Canon A1 Outside Footage
 

We had our first sunny day in a long time recently so I finally got my A1 outside in front of my house to shoot some scenery. I got to test out a couple features too which was nice and the camera gave me some nice footage, I love the color that this thing gives. The 20x zoom also reached way further than I thought it would. If you notice the first shot you see the corner way down the road that I zoom into later, lens rules on this cam.

Canon Footage Shot in 1080i60

- Kyle

Is that footage shot with one of the presets posted here or straight from the camera's original settings?

Trish

Wow. This might just be the clip that pushes me to get the A1. The colors are superb and the zoom amazing.

Thanks for posting. Real good sample of how well the A1 works.

Gas is $2.95 a gallon up there?!?!?!?

Hey Kyle, great footage! Would you mind sharing some details on your export/compression for this footage? I'm trying to get some footage posted in a quicktime format of similar size, but can't seem to achieve the quality/file size ratio you have there. Any tips would be great! :)

Thanks for the comments guys, I never expected anybody to respond really lol. Yes gas is expensive, and its 2.95 or so for normal gas, I had to put some gas in my dads 74 Chevy today which takes Ultra and its about 3.60 or so. Sucks, yes. The preset I used was Steven Dempseys normal preset, not the VividRGB, just the simple DVX looking one.

Btw just to comment on that, the presets are great and using and developing them is fun but if you want the best image from the thing for future tweaking they aren't ideal. Shoot as flat as you possible can with as much contrast as possible (with proper exposure) that way you can mess with it 10x more in post. The DVX presets, and film ones are very limited after the fact.

Basically for the compression:

853x480 (SD 16:9)
H264 Codec
3600kb/s Bitrate
Keyframing (auto)
AAC Codec
96kb/s Bitrate
41000khz

Quite honestly this compression isn't ideal, it should be alot smaller than what it is. 25MB/minute is a little too much for SD sized footage IMO.

- Kyle

2.95 for regular? I can only wish. Come to Calif to learn what truly "sucks". Currently I think our average cost for regular is 3.40 :-\

Bill

It was 108.00 a litre in Toronto the other day - not sure how that equates to the gallon numbers but it's high!

I was reading on the comments on presets above - shooting as flat as possible to get the most in post - and wondering what other people's thoughts were on this

Trish

Most high-end projects are shot flat. I shoot with the Varicam pretty often and using FILM REC mode the footage actually looks milky - BUT this is ideal for grading and the best way to do it.

You have far more lattitude this way. If you shoot with "locked" in contrast or colors it is harder to correct or grade. You have the most flexibility shooting flat and typically the best results. However, you MUST color correct.

For a lot of folks extra grading is not what they want to do (especially in this "prosumer" range of camera). But, again, you do get better results (with more work).

Maybe something to make you all feel better on your side of the ocean; here in europe (mainland) it is around $7 a gallon. :\

Blake; about shooting flat, I agree with you that for most projects that is a desirable workflow (providing you use cc). However it could be argued that in an 8-bit environment, you get less bits for the range you eventually want to show in the end product. So sometimes, if you have everything under control and you know which look you want, I'm a fan of getting it mostly right on set and use cc to correct it just for the last bit.