How high of an ISO do you go?

[Brian David Melnyk]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

Don't get me started on depth-of-focus and the pursuit of filmic imagery...

Ha ha. I wish people would just realize that it is being allowed the technical option of choosing creatively how deep or shallow the field of focus is, that is the real benefit of DSLRs, FF in particular.
I love being able to choose, to be far less controlled by the limitations of the camera/lens.
Who wants to use a tiny sensor at telephoto in an interview to isolate the subject visually, setting up the camera in a different timezone, destroying any sense of connection and intimacy? Much easier to just change the aperture, or dial it in precisely to include/exclude the background to taste.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Suddenly I find myself tempted to become a ranting radio talk-show host. If two people like my rant, imagine what it must feel like to be listened to by thousands!

Originally Posted by Brian David Melnyk

Ha ha. I wish people would just realize that it is being allowed the technical option of choosing creatively how deep or shallow the field of focus is, that is the real benefit of DSLRs, FF in particular.
I love being able to choose,...

IMO...

Brian has it about right. For the money you get lots of choice about depth of focus with dSLRs.

Of course there are those internet-educated that think "filmic" means shallow DoF all the time, and the shallower the better. Following this logic, of course they want full-frame, because you can get even shallower.

Myth: Full-frame gives you as much shallow DoF as 35mm film. That's wrong, Full-frame gives you more available shallow DoF than 35mm film.

Why? Go back to 35mm stills ("135" film in a cassette). The film advances through the camera from left to right, with a 3:2 aspect ratio, there's about 24mm of image height available between the sprocket holes, and the image is about 36mm wide. There's your 3:2.

However, in a 35 motion picture camera the film runs from top to bottom, so the available image width between sprocket holes is 24mm... but there have been many standards on how to use the real estate. For example the "Academy Ratio" of 1.375:1 used only 22mm of width, leaving 2-ish mm for an optical sound track. Super-35 squeezed every last bit between the sprocket holes at about 24.8mm of image width.

What dSLR sensor most closely matches the available DoF of 35mm motion pictures? The Canon APS-C sensor with the 1.6x crop, found on the 7D, 70D, etc. at 22mm wide, an exact match for Academy Ratio 35mm motion picture images and real close to Super-35.

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My next rant would be about 24fps being more filmic than 30fps. 24p video does not look like 24fps film.

Why throw away (temporal) resolution to have inferior representation of motion that is mis-timed against the screen refresh standards?
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It isn't the frame rate or DoF that will make our video look most filmic. I love the creamy look of large sensors these days, even though it's different than film.

What makes our work look most filmic is lighting, latitude, and exposure. Nothing says "cheap video" like overexposed highlights, noisy darks, and random middle tones.

What makes our work look filmic is deliberate design of all aspects of the image, to include highs, mid-tones and darks. Then there's composition, how we apply the conventional visual language in camera support, shots, and editing, clean sound that is direct... all this is craft that any videographer with cinematography aspirations should understand and use.

[Brian David Melnyk]

Agreed. I shoot 30p as I dislike the way motion looks in 24p in video.
I was just reading specifically about canon DSLRs and how it is their color science that helps makes their dslr video look really filmic, in particular the skin tones. I often combine footage from canon DSLRs and canon xa10, and it is really the skin tones that I have the hardest time matching. The videocamera seems so much more flat and lifeless, while DSLRs are natural, beautiful skin tones.