DSLR Follow focus

IMHO you don't need a follow focus at all for weddings. a luxury maybe, but def. not an essential item.

Doesn't the follow focus reduce tremble when following scenes that require the focus point altering manually?

hehe, maybe if your hands tremble or you have cheap lenses :)

no seriously, follow focus' are completely great, but i'd say more so for corporate and not your average quick-fire wedding.

i'm amazed anyone considers shooting weddings on these cameras. I wouldn't risk it, too many image quality issues and such a short depth of field that focusing on the subject becomes seriously difficult.

We love them so much were selling our last CCD camera this week. Been all DSLR for the past few weddings now.

We dont use a follow focus as the lenses we have all focus smoothly if were doing a rack focus shot. To start with thought the ability to mark focal points would be nice but its a wedding, no one stands where they should.

The shallow DOF is the exact reason we go for them. Sure, its a challenge, everything is a challenge. audio is recorded seperatly, focus is harder, its full manual or nothing, over heating (last few weddings were outside in direct sunlight, 7D always over heats). No IS unless you get it in lens, jello, moire, rolling shutter, light (problem on a steadicam), must use an external mic on camera, eats batteries like its got a hole in the tank, we get through 10 in a day between us. Files are huge, cineformed there even bigger, you need lenses which are expensive. I could go on.

But, despite all this it creates beautiful images and we have won clients over with their small size and the imagery they create.

"Wow, it looks just like a film" is what we hear a lot when we show prospective clients our DSLR work.

I'm really surprised by this.

Have you ever seen proper HD footage from a broadcast camera or a Red even? Do you have a calibrated HD monitor? I've been the unlucky one trying to do post on DSLR shorts and I can assure you the images they produce are neither good nor "just like film". Ok so 90% of clients won't notice or don't have good enough TVs to see the errors. But thats part of the job of doing something professionally, we are supposed to notice these problems and select kit to avoid them.

What do you do when your stills cameras fail to get a critical shot such as the rings exchange? This IS going to happen at some point, as the conditions are just about perfect to make the 7d fall over, low light, often in a brick built church ideal for moire and you need to be using a reasonably deep DOF to ensure the couple are both in focus. One day one or all of these factors will ruin that shot, you can't fix it in post, you can do another take. You will be liable, as a professional your supposed to choose equipment that is suited to the task in hand, which for documentary shots means a DSLR is out.

blimey sleepy, what a response!

do you honestly think we're just filming with one SLR? how on earth would we miss shots??

and yes, HD footage from broadcast cameras is fantastic. and who here can afford red cameras for weddings. SLR's are totally affordable, 1080p, and are superb in low light and with your choice of dof. i think you're being very dismissive of an obvious triumph in the filming world!

p.s. the whole 'moire' thing is getting extremely tiring. switch on the TV and you'll see it on numerous programmes. does it matter? HONESTLY? no.

Why would my camera fail to get the ring shot? Why would it do it any more than a regular camera? Am I missing something? also regarding your comment "conditions are just about perfect to make the 7d fall over". How do you mean?

Moire, no one has noticed, cant say ive even noticed.

While a red or a broadcast camera is decent as Rich says, thats big bucks and for most the cost of going DSLR is the cheapest way to get something which is close to film. Why have the video look when you can have the film look?

Arnt George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez and Shane Hurlbut all waving the DSLR flag?

Its a choice. Some like to turn up with the great big cameras and laugh at us going to excess with our steadicam. "A Steadicam at a wedding!" is often a comment thrown around. People used to poke fun that we shot on the FX1, sometimes seen as the lowest of the low when it came to prosumer cameras. We still managed to produce some OK stuff with it.

Try not to get caught up in the technical perfection and embrace the creative possibilities of DSLR's.

Should we all be using calibrated monitors, broadcast cameras and all that stuff for weddings. would love to, but its a wedding, run and gun style within a set budget.

We show clients footage from DSLR and footage from a 'traditional' video camera. They choose DSLR each time. There paying the money so why not let them choose.

they are not superb in lowlight, there is very serious breakup in the image which really messes up the out of focus areas.

