In LA

People often ask me for recommendations for DSLRs with which they can shoot video. I think the Canon Rebel series of cameras (T2i, T3i, T4i) are the best bang-for-the-buck in that category. Today, perhaps in celebration of Ridiculous_Invented-name_Consumerism-holiday¹, a couple of very good deals on nice entry-level Canon DSLRs have popped up. I read about these deals on the site cheesycam, which is a site I would recommend to any budget-minded filmmaker who is looking to save money and can manage to not buy so many good deals as to render the idea of “saving money” a bad joke.

Deal 1: $499 for Canon T3i DSLR Kit (includes a lightweight and dim 18-55mm lens with built-in stabilization)

Deal 2: $669 for Canon T3i kit with 18-55mm kit lens and 2 additional lenses (55-250mm, 75-300mm). I tend not to recommend lenses that cover long ranges as there are so many design compromises that go into maximizing that range that other qualities of the lenses suffer, but in this case they come out to costing very little. If you don’t like them you could probably sell them on eBay afterward and cover a portion of the cost of the camera.

As far as I know, the video quality of the Canon T3i is identical to that of the T4i and T2i, and pretty indistinguishable from that of the 7D and 60D. If you need such a thing, both of the deals listed above seem pretty good to me.

1. “Cyber Monday”, ew. [↩]

EOS HD has put up a summary of results from a grading test of footage from the new Canon 5D Mark III. It sounds as though this is all footage shot at 6400 ISO, and they’re impressed. The original footage and test can be found on Sam Morgan Moore’s blog.

I’d expect now that Canon’s put in the processing power to actually scale the entire image captured on their full-frame sensor in a sane fashion (i.e. no binning or line skipping, but actual scaling) before recording into a quicktime file, that may make a huge difference from the DSLR footage we’ve all been shooting for the past few years –I expect no more moire, and much higher detail. It’s scaled from a sensor whose resolution is within the realm of the Red Epic, but whose size and likely light sensitivity is larger. I know the final result is a 1080p quicktime file and not 5k of RAW, but it still could be very very nice.

I look forward to seeing more test footage surfacing on the net, I’m particularly interested in any tests at more optimal ISOs and with noise reduction disengaged or minimized (it likely softens imagery). And I’m also looking forward to the thoughts of professional DSLR cinematography expert and C300 owner Philip Bloom on the matter, as he’ll undoubtedly push the camera to its limits and make the comparisons I’m most curious about. I want to see how sharp and detailed the imagery from this 5k+ resolution sensor scaled to 1080p can be. I’m curious to see how it compares to C300 footage and, dare I say, scaled footage from Red’s Epic-X or Scarlet-X. If Canon’s not taking shortcuts when scaling the full image from their sensor, and the 90mbps i-frame encoding preserves enough detail, it could look amazing.

I just happened upon a deal and figured I’d pass it along. If you’ve been thinking of getting a video-capable DSLR, you can now get a refurb T2i at under $500 shipped.

The Canon T2i is my bang-for-the-buck camera of choice. It shoots video that’s identical to that of their more expensive models T3i and 7D, and it’s also easily hackable to run the Magic Lantern open-source firmware. Magic Lantern gives the camera a ton of new useful features, such as time-lapse, HDR multiple-exposure bracketing, focus peaking, focus zoom, and more.

Canon’s discounted the price of some refurbished cameras by 15%. Which brings the T2i down to what must be its record low price.

The Deal:

• Here’s a link to the EOS Rebel T2i Body Refurbished – $475.99.
• They also sell it with a very good, cheap kit lens: EOS Rebel T2i EF-S 18-55mm IS Lens Kit Refurbished – $543.99.

According to the site at which I found the deal, “Shipping is $5 for $150+ purchases with coupon code SHIP11 [Exp 12/11]“.

