[Steve Crow]

Yeah, in terms of your camera settings – for a more filmic look dial the contrast all the way down, dial the sharpness all the way down, and then dial the saturation down two ticks. Of course you should shoot a 24fps and with a 50th shutter speed.

Regarding the video samples to my eye I am not seeing grain as much as a general “murkiness” and a green color cast. So go ahead and raise your ISO up as high as 800 – also be sure to do a manual white balance to to address the color cast.

[Steve Crow]

No 1.4 is a very fast nice lens…there are 1.2 50mm but you would have so much difficulty getting focus with that lens that I couldn’t recommend it.

What’s the overall lighting like in your scene? Are you filming in a basement with all the lights turned off or are you outside in the sunshine?

I wouldn’t recommend a plugin to solve this problem for you…there’s something else much more fundamental going on. Why not post a link to the video so that we all can see exactly what it is you are talking about, it’s hard to provide feedback without something concrete to view.

[Steve Crow]

Hi Ali
Just to be clear I don’t think the shutter speed issue is related to the noise problems you are having…that’s probably an ISO in combination with F-stop issue.

I’m just thinking off the top of my head here but I wonder if this may also have to do with your editing workflow.

If you film at full 1080p in the camera but then upload the video to YouTube at a much lower resolution/quality setting then it would tend to “soften” the video and hide things like noise.

So when you are looking other other videos on YouTube or Vimeo see if you can determine what resolution/quality settings/format is being displayed and what resolution they originally shot the video in.

For instance, when you look at the YouTube player you can see in the gray control bar area just below the video you can often change the quality of the video you are seeing from standard definition all the way up to HD (720p)

So if are watching a video at low resolution on YouTube (like 360p) it may not be that the video is any less noisy than yours it’s that the noise is being “blurred out” you might say because of the low playback resolution.

I hope that makes some sense to you. (and again I can’t say for sure what’s going on with your video but these ideas occurred to me and I am sure others will chime in here with ideas too)

Steve

[Steve Crow]

The shutter speed should be set a 2 times your frame rate so if you are shooting at 24 frames per second then your shutter should be a 50 (1/50th) and if you are shooting at 30 frames per second your shutter speed should be at 1/60th or thereabouts.

You probably lowered the shutter speed to get more light into the camera but that can lead to jittery footage. When I film I consider my shutter speed as “locked” meaning I can only change the aperture and ISO to get a good exposure.

[Steve Crow]

Wow that sounds like a great tip, I hope others find it works for them too!

[Steve Crow]

Shoulder mounts are for when you want to be very mobile but not necessarily constantly moving while filming. For instance, you might be filming a sports event from the sidelines where it would be slow and inconvenient to be constantly moving your and resetting up your traditional tripod.

Steadicams are all about moving while filming, you are moving, following the action – giving you that “camera is flying through the air” feeling. By the way, Steadicams take a good while to master, it’s not something you can be great at using in only a day.

************************************************
Steve Crow
Executive Producer/Founder
Crow Digital Media
Palo Alto, CA
Steve@CrowDigitalMedia.com
https://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com
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[Steve Crow]

I think the main advantage is encoding speed, at least that’s the claim they make. I don’t have anything negative to say about it.

[Steve Crow]

I am sure HD video will look better than just “okay” with this lens however I would suggest you try and buy just the Canon camera body and then buy the lens separately. The one you asked about is kind of “slow” – meaning I would like to see you have the option of a lens with a FStop in the 2.0/2.8 range so that you can get that lovely shallow depth of field look when you need it.

L glass is top of the line so if you do go ahead and buy that kit lens you will still be able to get some great shots but you have trouble getting a shallow DOF.

Oh, also make sure you buy some ND filters to cut down on the amount of light hitting the sensor and a loupe so that you can see the LCD screen outdoors and a tripod and a…..the list goes on and on.

[Steve Crow]

Yep, the AGC issue applies to all the Canon HD DSLRs as far as I know. There is additional software you can download called Magic Lantern that fixes the issues for the 5D Mark II but no 7D or T2i version is available.

[Steve Crow]

Yes that would be very cumbersome and besides it all comes down to the Microphone you would be connecting to the laptop – using the laptop’s built-in mic would actually be worse than using the one built into the camera.

If you are strapped for cash, look at the Rode VideoMic, not 100% awesome but better than using just the camera’s built-in Mic, you will still have the automatic gain control issue however