Michael Johnston
Forum Replies Created
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I shoot the same types of videos with the NX5. You can get a shallow depth of field but need to utilize all of the space in the room. I get the subject away from the background and try to position the camera an equal distance from the subject as the background. The rest is all about lighting. I shoot on filter 1 with the shutter at 1/250. Doing that means you have to blast a LOT of light on the subject and background. That’s the only way to do it in small rooms. It’s much easier in large spaces.
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Check out CoolLCD.com. They have several 5″, 7″, & 8″ HD LCD’s under $1k. They are not as good as the higher end HD monitors but might fit your needs.
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You’re not going to find a HD monitor that’s better than the LCD for focusing for under $1k. I use a Haier 7″ SD TV/Monitor I picked up on eBay for $65 for studio configuration shoots. You can use it for focusing, although it’s not great for that since it’s SD. I mainly use it for color/framing.
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I’m interested to hear if anyone has used this as well. Would be great for recording native ProRes files for use in FCP in ENG situations where time is critical and there’s no time to wait for transcoding from AVCHD to ProRes.
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The Premiere DV-NTSC Preset is for native .avi files. The NX5U shoots MPEG2 in SD so when it’s dropped in the timeline, it looks bad because it isn’t rendered. Edit, render, and export and the footage will look fine.
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Type and class of SD cards matter. I use ScanDisk Extreme Class UI 45Mbs. They are professional grade SD cards and cost much more than other SD cards but I’ve NEVER had a problem with them. DON’T USE CHEAP CARDS IN THE NX5U. Also, don’t forget to do a MEDIA EMPTY of the SD cards from time to time. It’s in the user manual. That’s a CRITICAL procedure in keeping your camera operating without error. Invest in the FMU128 hard drive. You won’t regret it. Finally, if you are copying the card to your Mac, you MUST copy the entire card as is or you’ll have all kinds of problems. Don’t relabel ANYTHING. The entire original file structure MUST be intact for FCP use. Also, there have been all kinds of bugs and errors with FCPX so be aware of that.
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I can definitely show you screen grabs of interviews I’ve done that show the NX5 is definitely better than other 3 1/3″chip cameras. You have to be careful not to buy into the marketing hype too much. Yes, the XA10 has 8 blades but it also only has a single 1/3″ chip. You really have to look at the specs to understand a camera. Notice how Canon does not specify a minimun illumination for this camera. BIG RED FLAG. As for focal length/f stop, on 2/3″ cameras the ideal f stop is 5.6. However, with 1/3″ chip cameras, it’s more like 1.6 to 2.4 because you need as much light as possible getting to those smaller chips.
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You can try MPEG Streamclip as long as it’s not a long clip (over 5 minutes). Anything longer will usually crash the software. That’s really the only option. Yes, you can use ClipWrap but the original post said converting all the footage is not an option because there is so much of it. That’s why I said he’s stuck. There really is no other option other than getting access to a Mac and FCP 7.03. You can use LPCM audio with that. As far as Jim using CS4, he’s out of luck.
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With all cameras, if you shoot zoomed in halfway on a subject, you’ll get a blurred background as ling as the subject has some distance from the background. With the NX5’s six blade, you simply get more blur than other similar cameras. Zoomed all the way out, you really won’t notice. It’s when you start zooming tight that you notice the difference.
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Well, I’ve found auto focus to work really well when tracking motion shots such as shooting football games. The issue is when the subject you want in focus is drastically offset to the right or left of center. Keep it near the middle and you should not have a problem. I actually shoot football most of the time in manual focus and have no problems keeping focus. The LCD is really good and the focus ring response is very precise.