12
An Idiots Guide To Shooting With Your 7D/550D
I made a quick idiot-guide to shooting settings to put in the camera bag so I could quickly dial in the right settings nice and fast (I have a terrible memory, I’ve been meaning to write this post for a week!). So I thought I’d share it with you. If I had design skills I’d make it into little card for you to download, but I don’t so you’ll have to deal with the making pretty stuff yourself.
Picture Style Settings For SuperFlat
Sharpness: 0
Contrast: -4
Saturation: -2
Colour tone: 0
Highlight Tone Priority: ON
ISO
160, 320, 640, 1250
FPS – Shutter Speed
24/25 – 1/50
50 – 1/100
50 to be slowed by half to 25 – 1/200
REMEMBER TO WHITE BALANCE!!
7
A comparison of shutter speeds and techniques for slo-mo footage
Back in this article I rasied the question of which shutter speed would be best if you intended to turn your 720@50fps footage into slo-mo. I wasn’t 100% sure, and there was some debate in the comments about which techniques produced the best results so I thought I’d do a little test.
I shot the same exciting footage of pouring a glass of water on a 7D set to 720@50fps using 1/100, 1/200 and 1/400. I then converted it to ProRez422HQ and conformed the 1/200 and 1/400 from 50fps to 25fps in CinemaTools. I then stuck it all into FCP7 into two timelines, one 50fps and one 25fps. As there wasn’t a conform to 12.5fs option in CinemaTools to quarter the 1/400 I took the halved 1/400 footage and slowed the speed by half using FCP’s speed tool, leaving blend/scale/ripple all on. Below are the two results exported as 720 H.264 25fps and 50fps.
I having looked at the clips a number of times, zoomed in on the detail, gone through them frame by frame I prefer the 1/200 slowed by CinemaTools to 25fps in the 25fps timeline. If you were going for a really slow shot I’d defiantly suggest the 1/400/CinemaTools/FCPspeed option as although a little soft, its still very much usable.
But that’s my opinion, and as with all these things its down to personal taste. So which do you prefer? Comments are just below. And if you’d like me to re-do the test in anyway just shout and I’ll see what I can do.
1
Reducing Noise on Canon Cameras
If you’re the owner of a 7D or 550D you have experienced some issues with Noise on your recordings thanks to the rather over zealous work of the AGC -Auto Gain Control, if you’re not familiar with this concept, its something that is designed to assist the camera in picking out sound when the volume going into the device decreases. On the 5D mark II and 1D there are hacked firmwares by Magic Lantern which can allow you to disable this feature of those models, but as of the time of writing, no such firmware hack is available to 7D / 550D owners.
This is where a hack comes in! Thanks to Mike B, aka Fony on youtube, you can effect a solution with the use of a simply Y connector (stereo to 2 mono) and a cheap mp3 player. Mike’s technique involves creating a false noise floor, which forces the AGC to hold back from turning up the mic, well enough yap from me, check out his solution in the video below -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91xw_NX0Qm8
Some folks in the youtube comments have stated that they have had issues with this solution for the 550D, haven’t had chance to try it just yet but look forward to finding out if anyone has luck with it!