright areas in a image that is impossible to recover in post. Always make sure to slightly underexpose your image, stay to the left on the bracket. Remember, its impossible to recover what the camera sensor washed out, if its dark its easier to recover with a little contrast correction.

7. White Balance

This is such an easy but yet so over looked. White balance is simply letting your camera know whats pure white or 50% grey. Always make sure to white balance when light drastically changes or you have change in scene, it will help keep everything look consistent and save headaches later.

8. Focusing

Ever see video that its so obvious that they filmed it with a dslr because 75% is either out of focus or the camera man struggling to maintain focus? yeah theres A LOT of those videos out there lol. Although its understandable because dslr’s don’t have active autofocus there are work arounds to prevent this from happening.

- Dont shoot moving objects with such a open aperture: The more open, the more shallow depth of field and more trouble to follow your subject.

- Get a viewfinder: A viewfinder that attaches to the lcd will magnify your display therefor helping you stay more in focus.

- Follow Focus System: Another expensive but awesome tool, its basically a gear system that allows you to repositions your hand to focus the camera without coming in direct contact with the lens. Rotating the grip on the gear can cause unsteady handling which results in shaky footage.
The system I use is the D|Focus V3 and it is one of the best systems for its price. While a Red Rock Micro being one of the best at $600, the D|Focus system compares to it in quality and functionality at a price of $250 with everything pictured below.

9. Practice

Practice, Practice, and practice some more.

Thanks for taking the time out to read this, i hope you guys learned something new.

January 29, 2012 Comments Closed

SMOKE

December 30, 2011 Comments Closed

Fall

Last year i shot pictures, this year i did a little video. i apologize about the shakiness, it was just me and my camera, no rig so i did this all handheld.

October 10, 2011 Comments Closed

NhuLan’s Bakery

I herd about this place months ago on tv and i was dying to go and check it out, boy im glad i finally did. The sandwiches are excellent and the prices are even better. A sandwich will run you about 3.50 or a little more depending on the ingredients. It was so good, i bought 6 baguettes of bread to take home Lol. Check out the pics and if your ever in the north side near ravenswood, NhuLan’s bakery is defiantly a place you want to check out.

October 6, 2011 Comments Closed

Snakeskin

Personal 1 of 1′s

September 13, 2011 Comments Closed

Temporary Relocated

This past few weeks i’ve been spending some time at the vaction home out in Cape Coral, Flordia. Cape Coral is a small city in the southwest region of Florida along the coast of the gulf of mexico. Cape Coral shares borders with Fort Myers and the small islands: Captiva, Pine Island, Matlacha, Sanibel, and St. James island.

Fort Myers (tourist haven lol)

The stuff they try to sell to people lol

Matlacha

Matlacha is a very artsy island with a population of approximately 730 people

August 21, 2011 Comments Closed

Camera Journeys

Just a few things ive been working on the past few weeks, check it out.

Small commercial i produced for my buds barbershop, The Big Boss Barbershop.

Jugrnaut teamed up with Starter to create a very limited vintage styled snapback hat. I was given the opportunity to do the photo shoot for the project which is releasing every other week over on their site.