Not too impressive for a 20 person production team team with a $300K budget IMO.

I guess the 7D dosent have an adjustable knee point judging by the blown out image in most of the scenes.

It does not have a knee control per se, but it does have other controls for retaining more dynamic range, including the picture profile (contrast & curve control), highlight tone priority, and Automatic Lighting Optimizer. Their blown out images don't indicate what the camera can do in the right hands. (See Jon's 48 hr project for an example of doing it right.)

Thanks, Daniel!

Of course, we had the Magic Lantern advantage on the 48-hour shoot. The zebras made all the difference.

Back when we shot our 15-minute short film, we often overexposed, and were inconsistent. Sure, that was when we were tricking the camera to set the exposure, but lack of manual control wasn't the problem. Using the photo histograms helped, but it's not a good method for getting scene to scene matches.

Can you post a link to Jon's 48 hr project? I'd like to check it out! Thanks!

Here it is, Paul: The Last Outpost on Vimeo

Aside from some color correction for special effects, all but about five shots were edited with no color correction whatsoever. On the five shots, we underexposed slightly, which is the risk with zebras - you know when you're over the line, but not how much below the line you are. We didn't underexpose by much, so it was easy to get those shots to line up.

Ha HA! Love it Jon, thanks for sharing. And your exposure looks right on.

A big Oops! I gave the wrong link. We don't have snow here in August. ;) Here is the right one: Dream Job on Vimeo

As compared to Dream Job, we had to tweak The Last Outpost like mad! We shot that after owning the camera a couple of weeks. It was all auto (with us jumping through hoops to fool it.) We didn't have an ND filter, so the shutter is 1/250 or 1/320 for the outdoor shots. The sun and clouds kept changing, so white balance was all over the map. In a lot of cases, we had to mask and tweak things separately - especially for the zombie. Fortunately, we spent the time with photo histograms to ensure that we got usable shots.

Another problem is that we shot The Last Outpost before the black crush problem had been fixed. We used a custom picture style that attempted to lift the blacks as much as possible. It helped, but wasn't ideal.

Dream Job was the opposite experience. We dialed stuff in, used zebras to fine tune things, edited for timing, and generally used the out-of-the-camera look. On The Last Outpost, not a single shot was left untouched.

Glad you liked it though. :)

Even funnier! Nice work, plus your link led me to all your audio on the 5D videos that I really find informative! Thanks again!