My first official T2i vid
 

Hey all,

Shot this for work on my personal T2i. I was shooting with it using the EX1 as the A-cam, but all I wound up keeping from the EX1 was the audio. ;) Used the Canon 50mm f1.4 lens for all of it, barely did any color correction, and was just all-around stunned by the results.

***WARNING: this video is about being pro-choice. If that's not your thing, I totally respect that and you probably don't wanna watch this. Either way, I am sure the mods wanna keep politics outta this so, y'know, feel free to dis the vid but maybe not the politics. ;)

For talking heads, the T2i and DSLRs in general totally change the game.

Marc,

Just FYI there's a forum to put examples of T2i work:

EOS 550D / Rebel T2i Sample Clips Gallery Forum at DVinfo.net

I'm sure this will get moved eventually.

Good looking video (I'm on the other side of the political fence ;) ), any specifics on the shoot? What lenses, ISO, lights?

I noticed very little noise in your video, which is something I'm always struggling with. Curious to know how you shot to get such clean results, or did you do anything in post?

Hey Bryan,

Whoops! Should probably move this myself if I can, thanks for the heads up.

I shot it all with ambient light from windows and overhead. I did a white balance before each interview, set the ISO at 200 and actually pushed the shutter up a bit to 80 I believe (I like the look of a quick shutter on pretty much everything). Can't recall the f-stop but with a low-light lens like this and enough light coming in, it was probably bumped up a bit. Lens was Canon 50mm f1.4.

It was SO EASY to get a great shot, I barely had to adjust anything but the most basic settings.

One thing I did have to do: run SmoothCam on the footage in FCP. I did it all handheld, and I will never do that again with this cam. You could actually see my *pulse* in the footage. Still, I don't think you can see the SmoothCam results too easily unless you know I ran it.

Thanks for the feedback. Guess I'm going to have to get me one of those 1.4 50mm lenses.... :)

Highlight tone priority on or off? What about picture profile settings, i.e. sharpness, contrast etc?

Thanks, I've got a T2i and the 50mm 1.4.

Forrest

Another example of why the 50mm 1.4 ROCKS!!!
Nice job!

Marc, Good looking footage, I have the same lens with the T2i, and it also change the game for me and the way I shoot in low lights.

Thanks for the feedback, y'all. The lens really is the star of the piece.

I've left the profile, contrast, sharpness, etc. at the default out-of-the-box settings thus far. I know people tend to turn sharpness down to 0, but I have tried that and preferred leaving it at 3 out of the box. I want to shoot and play more to learn what I like/dislike before I start futzing much with settings.

My only complaints thus far are the lack of manual white balance control and the image stabilization issues (which were worse than I imagined). This project was also my first chance to use pluraleyes, and while it didn't synch up every one of my clips, it did synch about 90% and was very helpful.

On Pluraleyes try selecting 'try really hard' and 'level audio'. I've had great success with these options on some that would otherwise not sync.

Thanks Bryan! Will do. I saw the 'try really hard' option after I ran everything (which is a great feature name, btw) but haven't put it through its paces yet.

What F-Stop did you use with Canon T2i, EF 50mm f1.4 USM Lens?
 

Hi Marc, your video looks amazing!
I just got the Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM lens
and my question to you is that, in Movie Mode,
my F-Stop shows 5.6 and Shutter Speed 1/60sec
and the image is darker. I don't see any options to change that.
How can I change the F-Stops on this lens?
Thanks,
Zia

Marc,

Nice piece except the image stabilization is distracting, I think the natural shake or stable on a tripod would been far more desirable; look at how the background moves unnaturally when the interviewee head is moving.

Just my thoughts and they should be taken as constructive criticism only :)