[Steve Crow]

Yes, it is sure sounding like the camera…don’t forget to try it out in a more brightly lit room to see what kind of performance you are getting.

It’s great you have a friend with the same camera – that will be a great diagnostic test for this situation.

I can really relate to your frustration, hang in there…also don’t forget the sound, please don’t rely on the camera’s built in microphone which is terrible. Dual system sound is absolutely the way to go, I use the Zoom H4N with wireless mics but to be honest the user interface on the Zoom is not good and has caused me to think I was recording when I was not, very embarrassing.

I may switch to another recorder with a more basic user interface even though the H4N does record great sound.

[Steve Crow]

Yeah the chandelier isn’t putting out that much light is it? Might as well try turning on a few more lamps in the room and trying again

I don’t think he’s using a cheap lens at all, I film mostly with a Canon 1.4 50mm that cost around $300 and it does great

[Steve Crow]

Oh, one more thing….you are filming in FULL manual mode yes?…check your menu settings. If you are not, the camera is taking control of some of the exposure settings which could be causing your issue in theory.

When you are looking through the viewfinder or using Liveview you should see THREE sets of numbers at the bottom left that you can control….shutter speed, aperture and ISO

For a decently lit room, settings of 50 2.4 200 should give you a nice exposure with a shallow depth of field. If it’s too dark raise the ISO one more notch but leave the other two settings alone for this test.

[Steve Crow]

Something is seriously F*#!ed Up with either your camera or your lens, either that or you are just messing with us.

Send it back – the lens, the camera, both whatever. You might borrow a Canon lens from someone just to test out but there is no way things should be this dark.

[Steve Crow]

Something is definitely off. Try resetting the camera to default settings. Keep the shutter speed to 1/50 which is the ideal setting for filming 24/25fps video.

Are you absolutely sure that your lens aperture is set to wide open?

That lens should be plenty fast enough. 800 ISO is really the maximum you want to go…is this a decently lit room (like could you easily read a book in the available light?)

[Steve Crow]

Here’s a link to a video I did explaining how to use MPEG Streamclip to convert HD DSLR footage.

https://crowdigitalmedia.com/hd-dslr-workflow-%E2%80%93-part-2-%E2%80%93-transcoding-syncing-and-more-much-more

Now I use FCP and a Mac so I convert my footage to ProRes LT – you will want to instead convert your footage to a PC friendly format.

Cineform is the one I hear the most about but you will probably have to buy this codec before MPEG-Streamclip can convert your files to that format. If you already have Cineform installed on your system then you should be ready to go.

Here’s the Cineform encoding application: https://www.cineform.com/neoscene/

You could also try exporting AVI or MOV files out of MPEG Streamclip since I assume Premiere can work with these formats. By the way, I am noticing a growing trend of people running Premiere on a Mac for HD DSLR editing – in other words moving away from FCP.

All the best to you!

[Steve Crow]

I think what they might be referring to is that some ISO settings are consider “native” as in built into the camera firmware and hardware while the rest are somewhat artificial and are created by the camera software – sort of like the difference between optical and digital zoom.

So they are saying that their lowest NATIVE ISO is 100 and their highest native ISO is 1600 – aprox half of the ISOs found within that range are therefore NOT native.

That’s my guess-timate of interpreting their marketing speak.

Naturally you are going to ask next what the native ISOs are and I don’t have an answer for you as this is not info Canon is exactly upfront about giving its users. Here is a discussion on the topic for the Canon 7D but you can find other sources with a Google search:

https://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/canon-7d-video-iso-sweet-spots/

[Steve Crow]

Oh yeah I understood that Michael, no worries! 🙂

[Steve Crow]

Yeah, I was thinking that too, since I would probably use them mostly on monitoring sound and making sure all the batteries are kept charged, that I would spend a day with them before the actual shoot date showing how to use the sound equipment and answering any of their questions about DSLR filmmaking or my workflow.

I totally agree with all the examples you give but one difference I see is that editing, color grading etc takes a lot more time and effort plus it requires an expertise – my situation would be best for someone with minimal experience but who is reliable and see it as a fair trade (and someone who won’t walk off with any of my gear at the end of the shoot too! 🙂 )

[Steve Crow]

First off, I have never done a real music video myself however… from my reading about the music video technique, I’d think you’d be far better off just shooting everything with the HD DSLR.

I don’t think you will end up using much, if anything, of the HVX footage shooting the wide master…I say this because I think the depth of field issue and the whole “look” of the footage from the cameras will be so different. The HVX200, even in Cinema Mode, looks much more “video-ey” than the HD DSLR footage (I shoot with a Canon T2i but I am assuming the Nikon footage looks about the same)

Sure, with enough time spent in color correction and grading maybe you can get the two cameras to look a little bit the same but the difference is going to be obvious, in my humble opinion.

I do have a bias, I sold all my HVX200 equipment for a Canon T2i rig costing half as much but am now far, far happier with the results I am getting even though filming with a HD DSLR is much much harder than what I was used to with the HVX200. I just came back from a HD DSLR shoot today and I am exhausted BUT I think I got some great stuff.