How to choose a dslr for indi film shoot?

[Steve Crow]

That is the kit lens I believe and unfortunately it is too slow and is not a constant aperture – a great starter lens is either the Canon 50mm 1.8 for about $100 or the Canon 50mm 1.4 for $300 which is beautiful and easier to focus than the 1.8…starting with prime lenses is a great way to learn your camera and you will be very happy with the 50mm – over time you can get other lenses but start with this one!

[Steve Crow]

In terms of video performance the 7D and the T2i are very similar – I don’t know the other two cameras you mentioned
Steve

[Joydeep Ghosh]

Espeed 2 is processor which Nikon use and Digic 4 is the processor which canon use

[Pete Burger]

[Steve Crow] “In terms of video performance the 7D and the T2i are very similar”

I can confirm that. We do a lot of “mixed”-footage videos with the 7D and 550D (T2i). The only difference I can see is a slightly better low-light performance of the 7D, in terms of less noise..

[Jim Hagan] ” Somewhere I read that the
T2i could only rsolve to 680 lines but it has to be able to resolve to 1080 lines woudn’t it? I was wondering about your experience with the T2i(550D). Can you get what would be considered broadcast quality at 1080p/30fps?”

Yes, all the Canons seem to produce a more 720p’ish picture in 1080p mode, if this was your question. Since I don’t have too much experience in (tv-)broadcast, I can only write, what I read and heard from colleagues and that is that DSLRs are more and more accepted in broadcast. You maybe want to look at this article:
https://philipbloom.net/2010/09/02/bbc/
What I can definitly say is, that there is next to no difference – quality wise – between the different Canon VDSLRs. Exception: The 5DMkII with it’s full frame sensor and the before mentioned better low-light-performance of the “bigger” Canons.
If I had to choose between the T2i and the 7D for video, I’d definitly take the T2i. Not only is it lower-priced with nearly the same video-performance “out-of-the-box”, but with Magic Lantern you have features, that the 7D (presumably) never will have, like higher video bitrates (= higher quality video), focus peaking, rack focussing, …

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“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton

[Joydeep Ghosh]

Steve and Jim

Thank u

You see Iam looking for making films which are projectable on big screen and even transferable to celluloid… you see 1080P @24 giving me a film look as well as it a little lower than 2k. 1080P is 1920×1080 whereas 2k will be 2048×1080 and the Full HD footage is upgradable to 2k actually Digital images require a red, green, and blue value for each pixel to be displayed or printed, but one individual pixel in the image sensor will only supply one of those three pieces of information. The image has to be interpolated or de-mosaiced to produce all three colors for each output pixel. is there any info on that?

[Jim Hagan]

Thanks for the advice Steve. I purchased the T2i with a 50mm f1.8 lens. You mentioned the Magic Lantern firmware, is that available for the T2i ? If so will that allow me to defeat the audio auto gain control ? I’m thinking I would need the juiced linked d454 for on camera audio right?

[Steve Crow]

Good choice, I think you will be very happy. Yes Magic Lantern is available for the T2i, I rented the JuicedLink box for a documentary assignment but in the end I wasn’t that happy with it.

The problem was more that it made the “stack” of gear under my camera too unstable and everything was kind of twisting to the left and right making for a very unsteady rig.

The Zoom H4N allows me to monitor the sound I’m recording so that was a major reason for having the JuicedLink – so I was okay without it. Ofcourse the JuicedLink box offers other functionality including defeating the AGC but now Magic Lantern does that so you’re good there too! 🙂

Steve