Just an update. Shot the event on friday thru sunday. Captured about 3.5hrs of video. Camera worked very well but my skills are still lacking. The camera worked better than me for the most part. Got some amazing footage and some really messed up footage, "all my fault" but overall I am pretty happy with the results. I knew it was going to be trial by fire and it was. But thats okay, I learn very quickly that way. I am working on editing all the footage now. Will be interesting to see how much ends up in the final cut. Goal is to produce a DVD for sale. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I will eventually put up a teaser trailer on youtube.
Some technical info. I used a Rode mic to capture all the sound. That is when I remembered to turn it on. I eventually just left it on the whole time so I wouldn't forget. Worked well that way and the battery lasted just fine. Went thru 4 fully charged Canon batteries. Had a 32gig chip that I kept off loading to my Macbook Pro. Most I captured at one time was about 19gigs. I did learn that its difficult for me to switch from still pics to video with the camera. Next time around I will be shooting stills with my other Canon and not touch the setting on this one once its set up for video. This caused me major problems, partially because I am not familiar with it enough yet to move around all the settings. I shot the whole things at 24fps at 1080. Shutters speed varied but I tried to keep it at 50. The problem I had was when I had it at 50 the LCD was dim? When it went up higher the screen became brighter. I dont get that. My ISO I had set on Auto and my white balance set to sunny.
I shot with a rig the first day, tripod the second day and hand held the third. All three with good results. Hand held was with wide angle lens and came out smooth enough to use. Primary lens was a 24-70 2.8L second lens was my 70-200 which was only used on the tripod.
thats it for now I think. Back to editing.
You said the LCD looked dim with the shutter at 50, was the meter indicating it was properly exposed at that point? It may have looked brighter because of the auto ISO, when you switch to a faster shutter speed the ISO gets bumped up to compensate. Higher ISO=more noise, so keeping it at 1/50 would have allowed you to use a lower ISO. I think if it was very sunny that could affect the perceived brightness, but you can always change the LCD brightness to manual and raise the brightness accordingly. I would avoid using auto ISO settings, the changes are very noticeable and certain ISOs produce more noise than others (160,320,640,1250,1600 produce less noise than 200,400,800,1000).
And to get around your issues switching between stills and video, I suggest this: Set up a custom function for still settings and save it. Then when you go out to shoot video, put the dial on M and set up for shooting video. Then if you run into a situation that you need to shoot some stills you can just flip over to C1, shoot your stills and then when you go back to M it will still be the same video settings that you were using before.
Anyways, I'm glad the shoot turned out pretty well, every one is a learning experience and you'll get better with each one.