Shoot right with this camera, and it can look ridiculously good. I bought mine back when the best price for the T2i body alone was $799 about a year-and-a-half ago, and have no regrets. It allows me to shoot video to a large sensor (APS-C size) using my excellent Canon lenses and even old Nikon lenses using an adapter.

A few clips I’ve shot on my T2i can be found here. They’re not best-of-breed, but should give some idea of what video from the T2i can look like:

• my first online DSLR video
• Looong Steadicam Merlin + Canon T2i shot
• On the streets of Hengdian, China

My first video shot on my T2i:

pizza and the dream of not being filmed from ZachFine on Vimeo.

I’ve previously written on this blog about the Creative Vado HD solid-state 720p video cameras. I enjoy knocking mine about (both above and below the waterline) and I tend to recommend them to people who just want to capture moments with family, or to those looking for a simple video camera to give to a future filmmaker, or to folk who want a camera cheap enough to risk destroying in unsafe conditions¹, or to anyone who simply wants a convenient tiny video camera. The reason I particularly like the Creative Vado series as opposed to the now-defunct Flip cameras and other competitors is that the Vados feature the widest-angle lenses in this class of camera. I thought these were a good deal when their price fell to $129 a couple of years ago. Today I noticed refurbs are available for 1/3 that price. Perhaps they’re being cleared away due to the fact that some popular smartphones record video of equivalent quality, and are eating away the market? Regardless the reason for the discount, I think these cameras are fun, useful, and a great value.

The Creative Vado HD 8GB (refurbished, first generation), is currently² listed at $40, and the third generation Vado HD (refurbished, available in several candy colors) are on sale for $50.

Both of these are solid-state video cameras that charge and transfer video to computer over a concealed USB connector and record pretty nice (for the price) 720p HD video at 30 frames per second. The older Vado records to mpeg-2 codec and includes 8Gb of storage space (~2 hours of record time), and the 3rd generation records to mpeg-4 and includes 4Gb of space (also ~2 hours, possibly at the same or better visual quality than the older model due to the more efficient mp4 codec). I haven’t yet used a 3rd gen Vado HD, but it appears to include an improvement that was at the top of my wishlist for the earlier Vado HDs: improved dynamic range and some manual exposure control. These cameras clip highlights³, it’d be nice to be able to minimize that issue and knock the exposure down a peg.

Also available at a discount right now, and possibly of interest to anyone with a small camera or phone, is the Creative Labs Vado HD Underwater Pouch. This item has for some reason⁴ dropped in price to $10. I believe it is a rebranded Aquapac Mini Waterproof Camera Case, an item which normally sells for about $30 (under both the Aquapac and Creative brand names).

This pouch is basically a fancy polyurethane bag, with a strong seal⁵ and very clear vinyl windows on front and back. It can hold small cameras easily, and I’ll probably be using mine next month to keep my iPhone dry while kayaking.

For an example of the 2nd generation Vado HD and this pouch in action together, check out this a Green Sea Turtle video I shot in Hawaii. I also recently loaned out my Vado and pouch to The Perennial Plate, and they used it to shoot some underwater footage of an urchin diver for their web series.

1. such as underwater in a fancy plastic bag [↩]
2. last I checked — the price could change any moment due to the way Amazon operates [↩]
3. a characteristic of all inexpensive digital cameras [↩]
4. momentarily? [↩]
5. I trust it more than I would a couple of ziplocs, FWIW, and have had no problems with mine over a couple of years of use. [↩]

By popular demand¹, and to give me a reference so I can remember my settings when I inevitably lose them, I present my Steadicam Merlin recipe for the Canon T2i with attached² Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 lens. It’s the exact setup I used to shoot this little video of a sidewalk butcher shop in China.

These images show the combination of weights used, the span angle setting, the hole in the mounting plate to which the camera was attached (hole N), that the gezornenplatz screw was in place, and the position of the mount plate.

