Movie problem, can anybody please help me? (screenshot included)

[J Live]

Another thing on your 60D picture profile settings to help quality while you're lowering your 'saturation' setting is also lowering the 'contrast' setting from the default - these are all artificial things that can be added later in editing if you wish, but it's best to shoot fairly clean and 'flat'. It's like a photo that's shot with an artificial 'vivid' type setting in-camera and saved as a jpeg - it's really hard to do much adjustment with it afterwards. H264 is a pretty unforgiving codec. Which means also it's also important to get your White balance as accurate as possible. If your Sony can do a custom white balance and give you a colour temp value, dial that same K value into your 60D and they should be fairly close. Shoot a few seconds of a white card with both cameras beside each other to make it easier to adjust in post (you can sample the white during editing for quick colour correction). It's important to have both cameras right beside each other when doing a white balance.

I also agree with the comment of shooting the Wide shot with the Sony while you're using the DSLR at the same time grabbing your medium and CU shots - just remember to stay out of the wide shot : ) - just do a hand clap or slate with a take number and don't pause the DSLR during the song even while your moving into a different position for a different angle so you only have to sync the cameras once per take.

You may also want to investigate shooting 1080 24p instead of 30 (29.97) - most music videos are shot in 24p to give it a bit more of a cinematic/strobe look. Again, a quick test using both can help you decide which you prefer. Make sure your editing system is compatible with 24p as well. The only real advantage of shooting 720p60 is if you plan on doing slo-mo.

Good luck.

Jeff

 

[NormanBates]

Which means also it's also important to get your White balance as accurate as possible. If your Sony can do a custom white balance and give you a colour temp value, dial that same K value into your 60D and they should be fairly close. Shoot a few seconds of a white card with both cameras beside each other to make it easier to adjust in post (you can sample the white during editing for quick colour correction). It's important to have both cameras right beside each other when doing a white balance.

yes, it is important to have the white balance right; but the there's a better and easier way to do it: use a white card to set custom WB on the sony, and then do the same on the 60D!!!! (take a still of the white card, go to the menus, tell the camera to use that still as custom white balance, exit, go to the Q menu, tell the camera to use custom white balance) (this is better than the K value thing because it also controls the green cast) (you should repeat that process every time you change the lens or the ND filters; check my color cast tests at the end of the following link)
http://www.similaar.com/foto/lenstests/lenstestsn.html

on the shooting flat issue: yes, it is a good idea to shoot flat, but not a lot flatter than you need; I use the following four picture styles, depending on how much dynamic range I need:
* Portrait, with saturation = -2, contrast = -1 or -2
* Portrait, with saturation = -4, contrast = -4
* Portrait, with saturation = -4, contrast = -4 and a curve slightly pushing shadows up (not really used a lot)
* CineStyle, with saturation = +2
reasons here:
http://www.similaar.com/foto/picturestyles/picturestyles.html

 

[joecaster]

Are you telling me to basically take a picture of a white card (take a still?) to use it as custom white balance?
Look this morning I tried a narrow aperture and even with the ISO set at 6400 I don't get enough light although there is lots of light in the room. The image is very blurry and dark with lots of noise.
This is driving me crazy.

(I can't find an image host that shows the full size of the picure)

Why can't I get at least good focus with a narow aperture and auto focus?

 

[joecaster]

I just can't get this cam to get everything in focus. I tried all sorts of combinations but the result is always blurry.
What is the AF function is for exactly? I'm sorry to be such a pain with my newbie questions but I really appreciate all the help.
All I seem to be able to do with this 60D are close up shots focusing manually.
I usually film myself playing instruments leaving my cam on a tripod.
If I can't do this with the 60D I'm scared that I bought the wrong cam and I'm better off with my sony HDRCX505.
What do you guys think?

 

[Cregg Annarino]

What are your camera settings besides being in 6400 iso? And what lens are you using?

 

[joecaster]

Hi Cregg, I'm using the 18-135 lens that comes with the body when you buy the kit.
For that specific shot I posted above, I chose the narrowest aperture and tried to compensate the lack of light with the max ISO, resulting in a still too dark image. Contrast, saturation, sharpness and color tone were at 0.
I took a picture in the all automatic mode and the cam caught lots of light and the picture was nice and clean.
When I switch to the video mode it gets extremely dark and blurry.
It's like having 2 different machines...

 

[Cregg Annarino]

Hey Joe,

In video mode what was your shutter speed and aperture on the lens? And what shutter speed and aperture were you for taking the photo? For video you could try putting it in 24fps mode and using manual in the camera and setting your shutter speed at 50, it should always be 50 shutter in the manual mode for video then you adjust your ISO to get the desired dark/light of the video. Or your shutter should be double the fps of the video, never higher.

Try that and see what happens.

