Martial Arts video shot on the 7D - my first time playing with 60p on a DSLR

I got a minuscule amount of money to shoot a video of a sparring session at a local dojo. Figured it was a perfect time to bust out with some 60p and the glidecam. I poured my heart into the edit hoping to end up with a nice portfolio piece. Let me know what you think!

A Day at the Dojo on Vimeo

[Ryan Hargrave]

Nice stuff! I love Martial Arts stuff and you do an awesome job of moving around and hitting the great moments. My only critique is the length. Too many of the same type of shots I think.

I tried a few things with some 60p martial arts footage and added in some motion blur back in to the normal speed stuff (60p frame dropped to 24p) mixed in with 60p slo-mo adn some time-remapping. It did soften it a little but the fast action made up for it.

well done.

[Graham King]

Ryan, thanks for your feedback. It did get really long. I was originally aiming for 60 seconds but I really wanted to get the slow vs fast thing in there a few times. I wonder how I could have done that with a shorter video. Maybe chop the song up.

What did you use to add motion blur? Could you add sharpening to fix it or would that just cancel out a lot of the blur?

[Lance Watts]

Originally Posted by Jon Braeley

DSLR zooms like Canon, Nikon, throw out the focus if you zoom. The lens are parfocal, meaning when you adjust the focal length on a zoom, you need to refocus. The difference is hard to see but when you look on a large monitor is becomes apparent - slightly out of focus.

No. If a lens is parfocal, it maintains focus throughout the zoom. You are talking about non-parfocal lenses. And contrary to your assertion, there are a number of parfocal zoom lenses for Canon. The Tokina 11-16 is one, and it works wonderfully on a 7D + Glidecam. Other parfocal zooms include Canon 16-35 f/2.8, 70-200 f/2.8, and Tamron 17-50 f2.8.

[Stephen Hill]

Really liked it, and this was with the sound down (Im at work and sneakily reading the forum). Just out of interest, was the speed ramp into the realtime shot at 60p, slowed to 24p for the slow-mo, then sped back up to 60p to go back into realtime speed ? Hope that makes sense.

[Josh Bass]

Holy crap! I did NOT know this about Parfocal/still lenses. What about the Canon L series 24-105? Maintains focus throughout zoom or no?

[Lance Watts]

I don't have any experience with the Canon L-Series 24-105 f/4 but I would presume that it is parfocal for two reasons:

1. It's L Series lens
2. Assuming you have shot with the lens wide open, it would be surprising if you haven't noticed that it's NOT parfocal.

[Graham King]

Originally Posted by Stephen Hill

Really liked it, and this was with the sound down (Im at work and sneakily reading the forum). Just out of interest, was the speed ramp into the realtime shot at 60p, slowed to 24p for the slow-mo, then sped back up to 60p to go back into realtime speed ? Hope that makes sense.

The slow mo stuff was shot at 60p and conformed to 24p for true 40% slow motion. For the fast stuff, I sped the slow mo footage to 288% giving me 115% of realtime.

Up until now I've been telling everyone I sped it up to 120% but I think I was so sleepy and delusional the night I was editing that I forgot that I actually used 115%!

[Stephen Hill]

Thanks Graham. The technique has been used really well. The faster shutter gave the sparring real energy.

[Josh Bass]

"wide open" on that lens is f4!