I just got my 60D and I'm slowly going over all the features. I want to use it for short highlight films for weddings. DSLRs are new to me. I shoot Panasonic 170 and 300 for weddings. I've been studying up on all the suggestions on this forum to shoot video. Steer me in the right direction. I bought a Class 6 SD 16 gig card.

To shoot Video with these cameras, I should Shoot:

1080p 24p f 1.8 Shutter 1/50
Keep the ISO 800 if possible turn off the Auto ISO
Use a native ISO like 160, 320, 640, 1250, 2500
Buy Magic Lantern if my camera won't let me shoot native
Download CineStyle
Buy a lens like Tamron sp B005 17mm - 50mm f/2.8 or Canon EF15mm-85mm or Rokinon 35 f 1/4. I just have an old standard lens now. I mostly use it for stills. I just upgraded from my old 10D from 10 years ago. What else should I know?

I have a slider but no stabilizer yet. I know it takes a lot of practice. Big difference from my other cameras, especially holding, zooming and focusing.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Art

-I'd be real careful with cinestyle. It requires particular handling and very good exposure or you'll get yourself in trouble (as the name suggests, it was designed with "movies" in mind). In most cases the Neutral picture style will serve you just as well if you want to grade later.

-I don't think you do have to buy Magic Lantern, but it'd be nice for them.

-I have never been sold on the superiority of 24p over 25, but to each their own (depends where you are and what you're finishing on too). That may dampen any chance at credibility among purists, but that's life I guess.

-your old 50(?) could be quite nice.

-do you need to think about sound? 'cause the onboard mic ain't great (the other cameras probably have you covered though)

Curious; what are you hoping the 60 will give you that the 170 can't? True 1080p? Just trying something different?

Murray,
Thank you. Never thought about the 24p. I just routinely shoot that because you can instantly review it in the camera. I take my own stills, mostly but there are times when I kinda wished I had that 3rd camera. Most of what made me go with the 60D is the examples I have seen on this forum with the nice depth of field and stabilizer. 170 can too, but like look of this HDSLR stuff even tho I don't know much about it.

I'll leave the audio for the other camera. I'll leave Magic Lantern and CineStyle alone too, until I can figure if it's best for my set up.

Thanks!
Art

Yeah they do have a certain something. Sometimes I notice a few flaws and wish I had a three chip-er. But even now it seems I'd have to give up true 1080p and a pile of lenses, or spend a heck of a lot of money, and they're just so much fun.

Yes there is. And with anything else, you can spend as much money as you want to with these things. I mis-spoke, my lens is a Sigma 18-200mm 1:3.5-6.3. It's still nice looking, albeit I don't have anything to compare it too. Tripod and slider shots are nice. It's gunna be a bit before I'm comfortable with hand held shooting.

Funny - I too upgraded just this year from my wonderful 10D to the 60D (flip-flop rear screen finally hooked me). I went out and bought two fast Tokina zooms but neither has OIS and for any sort of hand-held movie work on the 60D this is pretty much a must-have. Of course Mercalli in post can help a lot, but as with all things in this life it's best to get things right up front.

tom.

I bought a Class 6 SD 16 gig card.

I hope that card is a SanDisk. If not test it thoroughly, many "bargain" brands don't always keep up with the camera. To test, just shoot a lot of video. If you get even one instance of the buffer bar appearing DO NOT trust it on a wedding.

To shoot Video with these cameras, I should Shoot:

1080p 24p f 1.8 Shutter 1/50

1080 30p might be better unless you're going to burn Blu Ray then 24p might be better. Shutter should be some multiple of US line frequency of 60Hz (since you're in Lansing) so best would be 1/60th. This will still allow enough motion blur to look natural.

Set aperture for depth of field effect desired. Wide for shallow zone of acceptable focus, small for deep zone of focus, or mid range for something inbetween.


Keep the ISO 800 if possible turn off the Auto ISO

I set ISO to AUTO long enough to see what ISO value the camera wants to use in that lighting environment, then I manually "dial in" that value. From there I can adjust it up or down for exposure effect desired (must use viewfinder loupe to evaluate exposure effect, otherwise leave it at the value the camera selected in AUTO ISO mode).


Use a native ISO like 160, 320, 640, 1250, 2500
Buy Magic Lantern if my camera won't let me shoot native

Your 60D will let you use those ISO values.

Once you get used to it, you'll really enjoy that 60D.

Bruce

Regarding Cinestyle, it's more forgiving of exposure, rather than less, compared to the built-in picture styles. The challenge is focus. Because of lower contrast, it can be harder to see critical focus live on the monitor.

If you can take the time to zoom in and set critical focus, this isn't a problem. You can also zoom in, set multiple focus points by marking a lens and pull focus to those points, depending on the lens and how well people hit their marks. The challenge is when trying to focus live by looking at the screen. But that's always a challenge with DSLRs.

The key thing with Cinestyle is that it pretty much requires grading later.