 

[joecaster]

Thanks Cregg. I tried what you say but the image is still really blurry.
By the way I set the aperture to 15 or 16 as I've been told I would be able to have everything in focus but it doesn't work.
I'm getting really frustrated.
I don't remember what setings I used for the picture but it was the automatic mode.
The details were perfect, the red looks clean and the picture is sharp.
When I switch to video, it gets blurry and the red (the cables and a red star on my t short) is looking awful.
When I use higher ISO it gets even worse so I have to keep it low and darker.
I feel very disapointed and wish I could have tested this cam before I bought it.
I spent the whole day trying to get decent result but I don't. :-\

 

[NormanBates]

@WB: yes, that's what I mean: take a still of a white card, use it as custom white balance (if you don't know how to do that, hint: the first step is on "menu", the second step is on "Q")

@DoF: I think you're doing something wrong

yes, the DoF of a big sensor camera is a lot shallower than what you get with a small sensor camera, but for that wide shot you posted this shouldn't be a problem: just use a 35mm lens, put the camera 4.5m from your subject, and set the aperture at f/9 and speed at 1/50s (in PAL land) or 1/60s (in NTSC land); you'll have over 6m of depth of field!!
http://www.similaar.com/foto/dof/dof.php?f_x=1.6&f_r=1.77&f_mm=35&f_f=9&f_d=4.5

if you really need ISO 6400 for that, the image will be horrible; get yourself some lights; the highest I'd go for video on a 60D is ISO 800

if you closed your lens much more, e.g. to f/22, that blurriness you saw was caused by diffraction: don't close your iris much beyond f/11 and you should be fine

now: focus: for such a simple setup, why do you insist on using autofocus? it will never beat manual focus using the 10x zoom-in function; plus, on video, you're supposed to be focusing manually anyway (focus hunting is nasty)

 

[joecaster]

OK thanks I tried that but the thing is I can only get 2 meters away from the drums, the room being too small.
Maybe it's because of that but It's stiil too blurry for my liking. If I converted this clip to 720 it would probably look "OK".
Look at this picture I took, you can se there is plenty of light in the room:
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc105/nocaster_2007/IMG_0340.jpg
Why the hell the video mode cannot get all this light??
It always ends up too dark. This is the best I could get:
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc105/nocaster_2007/kjyf.jpg
I have 4 spots on the ceiling pointing directly at the drums.
It shouldn't be that dark really...

 

[joecaster]

Ok I finally got something that looks acceptable.
Here is a picture I took first (automatic mode):
http://postimage.org/image/na0dqy0rd/
Then I filmed this:

I set shutter speed to 60, aperture to 8 and ISO is at 1600 because it gets really dark at 800.
It doesn't look THAT bad but the white and red look so much nicer on the picture.
Now I'll try to set that custom white balance as you said to see if that improves something.
Thank you all so much!

 

[Cornershot]

What you really need are some daylight balanced video lights. The ambient lighting is too dark which is why you have to hike the ISO so much. That just boosts the noise and adds to the problem. There are a lot of cheap lighting options you can use. The cheapest are some clamp lights with 5600K bulbs. Amazon sells a bunch of cheap lighting kits that work decently. There are some pretty decent on camera LED lights but LED in general doesn't throw much light compared to incandescent so you'd have to buy a few or the bigger panels and a light stand. They run cool compared to incandescent. Florescent lights throw nice soft light but you have to get a decent set with good ballast or it will flicker. Merchants on Amazon sell a 500 LED panel light with stand that a lot of indie filmmakers use with some success. It's about $180. Ideally, you'd want a couple for even lighting, one for key and one fill. There are also some CFL kits with softboxes that are really cheap but I'm not sure how well they work.

 

[joecaster]

I have two lights I got with a green screen set I bought off ebay. I think it was this one:
http://cgi.ebay.fr/3Mx6M-CHROMAKEY-GREEN-BACKDROP-SCREEN-LIGHT-STUDIO-KIT-/170654656324?pt=UK_Photography_StudioEquipment_RL&hash=item27bbcf6744
I used them off course, they are placed on the sides of the drums but they are not very powerfull...
Ok this is quite encouraging. I hope with better lights I can get good results really!
Thank you very much!

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

The closer the camera is to the subject, the shallower the depth of field. A DSLR for video is often used to get a shallow depth of field due to the larger sensor, a camcorder will get a large depth of field due to the small sensor.

Move the camera back at least 15-20 ft or until everything is in sharp focus.

 

[NormanBates]

ok, the picture you like was taken at:
18mm - f/3.5 - 1/40s - ISO 1250

given that for video you have to use 1/50s (in PAL land) or 1/60s (in NTSC land), and you're already at an ISO that is higher than recommended for a 60D, you need more light (about one stop)

if you're happy with a f/3.5 picture, it's not a DoF problem, look elsewhere

 

[Cregg Annarino]

Hi Joe,

How are you making out with your problem?

Have you tried shooting video mode in full manual vs automatic? In auto or any mode but manual the camera will meter using reflective metering which is the light that it sees bouncing off your subject whatever it may be. That can cause problems with exposure as the camera may try to compensate. Like if you were filming or taking photos on a snowy day, you would have to increase your exposure compensation to +1 or +2 to compensate for the camera trying to correct the exposure, leading to an image that doesn't look right.

But in manual mode it is incident metering which means it captures the light falling on your subject with no camera compensation, this is why people use a hand held exposure meter. Another example would be a wedding dress and a black suit. If you metered in auto or any mode but manual on each one in two different photos you would get drastically different results if the camera is trying to compensate for the white vs. the dark. But in manual the white dress or black suit would be captured as you see it with no compensation. You can then fine tune to get the results you see with your eyes by adjusting the shutter speed and ISO values.

And if you are using a wide angle lens, you shouldn't really have a problem shooting wide open with the lens, they produce a greater depth of field than other lenses. Especially if you are shooting at the lenses widest setting.