Pete Burger
Forum Replies Created
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I’d guess your shutterspeed doesn’t match the frequency of the lights you’re using. When shooting in a country that uses 60Hz always use shutterspeed of multiples of 60. So when using 24p, 30p or 60i use 60, when shooting 60p use 120.
When shooting in a country that uses 50Hz, use multiples of 50. For 24p, 25p or 50i use 50 and for 50p use 100.——————————————
“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
[Austin Conroy] “I’m a bit confused though, this is for video, how do I use photoshop to make color changes?”
You can use Photoshop for video as well. Richard made series of fantastic tutorials called “Photoshop for video” here on the cow in the tutorials section.
[Austin Conroy] “I don’t know a lot about the way 5D deals with color information”
The 5DMkII like all Canon VDSLRs uses 4:2:0 colour sampling, so not much colour information left. Plus very heavy H.264 compression. Plus a lot of aliasing due to line skipping.
This can give you a hard time in postproduction when colour-grading. So, like Richard wrote, shoot flat to preserve the most information.A general – often followed – advice is using “neutral” settings with sharpness and contrast dialled all down and saturation reduced two ticks. This will give you a very soft and flat picture, which has a greater dynamic range and less artifacts. Sharpness and contrast can be tweaked in post with more precision.
Some guys (myself included) use the Technicolor Cinestyle, which is even flatter and – at least that’s my personal experience – cleaner than the built-in styles and will give you even more room in post to grade.Edit: What’s crucial, when aiming for more extreme colour-changes in post, is to get shure that the colour-channels don’t clip. A clipped colour-channel will give you a hard time in post, when dealing with colour.
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“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
[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, …——————————————
“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
[Francisco Bech Gómez] ” I would like to ask if is posible to reduce this noise in postproduction, what would be the best software and technique for this.”
As Bob wrote, there are many noise reduction plugins out there. The two I know are: Neat-Video and the Magic-Bullet Denoiser. Both great plugins.
To avoid noise in low light situations, a fast lens (2.8 of faster) is a must. Also try to shoot with ISOs that are multiples of 160 (160, 320, 480, 640…). With all Canons these seem to be the “cleanest” settings”——————————————
“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
[Gary Huff] “More often than not, I can see the warping in the picture when viewing it in a larger window than just the default size on Vimeo/YouTube/ect.”
That’s right. Those warping artifacts are disturbing. What helps a bit is to shoot with higher shutterspeeds and shooting against a plain or defocussed background if you want to use Twixtor or any other slomo plugin. This reduces the interpolation effects a bit. But as you wrote, Gary, it’s more like an “OK solution” and nothing like real high-speed recording.
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“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
[Gary Huff] “The Canon DSLRS only resolve an actual 700ish lines of resolution anyway, so there won’t be any noticeable difference when you upscale, especially if you go through AE first and use Instant HD from Red Giant.”
I agree with the AE and “Instant HD” step and your statement, that the Canons achive more of a 700ish resolution in 1080p mode. Instant HD is a fantatsic plugin and creates fabulous results.
But I want to throw in, that when shooting 720p, aliasing and moiré will be considerably higher. So picture quality will definitly be worse in 720p mode.
Of course it’s a choice you’d have to make for yourself, if picture quality will be good enough for what you’re aiming for.
I did some tests some time ago and for my projects I try to avoid the 720p mode whenever possible.
One thing you could try is the Twixtor plugin for slomos. There’s a demo-version available on the Re:Vision site.——————————————
“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
It’s most definitly an aliasing issue, don’t think transcoding will help.
[Stephen Underwood] “is there a plugin that will smooth these areas out?”
I don’t know any plugin, that is smoothing out areas automatically, I think you’ll have mask by hand… But maybe someone else has an idea…
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“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
Glad, I helped a bit!
In short: Magic Lantern is an enhancement that adds a lot of features to Canon VDSLRs. Almost all Canons except the 7D are supported. AFAIK 7D support is still under development.
The cool thing is, it is installed on the card and not the camera itself, so you don’t have to replace your original firmware. If you format the card or insert a card without ML, Magic Lantern is gone.
I’m using it with my 550D (T2i) for a couple of months now and it is more than useful! I’m very happy with it.Installing is a bit tricky, but not too complicated. You’ll have to make your card bootable, copy the ML files to your card and do a “firmware update” with that card the first time you’re using ML. This will not actually update the firmware of your camera, but “convince” the cam to boot ML from your card every time a ML-card is inserted. You’ll still have access to the camera menu and all features but a ML menu with all the ML features is now available with the “Erase” button.
The only real problems can occur if you insert a bootable card, that doesn’t have ML installed. At least that’s what I read.
Problems I had: Sometimes the camera hangs. Even switching it off won’t change anything. Taking the battery out for a couple of seconds and then restaring helps.
You might take a look at this link, it includes installing information and a feature list:
https://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/Magic_Lantern_Firmware_Wiki
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“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
Since I have no experience with VDSLRs other than Canons, I can’t compare the different brands.
I own a 550D (T2i) myself and did a lot of editing of “mixed footage” projects of various Canon VDSLRs. So what I think I can say is, that between the these there’s not much difference in picture quality. Of course, the 5D MkII stands out a bit – mainly because of its full-frame sensor, but choosing between 7D, 60D, 550D or even 600D is more a choice of budget, ergonomics (the 60D and the 600D have a swivel screen which is very handy) and the question of how important still photography is to you.
On the video-quality side, IMHO the main difference is, that the “smaller” Canons produce a bit more noise when using high ISOs than the “bigger” ones.
If I had to choose one today for video, I’d take the 60D mainly because of the swivel screen and the possibility to use the Magic Lantern Firmware hack (which is not possible with the 7D).Just my two cents
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“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton -
Don’t ask me how this can work, but that’s what I read in the Technicolor Cinestyle FAQ PDF, which can be found on the Technicolor website:
When the Technicolor CineStyle is selected in the camera it
puts the standard H.264 REC709 color space into a log color
space. Video images are recorded in log space. Still images are
also converted into the same log color space. This is the first
implementation of its kind for the Canon EOS line of cameras.So, it seems to be more than just a tweaking of the internal camera picture controls
You’ll find the PDF here:
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“Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” – Buster Keaton