Yesterday I did a shoot for a new web-series for Our Spirit (who I did another video for earlier this year). We were supposed to do our second (and final) day of shooting today, but we had to cancel due to bad weather, so we will resume next weekend. This will be a five episode (each 2-3 minutes long) series that will be released every few weeks on the Our Spirit site starting next year. Due to schedules and budget the entire shoot was slated for two days, which made for a very tight schedule, but we got through everything we needed to film yesterday. Frankly, I think that my experience with working on the 48-Hour Films helped in working on such a tight schedule.
We had a pretty slimmed down crew yesterday with just a director, DP (me), producer, assistant camera/gaffer, sound, and three PAs. With our three cast members and our makeup person the entire film had 12 people on set which seemed to be just the right number. Everybody seemed to have something to do and I rarely felt like we needed another hand. (This size crew is sort of the norm for me on these types of projects and I often wonder what the purpose is of the seemingly bloated sets of much bigger productions.)
This was also the first real shoot I was doing with my 7D. I’ve had it for about a month and spent a lot of time testing it out, but this was the first time it was on the front lines. The verdict? I think it’s great. It’s not perfect, but no camera I’ve used is.
Here’s what I really liked about it:
-The size is great. Even with rails, mattebox, and follow focus (my new RedRock follow focus arrived the day before the shoot, and it was pretty essential) the whole package is small and light. If I wasn’t using this I would have used the EX-1 with the Letus Extreme which is so much bigger. That certainly would have worked for this shoot but I just liked not having to lug around such a big rig.
-Filmmakers are picking up these DSLR video cameras because of the depth-of-field control, and I loved having that. I was not going for ridiculous, razor thin DOF on this shoot, but I certainly had more control than I do with the EX-1 alone. And I did not miss the finicky-ness of the Letus adapter which I would have used to get a shallower DOF. I think the image is cleaner and I don’t need to worry about separate focusing elements, edge sharpness or ground glass patterning.
-This was a case where I loved that recording quality sound on the camera was not really even an option. I had a great sound guy in Dave Manahan, and he recorded sound separately on his recorder. I never had to be connected to him, which made things much easier. Obviously if the camera had better sound options that WOULD be better, but I liked not even having to worry about it.
-I used one lens all day, the Canon 17-55 2.8. I have always used primes with the Letus (and I have a Nikon/Canon adapter so I can use them) but this lens was all I needed for the interiors we were shooting. I rented a Canon 70-200 2.8 for some of the exterior shots, but we didn’t get to use it today.
-The pictures look great. Steve and Robert (the director and writer/producer) came over today and we went through it all. It’s pretty amazing that these pictures are coming out of a camera that costs only $1700.
Here’s what I didn’t like so much:
-Monitoring is a pain. I have a small component HD monitor and a larger HDMI/SDI monitor for the director/client that I use, but on this camera when you plug in one of the video outputs (HDMI or composite) you lose the picture on the built in LCD. That means that I would have to view the monitor too, which logistically for this shoot was not going to work. I needed to have my eyes on the camera, so while we tried that setup for the first shot, we just stuck with the camera alone, and the director would watch the LCD with me. I have a Zacuto Z-finder which is great for helping to set my focus marks, but I did not use it too much so Steve could see the LCD too. It worked fine, but it’s not ideal for every shoot and I am looking into some different monitoring options so I can send HDMI to a small on-camera monitor and my larger director’s monitor.
-Another note on monitoring: I am used to my EX-1 where I what I see on that LCD is pretty darn close to what I see when editing. That is not entirely the case with the LCD on the Canon or even the through the HDMI output. Fortunately a lot of my tests with the camera have helped me to get more confident with what I am seeing on the screen.
-While the picture is great, especially at this price-point there are some limitations to the codec. Most of which will not be noticed by 99% of the viewers but there are some things that a user needs to know are triggers. Plus I think the images from the camera need a little more tweaking in post. While I sometimes grade the EX-1 footage to give it a different look, many times the footage straight from the camera is perfect on its own.
But all in all I was very happy with the cast, the crew, and shooting with a newer camera. Here are some frame grabs from what we shot yesterday. Enjoy!
Tags: Canon 7D, director of photography, EX-1, Our Spirit
Thanks for the shout out!
