How to Setup your 7D
 

I found these two articles on how to setup your 7D for more optimum performance and ease of use....

Use both of these as written and your camera will be setup pretty nice for stills and video.
I started with the first setup as written and finished the camera setup with the second one. You should change any settings that you would prefer to use in conjunction with
these suggestions to get the camera setup your personal way of shooting... I used all
of these settings and only changed one or two items from the combined articles...

the first one I used to setup the video portions is here:

Tutorial: How to custom configure your Canon EOS 7D settings for Photo & Video | Oeding.com

the second one I used to setup the still settings is here:

Setting Up Your New Canon 7D | Deep Green Photography

enjoy :-)

Thanks for posting that.

Anyone have links to settings that work best for out of the box shooting? I don't have good calibration gear for post and also am wary of artifacts that often result from manipulating heavily compressed files.

Brian, the posted set-up is an out-of-the-box solution and wont result in post-production artifacts - that's the point of the set-up.

As I understood the article (didn't read all of it) it's a recipe for footage that gives a lot of latitude in post for color correction, basically a video negative to play with in the NLE. No?

That's why you transcode the files out of the camera on ingest.. to my knowledge no one edits the native 5d/7d files...

Vegas, Premiere Pro CS4.1, FCP and EDIUS all edit 7d files natively. But that's not the point, I was hoping for some scene files that don't require extensive correcting in post. The link above gives a flat neutral image that maximizes options in post. I'm not after that because CC is a labor intensive process and therefore demolishes productivity and profit margin.

There's no major post required with these parameters. Keeping sharpness and contrast dialed down just prevents the camera from baking in too much too early in the process and gives you more control over the final look. Indeed, there are so few settings on this camera that you should be able to adjust one of the presets and find your desired look with the minimum of testing. Start with a "Neutral" picture style and adjust from there.

Are you kidding..? You don't want to color correct.. at all? I guess that's where I've always viewed the line between professional and amateur but maybe you have a different view.. BTW, just because theose software packages can edit native doesn't mean you want to... most computers are still way too slow to make editing native anything BUT labor intensive and time consuming, thereby demolishing productivity and profit margin...

Lots of people edit natively and lots of people get paid for doing it. Sounds like you need a faster computer.

The line between professional and amateur is drawn with the dollar bill. If you're getting paid, by definition you are professional. Without belaboring the point, I'll direct you to the maxim of "Cheap, fast, good. Pick two".

I've been doing some stuff with musicians lately and I absolutely love it, but they're musicians, they just don't have a budget, and as much as I love music and working with artists, I'm not going to work for minimum wage. So yes, I shoot them with a cheap camera (the 7d), and do everything possible to minimize post. They're happy, I'm happy so end of story.

Btw, they're especially pleased with the audio I'm getting from the Tascam DR100 and Octava mics and syncing via Plural Eyes. So much so that they're hiring me for audio only gigs over a well established sound engineer who carts around a 50k sound kit. These are discriminating professional musicians with degrees from places like Juliard, they don't know jack about Color grading, but they have ears

Don't need a faster computer.. they currently don't make one much faster.. I see where you are going with the videos for the musicians.. I guess it's just me personally that would never send out anything uncorrected at this point.. To each their own..

I set up my 7D exactly like the first link told me so, and I quite like it. However, when I'm using Custom Mode C2 the camera is adjusting the ISO automatically to match the light situation. Is this something you guys would want? I find it quite "camcorder" style, which IMHO doesn't suit the "cinema" style manu of us are pursuing. I could be missing some specific infomation though.

Frank, ISO should be set to 200 as a default. Select your desired ISO when shooting but never use AUTO.

I'm with Brian.

I use the 5D2 and 7D as a camcorder capable of shooting several stills during the video. No post processing required, just edit length, and burn SD DVD's, or if more definition is required Blu-Rays.

I realize this and other forums are geared towards filmmakers and wedding photographers, however there is also a need for informative, reliable advice covering more mundane applications of this hardware.

We surely don't need another forum do we?

This ability alone, to pop stills while recording video made a hero out of me at a recent shoot and led directly to several promising referrals as well as a decent paycheck. The comment was "He did still shots and video? One guy?" I say that not as testimonial to myself, but to the camera. You can do some trick stuff with it.

Doesn't the video have a slight pause when you take a still?

yep.......

*WARNING*

If you set-up your camera using the custom profiles as specified in this thread, be careful not to knock the main selector dial, as you may find you're shooting 720/50 when you wanted 1080/25! Yes, that did happen to me - luckily I spotted it before any major damage. In fact, since 720/50 is unusable on any shot with even a moderate amount of detail, I'd recommend not having it as a preset!

anyone care to help out a n00b with a quick question?

the presets mentioned above create a more "flat" look-- a dull look with, in my opinion at least, fewer colors all around. everything looks a little less shadowed and a little more single colored all the way through.
i don't understand how this can be considered helpful. isn't creating a less dynamic image not as good? i see that it's supposed to be better in post, but wouldn't color correcting with a better starting image still create a better final image? Once you take away that dynamic range and make everything more flat, even if you color correct, wouldn't it still look more flat?

Clearly i'm missing something here...
thanks a ton guys!

We do this, because its gives more room/options/choices when colour correcting or grading later in post. (and it really really does)

If you have ever seen (real 35mm film) dailies they too look washed out and listless. Only after it’s been colour corrected does it look like what we know.

PS Music goes through a similar process, called "mastering". If you'd listen to your fav band before mastering they too would sound washed out and listless:)