Full setup

middle weight and span setting	end weights	mounting plate
mount plate position

1. i.e., a single message sent to me on Vimeo [↩]
2. as opposed to unattached? [↩]

Rachel encounters a sidewalk butcher shop on the streets of Hengdian. Hengdian is a 4 hour drive from Shanghai. Many movies and TV shows are filmed on the town’s huge sets, which include a full-scale¹ replica of Beijing’s forbidden city.

Shot with a Canon 550D/T2i running the Magic Lantern firmware. Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 lens, Steadicam Merlin. Internal mics for audio, one channel without digital gain, one with about 18db.

If you are so inclined, you can download the video and watch it in higher quality from its vimeo page.

1. I’d venture it’s actually 4/5ths scale, but it’s pretty huge [↩]

A frame from last night’s camera tests. Noise removed and image sharpened with the NeatVideo plugin.

I stayed up late yesterday with ¹ testing our new dolly, and for some inexplicable reason most of our camera tests included either pumpkins or skulls. I thought this frame in particular was very pretty.

Like every DSLR shooter with a slider (the non-professional term for a fixed-length dolly) I’m now constantly fighting the urge to post video clips of slow moving shots cut to ambient music. But the internet’s bandwidth is safe for now, as my hands are tied while the NeatVideo FCP plugin takes its sweet time² to remove noise and sharpen all the footage.

1. @dmcm is a person, but I think he should adopt the DMCM molecule’s diagram as his signature [↩]
2. On my quad-core it seems it takes 17 hours to do the denoising on 20 minutes of footage. 17. [↩]

Test of NeatVideo plugin; Noise removal from Canon T2i 6400 ISO clips from ZachFine on Vimeo.

if you’re on a fast machine, I’d recommend watching this full-screen with HD set to “on” –if you’d like to download the original QuickTime file rather than watch it embedded in a web page, there’s a download link low on the right side of the movie’s Vimeo page.

I shot some 1080p video in low-light with my Canon Digital Rebel T2i set to its 6400ISO setting, which resulted in very noisy video.

I tested the demo version of the NeatVideo for FCP filter to see if it could remove or minimize the noise. The results were encouraging, so I bought the “Pro” version of the plugin for $99.

This clip shows the results of the application of this filter to a couple of my more dramatically noisy clips. The filter renders very slowly, compounded by the fact that I’ve set the temporal filtration to use 3 frames.

You’ll see portions of the clips both with and without the noise removal, and split-screened sections for comparison. I think the result is pretty remarkable and usable, though the noise is peeking through the darker areas of the frame in the first clip. I wonder if I can smooth that out if I build a better noise profile or if I increase the temporal filtration?

Music:
“Do The Global Twist” by “The Neatbeats”, from the awesome album “japanese groupsound”.

I had to chop the song in half. Go buy the song or album to hear the very enthusiastic jam session in the middle of the track. Fun stuff.

Click on the image to see it nice and big.

I’m pleased with the look of the footage. The edit was just a quick bit of fun. Mostly this was about testing my DSLR video workflow, with a secondary goal of cracking my sister up.

If you set HD to ‘on’ and go fullscreen, or click through to the video’s vimeo.com page and find the download link low in the right column, you can see this one at 1080p resolution. If the embedded video doesn’t play smoothly, try pausing it and waiting for it to finish loading before hitting play, or toggle HD to off.

pizza and the dream of not being filmed from ZachFine on Vimeo.

A little video of an evening of pizza-making and camera-dodging.

Shot and uploaded at 1080p resolution, so feel free to toggle HD to on and play this one back fullscreen.

Video shot with Canon Digital REBEL T2i DSLR set to the “superflat” picture style. Canon 50mm f1.8 lens.
Converted to Apple Prores, edited in Final Cut Pro 7.0.2, graded in Apple Color.

Exported to the QuickTime H264 at 1080p24, restricted to 8000kbps, audio 44.1Khz 16-bit AAC 128kbps.

Music: the first third of “free space incesticide” by Eight Frozen Modules.