The question I get most often is, “What kind of camera should I buy?” That’s a big question and a lot depends on your budget and what kind of photography you’ll be pursuing and at what level. The word beginner comes in many contexts: are you a beginner to shooting for money or using a camera period. Different options apply.
Professional and Semi-Professional
You’re planning on making money with your camera or plan to do a lot of shooting as a semi-pro or amateur. You have $1,800 to $2,500 in your budget.
If you’re shooting stills, go with Nikon. If you think you’ll be doing a lot of video go with Canon. Nikons have video recording capability, but most of the video accessories are made for Canons.
Advanced Hobbyist
You are really serious about taking pictures, but you have a day job in another field. Photography is a serious hobby. There’s an outside chance you’ll be taking a paying job, or filling in for friends who can’t afford a professional photographer. You have a budget from $800 to $1,500.
It’s pretty much just which ever camera you like in this range.
You Just Want To Take Good Pictures
You want to take great pictures, but mainly of your family and friends. You want something better than a pocket camera and you might want to experiment with manual controls once in a while.
I’ll admit to being somewhat jaded by corporate media relations but the announcement from Canon about a major product announcement on November 3rd caught my attention.
If you notice Canon is a little different about product announcements. For them, by the time they announce a product, it’s already on store shelves.
It’s rare that Canon ever makes this kind of production out of a product announcement, so photography and video professionals will be paying attention. The blog sphere is already alive with speculation.
Engadget speculated it could be an announcement of the new mirrorless camera lines hitting the shelves in time for the Christmas holidays, and the timing makes that a definite possibility.
WideOpenCamera thinks it’s an announcement about the rumored Canon 4K movie camera, and announcing that in Hollywood on the red carpet would make perfect sense.
DVFreelancer has a long-shot guess this is the long-awaited and oft-rumored 5D MKIII. Which would work from the holiday timing and Hollywood venue, but that would hardly qualify as “historic”, so I’m going with the 4K.
Whatever the product, Canon certainly has my attention. I’m just hope whatever it is lives up to the hype. What do you think it is?
Back when Nikon and Canon engineers first started getting requests from field reporters to add video to their high end still cameras, I’m sure the top two manufacturers were doing it so they didn’t lose business to the other. It wasn’t an unreasonable request at the time because video capability was turning up in all kinds of appliances. If your toaster had a camera, someone would have added video recording.
Even though they were reluctant participants at first, that all changed when the first video from the Canon 5Ds hit the internets machine. The film world experienced a collective jaw drop as video from a full frame 35mm sensor behind quality glass hit home. I remember there was a great disturbance in the Film Force that went through the normal stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining and, ultimately, depression. Hard to believe that was just 2008.
Today Canon DSLRs, particularly the Canon 5D and Canon 7D are as common on movie sets as Assistant Directors. The film world recovered from their initial shock and life went on.
For still photographers, the transition to video isn’t always easy because the rules are different. Instead of framing a shot and pushing the button, you’re scripting a scene that might feature multiple angles. The normal rules for exposure and composition go right out the window when you flip the selector switch from the little still camera over to the little video camera and DSLRs have some quirks that you need to aware of when shooting video.
There’s so much information about what goes into quality video, I’ve divided this into two separate features.
Frame Rate
I’m continually amazed at camera reviewers who take the position that 30 fps is “better” than 24 fps. It’s not a question of better or worse, when it comes to quality the two are almost indistinguishable.
A frame rate of 24 progressive frames per second is a hold-over from film days. When the film vs video worlds first collided, there was 24p on the film side and 30i (okay, 29.97) on the video side and neither was about to budge. DSLRs changed all that. Video from a 5D was good enough to be inter-cut with film, only the frame rates didn’t match. So some techno-wizards came up with the Magic Lantern firmware update which gave the Canon 5D the ability to output 24p video and, shazam, film and DSLRs were suddenly BFFs.
Today, most high end DSLRs support 24p, 30i and sometimes 60i. As movie theaters move away from film projection and production switches to video over film, the 24p/30i argument is less critical in production. Still, if you are thinking about shooting a video feature on a DSLR, you’ll want to stick with a 24p timeline. Mixing 24p and 30i on the same video timeline does not work. Sure, there is expensive software, like Twixtor, available that changes the frame rate and it looks decent, but the motion is still always a little off.
Unless it’s a quick cut-away shot, when you start a project in 24p or 30i, you’re stuck there for the entire project. Choose wisely. If you’re just grabbing some quick video at the beach, it doesn’t matter. If it’s a feature length documentary or film, you’ll want to shoot 24p. I shoot exclusively in 24p.
Shutter Speed
This one trips up a lot of photographers new to the video world. They think they have have the same exposure control they do over a static image. If you want a smaller f-stop, just bump up the shutter speed to compensate. Easy, right?
Wrong answer in video, where your shutter speed options are dictated by the frame rate:
Ignore those rules and your video with either look smeary at slower shutter speed or the motion will look choppy at higher shutter speeds.
If you want to change to lower f-stop for a shallow depth of field and the light isn’t right, you’ll need to use ND filters. To get a wider depth of field at a higher f-stop, you may need supplemental lighting.
In Part Two we’ll talk about color space, presets, audio, moire, and camera settings.
The Passion-Aggression Chassis is the future of DSLR video rigs. It is big, expensive and loaded with features like cup holders, dice, lot’s of places to grip, a mat box, and a built in boom mic with a custom baby seal fur wind screen. We all know that size matter, so the bigger your rig is the better! Okay so if you have not caught on the Passion-Aggression Chassis is not a real product. The guys at Neumann Films are trying to make a point, it is not all about your camera gear, it is about creativity. You don’t need a $10,000 rig to make a movie, you can do it yourself with a T2i or another HDSLR camera and a tripod.
Enjoy!