Regarding shutter speed, if you are shooting outside, 24fps and 1/50 is great. Indoors in the US and other 60 Hz countries, use 1/60 to avoid flicker. In Europe and other 50 Hz areas, stick with 1/50.

As for magic lantern it's free and well worth loading. The thing is if you don't like it just format the card and it's back to canons menu.
Have a look at their forum
Magic Lantern User Group forum on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/groups/magiclantern/forums)

if youre doing weddings, 17-50 2.8 may not be adequate. Just sold mine and switched to 50 1.4 and 24 1.8 get a fast 24, 50, and 85 and a 70-200 2.8 and you can can cover any wedding

Regarding Cinestyle, it's more forgiving of exposure, rather than less, compared to the built-in picture styles. The challenge is focus. Because of lower contrast, it can be harder to see critical focus live on the monitor.


Cinestyle's high shadows make it easier to avoid losing detail it's true. Black is lifted from 0 to 15, if memory serves. The highlights are more forgiving is well I think. But its compressed and flattened luminance range is designed to have a Look up Table/ S gamma curve type arrangement applied in post to restore the contrast.
There is a boilerplate one, which I think you'd be mad to use, but even custom tweaking each shot can get you variable results. I'm not precisely sure but I think that if you haven't got a nice even spread on your histogram, doing this can seriously reveal the noise in the image (and I'm really forgiving of noise).

I can't give exact technical talk on why this is so, and some people don't even use it like this, but if you are planning to go this route with it be warned. If for any reason you are shooting low light, low key and/or higher ISO situations, or could be, don't use it unless you've tested extensively and know exactly what you are going to get and are ok with it. That part I do know and that's why I wouldn't recommend it for a wedding or documentary shoot.

I just did the lazy route with Picture style. Go with Neutral style, then tone down saturation and sharpness.

I don't find CineStyle to be risky in the least. I use it on any scene with high contrast. Shooting outdoors? Definitely Cinestyle. Shooting quickly where you don't have time to really nail the exposure? Cinestyle.

The exception for me is when shooting in low contrast where skin tones are critical. In that case, I go with Normal. Put simply, Normal gives you more bits in the mid-range, while Cinestyle gives you more bits at the extremes.

For a wedding, I'd certainly use Cinestyle. You typically have a white dress near black suits. Cinestyle is more likely to capture those extremes.

And, yes, expect to grade everything shot with Cinestyle. Then again, I expect to grade everything, regardless of the Picture Style used.

Well, for anyone passing who wants to try it out using the typical work flow and finds when trying to apply a gamma curve some shots become surprisingly grainy. Rest assured your experience is not unusual.

I did purchase the SanDisk as I read where this was probably a good idea. I'm fortunate I'm in a position where this isn't my primary camera so I can take the time and take all of the suggestions on this forum and practice. It's a nice camera. I love the close up/depth of field shots. I REALLY have to get used to looking at the monitor as my only source of focus. I like having the camera on my shoulder looking through the eyepiece but this 60 is easy to move around. Thanks for all the advice. Keep them coming!

Thanks
Art

SanDisk is one of the most reliable brands of media cards out there. Costs a bit more, but B&H has some pretty good prices on them right now (I just picked up a 16GB - been using 8GB in my 7D) and a couple more 16GB Class (10) SDHC cards.

It's important to reformat your media cards each time you copy your files off to a computer (once you are sure you have the files safe in two separate locations - I use 2TB external drives in pairs). This keeps the card's format "fresh" and makes for most efficient writing of data to the card. Even SanDisk will eventually encounter problems if you simply "erase" files although it may take awhile.

I've read a couple of accounts of corrupted cards where the operator simply put a new card in the camera and never formatted it in camera. Kept deleting individual stills and video files until one day he started getting errors.

Bruce, can you cite some information about reformatting vs erasing keeping the cards "fresh?"

The reason I ask is because I use Magic Lantern when I shoot video and I erase rather than reformat so that I don't have to reinstall ML. I'd like to know in more detail how this might be affecting my card.

Reformatting totally "reorders" the media format where erasing merely tells the "file allocation table" it can reuse the portion the file previously occupied. At first the file is mostly left intact, part of the filename is replaced with other characters. Over time the constant erasing/deleting of files leaves fragments of files lying all over the media and "bargain brand" media is increasing susceptible to corruption as this goes on.

Even SanDisk & Hoodman media can eventually get corrupted.

I don't use ML so I cannot address your situation.

There's compelling evidence to suggest that reformatting a card considerably shortens its life expectancy, so this is a consideration to be recognised, if not acted upon. Of course shortening a card's life to 10 years is probably ok for most of us.

I think that fragmentation problem is more for harddrives for computer system instead solid states memory card for camera. For computer daily operations, there are many big/small files created and deleted all the time. So after many saving/deleting operations for a while, there will be lots of "holes" in the memory allocation. Next time for larger file to be saved, it will be split into smaller fragments that cause a hit in performance. For computer harddrive to restore performance, that's why we run defrag regularly.

For a freshly formatted SD card, all the large mov files saved and later deleted. There shouldn't be any issue with the FAT.

:)