How do you guys do it?

[JohnN]

I filmed my daughter opening her presents this morning and frankly the results are horrid - grainy and rough as anything, a mobile would have probably done better!

Now I don't really know much if anything about filming with the 60D but it is supposed to be pretty decent.

I've no idea about settings unfortunately, I just wheeled it round to video and pressed record.

Now it wasn't that well lit, being at 6:30AM with just natural light (through a huge window!), but I've seen people take decent movies and images at concerts so surely it can pull that off.

Are there any good guides out there to get me going and at least make it so I can take videos in my front room?

Cheers

 

[Harvey_nikon]

Depends what light there was, settings, lens used.

Its not something you can just pick up and expect cracking results, you need to learn the limitations of the gear and how to make the most of it.

As for tutorials, I started a thread on there asking people to post them but I don't think anyone did.

 

[JohnN]

Thats a shame about no one posting, perhaps I'll post the same on another forum, I just like to start here first.

The lens used as a Sigma DC 17-50 2.8 EX HSM, so not too shabby I wouldn't have though.

By the way - this is a sample image:

And this the video:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/27027215

 

[wambam]

First thing to check, what quality is the video set too on the camera.?

 

[JohnN]

If I understand what you're asking it was 1920x1080 25FPS

 

[wambam]

Yes thats a good start John,
next 'rule' (just a guide) is shutter speed double your fps so you wanted 50.
personally i would start at an aperture of about 4 (depending of course what DOF you need) ,
up the ISO if the light was bad to get these settings exposing correctly .
Then the Manual focusing is all down to you,

Just watched the video john,
Its well underexposed which is going to be noisy/grainy.

I see youve joined magic lantern ,
Good move.

 

[JohnN]

Thanks Ray - I think I know where the issue was and unsurprisingly it was me!

As a total newbie I installed ML, originally for the focus stacking/trap focus features, but as you no doubt know it wants you to set it to movie exposure to manual, in my total ignorance I just went ahead and did this without thinking, the result was I think my speed set to something like 1000 and my aperture at 11 for some unknown reason.

Because in the past I'd just dialed it in and filmed (back on the 500D) and it just worked I figured it would still... Oh silly me!

BTW I just did two tests, switched it back to auto and took a quick movie, much better even in my terribly lit room, then again switched back to manual but this time dropped it to 50 with an aperture of 2.8 and what a difference it made - granted a shallow depth of field but much brighter and clearer!

The irony being I'd never have set those settings if I'd been taking a photo, in fact the camera was set to AV with ISO 320 and 2.8, which resulted in a speed of around 1/125

Thank you Ray thats one mystery solved and I can go to bed