DSLR video?

[slakjaw]

Anyone here shoot video? I'd like to find a book about it maybe someone here can recommend some learning materials. I was under the impression that DSLR video would fall apart in post but I have seen some pretty impressive stuff on Vimeo. My main interest is stills so I am just curious.

[beepbeep]

I do. What do you need to know?

Generally, DSLR video is quite "filmic" and when good gear is used, doesn't fall apart at all. Also, you can get bokeh previously not available on this side of 35mm film.

I recommend starting with DVXUser forum DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking and going from there.

I have both Canon and Panasonic gear and now use Panasonic GH2 for video almost all the time. Canon still has a slights edge on stills (read: I invested too much money into Canon glass to get rid of it ) but it's video isn't quite up to par.

[89911]

I recently purchased a D600 and while the movie portion of it isn't my main focus, its not too shabby either.

[slakjaw]

Thanks for the link man... The one thing I am really jealous about with the motion picture guys is the way they light a scene. IMO motion guys are light years ahead of most stills shooters when it comes to lighting. are motion guys using the zone system? even when I watch old movies like A Clockwork Orange, the way they light scenes just blows my mind. Other curiosity's are the technical side. I shoot the D800 and I have read that it will do uncompressed HDMI out. I don't get it though because its still not RAW. right? I see people talking about 4.2.2 and 8 bit or 10 bit color. No idea what any of this stuff means.

[beepbeep]

Old movies were shot with slow emulsion film and needed copious amounts of lightning.
I remember reading that first Wizard of Oz was shot on early Technicolor and needed so much light that actor make-up was melting.

With DSLR, chips got so efficient you don't need Kilowatts of light, couple of bounce shileds can go long way.


Regarding HDMI/raw/4:2:2/10-bit color:

It's complicated. Don't get too hang up on details. Tech is good. Really good. I feel I have double the tech my dad ever had, but not quite as much talent

HDMI is uncompressed. So you can kinda call it RAW.
But it's only half a story. Some cameras suffer from artifacts/moire, so even uncompressed HDMI won't save the day. It will faithfuly reproduce the shortfalls of the chip. In this regards, Panasonic is IMHO the best.

4:2:2 is one of ways to do chroma-subsampling. Without going to details, let's just say that cameras record B/W portion of picture in much more detail than they do for colours. This is a "poor mans compression" and stems from the beginning of TV. 4:4:4 is best, then 4:2:2, then 4:2:0. In reality, you won't see the difference unless you do green-screen key-pulling.

More info here:
Chroma subsampling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All DSLR's I know about use 4:2:0 and 8-bit colour.

8-bit: 256 shades of every primary colour (RGB).
10-bit: 1024 ......

This matters more as 10-bit will "survive" post a lot better.

But all this is mostly academic. For 1000 bucks, you get better gear than many serious film makers had 30 years ago. Shoot a lot and experiment ... there is no film roll that needs to be developed

[slakjaw]

Cool. thanks for the info! I shoot a lot but I am going to try messing around with video. Just for the hell of it.