Try and do some masking of objects from a DSLR for selective grading or whatever - you'll soon start to see the errors these cameras are producing. The images the 7d et al produce are only a triumph if you don't really look at them very hard. Step though a rotoscoping job with DSLR footage and you'll be pulling you hair out with despair at the quality, there simply isn't any latitude to play with for grading and the image really quickly falls apart with any post processing.

Ok so few people can afford a Red or HDCam for their wedding, but almost everyone could use an EX1r or one of the new canon video cameras, both of which produce far far better images than the 7d.

Don't take my word for it, google some proper scientific tests (resolution charts), the 7d barely has enough resolution to be considered a PAL camera let alone an HD camera.

Alternatively ask Alan why these cameras are not accepted by the Beeb for HD.

Low light depends. We have a limit of 3200 ISO. Any higher and its gain grain time. But slap on a beautiful f1.4 lens and your laughing. Evening footage in this clip is a testament to that. http://vimeo.com/12398845 despite the apperance it was actually very dark. We used a 20w light to lift it up slightly.

The comments about rotoscoping are just my point, its a wedding. Im sure for some commerical jobs its a major foul up to use a DSLR but for weddings. Perfect, small size means people think your shooting photo, a lot more natural audio. People pay you less attention, we can slap on a lovely telephoto lens and stand down the back of the church.

Again your talking about scientific tests and technical details. When it comes to what we do some people talk about the technical on their website and boast about their 3CCD cameras, tripod heads and go into details about their gear. we went down the opposite side and dont talk about that... at all. We just show them what we can do with whatever gear we use. For us it works out well. Personal preference.

Were also influenced by the American studios. Like the ones ditching their EX1's and going DSLR. Are we sheep?

Baaaaaa!

ur last reply sleepy has summed up what you think. you want everything technical and scientifically perfect.

but that's not what wedding customers are after, or even care about. unless from the beeb ;)
(I'm 100% sure a random moire shot won't lose me business or reduce my enquiry flow)

that's not to say i don't care about it - but certainly not to scientific level...

You can fail to get the shot with a DSLR for many reasons. Firstly it is impossible to critically focus using the built in screen, so what looked OK on your camera might turn out to be quite seriously out of focus when viewed on a HD screen (you see this a lot on TV at the moment, focus which is super sharp on the bookcase behind the subject but soft on their facial features for example) Secondly there are the "accepted" problems with DSLRs - it might shutdown due to over-heating, you might suffer a card error on the only card your writing to.

Why do i say that "conditions are just about perfect to make the 7d fall over" - because during a wedding you cannot use a massive amount of lighting, you cannot check focus on a large external HD monitor, you cannot measure the focal distance with a tape measure, you cannot re-frame the shot to avoid shooting the bear brick wall in the background that you know will cause moire.

Sods law dictates that the problems which are inherent to the DSLR will appear at the worst moments, if your shooting a music video or a short film then its not a problem to do a second take because of a technical issue. When shooting documentary you cannot do a second take.

I would be extremely concerned by using a DSLR as a primary camera, they have too many problems too much of the time to be considered reliable.

I can see the argument for using one for a second camera to get cut aways and GVs - you can produce some arty shots like this for sure. But the trend to use them as primary cameras concerns me, the images they produce are full of technical flaws which make post production almost impossible. OK you might not really do any serious grading on wedding films, but people claiming these cameras have "fantastic image quality" have created a kind of fanboy scene which has spread like a cancer into commercial production where plenty of people are shooting stuff on DSLR which requires heavy post work to be done.

you're ending your own argument, LOL! they are fine for weddings, but 'could' pose technical problems for corporate/grading/keying/masking work. but this is a wedding forum, so why are you finding it weird that we're all excited about these SLRs...for weddings.

and why do you keep saying about the low light issue? they are better than camcorders in low light. correct me if i'm wrong but it is the MAIN reason we've all started buying them!!! no more dreading dark-room 1st dance situations

and have you not seen the attachable LCD viewfinders out there? makes critical focussing and exposure a doddle, if you're worried about it.

i always find it sad that people don't see the good in change. and all the people here who have SLRs for weddings are getting film-quality results at a fraction of the cost of actual film-like cameras. win-win situation really. oh, and did i mention they are amazingly priced.

case closed?