- D
Nice post, I like how you said it was a “slimmed down crew”, yet you had a producer, DP, makeup, assisstant camera and sound person
Great write-up – and great looking grabs! I’m really excited about the 7D and I’m really enjoying
shooting with it – and grabbing it as I walk out the door to go anywhere. Knowing I have a really
capable camera in a portable package is awesome…
One question I’d have for you is the amount of light you used for your interior shots with the 7D.
Was your lighting set up relatively sparse, or did you have to flood the room with light to keep
your aperture closed enough to give you the DOF you wanted, plus ISO low enough to keep the
image clean? With the 7D I’m finding that without ND it’s easy to have too much light, but when
you start closing down the aperture you might need more than you’d think.
Also, did you have an upper-limit for the ISO that you tried to not move beyond, and if so, what
was that?
Dave, no prob for the shout out. You did an awesome job. It’s great to have a pro like you onboard.
Rob, yeah, I know what you mean. I wasn’t trying to sound cheeky, and I think we did get a lot of help for our budget. I just meant compared with some other shoots I have worked on with 2 to 3 times the cast and crew, when it sometimes seems that people spend more time sitting around than actually doing something.
Ryan, thanks for reading. You’ll really enjoy the camera. As far as lighting, I used 2 units in the kitchen. A kino with 3 daylight and 1 tungsten bulb for fill on the faces, and a 1k open face light with 1/2 CTB (I think) that I was bouncing off the angled ceiling to raise the overall light level. I used natural light from the windows and it was a very overcast and rainy day, so I was sort of going for the daylight interior but lit by tungsten lights look. I think I was at ISO 640 in the kitchen. In the barn I used a pair of china ball lanterns with 500 watt fixtures and a 1K open face, and in one shot a Zylight Z90 as a backlight. I think I was also at 640 there. The shots with the bike we had the barn door open and I was at ISO 320 there. For bright exteriors I definitely think NDs are essential so that you can open up more if you’d like. As far as max ISO I would probably say 640 would be the highest I’d want for a daylight scene and 1250 for nighttime. I shot some cool test stuff at up to 3200 and it’s noisy, and could work for some things and you can pretty much see in the dark, but for most things that I am lighting and I want a clean image I would try to stick with 640. I am also going by what I read people say that 160, 320, 640 and 1250 were the cleanest ISOs, so that is what I am using. Not 100% sure if that is accurate. I did find, unfortunately, that on my unit I got some vertical banding with High Tone Priority ON so I leave it OFF. A bummer, but oh well.
Hey Ben, I’ll be getting my 7D tomorrow and have a lot of projects like the one you described coming up, so thanks for sharing your experiences with the camera. From the research I’ve been doing the monitoring of the camera is definitely an issue. What are your plans for a future solution? Also, what baseplate are you using there? Is it the RRM one? What do you think of RedRock’s gear? I was looking at it and I wasn’t too impressed with build quality, etc. I was looking more towards an Arri FF1… thoughts? Would you say your Z-Finder was worth the price? Thanks for your thoughts, all the best!
Hey Adam, thanks for reading. Congrats on the 7D. Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I do. Monitoring is definitely a weakness. I think I will need to work out a system of HDMI switching with a small on-camera solution for myself and run a second feed to a director’s monitor. With the Z-finder I can actually get away with just the LCD, but the fact that it shuts off if I plug in a monitor for a director is definitely no good. I think the Z-finder is great. I have not tried the other solutions but it seems to be the best made. I think this is one Zacuto item not to pass up. I love the new RRM follow focus. I think it is vastly improved over their first one and for the price it is fantastic. An Arri or Chrosziel will be the best but are probably 3 to 4 times the price and I am not sure what you’ll get for that. My baseplate is sort of custom. I have the Zacuto universal baseplate but it is too long for this camera. It physically works but I can’t get my eye on the z-finder when the camera is at the front of the plate. So I had an old Cinevate rails block which I can put my Sachtler tripod plate. I then had a spacer machined and drilled a Manfrotto tripod plate (I think the 3417) so I could fit it to the spacer and rails block. That gets it all to the right height for the mattebox and follow focus. It actually works perfectly.
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Hey all, interessting to read. I´m from Sachtler Germany, responsible for prodcut development. Always looking for input to improve and adapt our heads and tripods to your needs. Let me know if you have have frustrations with our current head range if they aren´t fullfilling your requests while shooting with with DSLR cameras. Looking forward to get your feedback either on twitter (Sachtler) or via my e-mail adress: juergen.sommer@vitecgroup.com. Sachtler is a Viteg Group brand.Thanks for your feedback, all the best!