Not "could" but "do pose very serious problems in commercial work which have been bad enough to fore a complete reshoot in more than one case that i'm aware of"

Because people who've not critically analysed the image keep saying "they are better than camcorders in low light" which isn't true. Yes you can put a superfast prime on the front and whack the iso up to 3200, and you'll get grainy pixelated colour images, in light levels which would of needed nightshot on a standard camcorder. This doesn't mean the camera is "great in low light". I'd say the camera can be acceptable in properly lit (by film standards) conditions. I'm taking a lot of light here, not 3 red heads. Most of the problems the image suffers from are made worse by grain, grain comes from high ISOs. If you can light the scene well enough to keep the iso low then the quality of picture is vastly vastly improved.

No i've seen a load a cheap crappy LCDs which don't have enough pixels for focusing sold to people who want to kit out their DSLR like a mutant reject from the arri r+d department. You can critically focus on a large external LCD but even suggesting taking a 24" on set gets you into a stupid argument with people who claim that they can focus just as well on a 640x480 LCD which was made in china for kids to watch dvds in the car on.

That sums up your sides points really well. Your not getting film-quality results, yet you seem to think that you are. These cameras are cheap, and they produce cheap looking results. For weddings this isn't so bad so long as the clients are not really critical. But for commercial work (including profesional events video - which is the other thing this forum is about) where proper post production is a requirement these cameras are a real pain in the bum. Too many people are too enthusiastic about them, people deny their are issues with them and attempt to use them for jobs where they are totally unsuited.

i give up then. all us SLR users must clearly be in the wrong.

p.s. a VERY sweeping generalisation here, but all the real techie-worryers on the forums never seem to have online clips to show off. it's the easiest thing in the world to criticise and pick holes in technical details and camera choices...but at the end of the day, SLR users are selling high-priced packages by the bucket-load, and that's because our customers LOVE the film-look they ARE producing! if you are happy to share your work (which must be technically amazing) then that'd be appreciated so we can see what we're missing out on! it'd be good to see what cameras out there are producing work as good as SLRs, that are under £2k?

No you just have different standards.

nothing wrong with that, cheap cameras doing low end work for low budget clients. Mostly doing a good job of it too (i've enjoyed both FX's and Minty's examples they've posted, nice shots and a good narrative structure feature in both your work)

But when Phillip Bloom et al try and tell everyone that these cameras are the answer to every shoot from lowbudget art film right up to high profile TV commercials then I despair. Ask any grading specialist what they think of the images these cameras produce and you'll hear a drastically different story to the one which enthusiastic cameramen paint on forums + blogs.

The 3 chip Panasonic HD handycams - better than 7d, less than half the price. The canon HMC30/40 is also a great camera which is significantly higher resolution than the 7d.

(7d on the left - HMC40 on the right)

The thing is that if you judge purely on short DOF, then everything bar the 5d/7d is rubbish. If you judge on any other aspect of image quality then the 5d/7d are at the bottom of the pile with all the small camcorders beating the DSLRs hands down.

well both sides of the argument are right in their own justified ways ... let's leave it as that ;)

p.s. thanks for the example camcorders, will def. look into those. but just so you know, when we said 'film-like' we weren't talking resolution. it's the whole 'look' in general- something those handycams don't seem to be producing.

In late on this one and whilst I don't want to rock the boat:) just had a client around who saw our flashback clip on our 42inch plasma and in his own words said

'Wow, the footage is so lush and pleasing to the eye....just like a film!':D ...lol

We can if we are honest all get far too technical. Nice chart btw!

My two pence worth.

Cheers.

Like many american forums there's been a rush to work with DSLRs - They seem to offer great images in certain situations, but as sleepytom has pointed out quite clearly, they have huge limitations which will hopefully be resolved.
For the short term though it seems it's a case of 'the kings new clothes'. :)

Wasn't the season finale of tha last season of "House" shotr etirely using DSLR's?

Hi
Hmmm.
Here's Sony's forthcoming $2000 DSLR-buster... ;)
http://vimeo.com/13344064

This version shows which lens did which shot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAazZrOl0AE