Video on DSLRs: why I don't care | Hacker News Reader

Video on DSLRs: why I don't care

kenrockwell.com

42 pointsmhw26 comments

Ken makes good points, but don't think for a moment that DSLR video isn't going places.

Sam Nicholson, for instance, has Canon's R&D people at his disposal. They furnish him with nice shiny things like HDMI monitor output and manual focus over bluetooth:

http://www.definitionmagazine.com/journal/2010/5/22/hollywoo...

Suddenly focus pulls become something you can set up on your iPhone. The rest of us can only drool and hope this will make its way into the kit soon.

Yeah, that's exactly right, digital photo tech is growing and progressing. Film camera tech? Stagnant.

Ken should be excited about where the technology is going, as it's basically in it's infancy. The first crop of HD video capable DSLRs was released JUST last year. They haven't even had a generation to iterate on these things.

I was a bit surprised he didn't mention the actual reason I still have to carry both a DSLR and a camcorder. Most (all?) DSLRs use a CMOS sensor, which often (always?) results in jello-effect video (see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bItYdfn-C0o). My camcorder has a CCD sensor instead, which doesn't suffer from this.

I fully expect it to get better soon though (if it hasn't already on some models - are there any DSLRs that somehow don't suffer from jello-effect video?).

I have a Canon 7d that takes beautiful video. I spent a fair amount of time learning to make beautiful videos with it, and I also spent a fair amount of money buying low light lenses, filters (vari nd filter), and still need to buy audio (zoom h4n), steadycam (zacuto) and follow focus gear. The thing is, I intend to make a documentary so I do want it to be as good as I can possibly make it so I will end up spending an additional $1k-2k on top of the camera body depending on the gear I end up going with.

Having said that, the target market for a cheap Canon DSLR (parents) with the stock lens and nothing more than a tripod should be very happy with the flexibility of carrying one camera for stills and video, and the results they get on video should be very close to a a similarly priced camcorder.

Here is an example of why. I was at a ballet recital on Saturday and a father was filming his daughter with a $900 Canon T2i camera on a tripod and his video will likely look better than on a comparable Canon camcorder because the light was not changing, his subject was at the same focal distance and his camera was mounted on a tripod. That eliminates almost all of the manual control variables that require more equipment except for one - audio. A $99 audio device can fix that if it matters to you.

On the flip side, the DSLR gives you full manual controls and the ability to shoot in low light with possibly a cheap $100 Canon 50mm f/1.8.

Here are two videos shot with DSLR's that can show you the range of these DSLR's:

Alexandra (1 camera body, lens, and monopod) http://vimeo.com/6854556

Salton Sea (1 camera body, lots of lenses and fancy equipment) http://vimeo.com/10314280

Video DSLR's will replace camcorders eventually. In the meantime they can be useful in that they take both stills and video, and etter yet they are the best thing that happened to independent film makers.

UPDATE: Another comments points to a post on Philip Bloom's site about which DSLR to purchase. Philips site is full of very helpful information, the Salton Sea video linked to above is his.

http://philipbloom.net/2010/06/06/whichdslr/

I recorded a concert my wife conducted using a borrowed $4,000 Sony HD camcorder that looked really sharp and shot nicely in low light. I could never justify spending $4,000 on a camera that I'll probably use 10-20 times, but I also didn't like the idea of buying a sub $1000 1080p video camera that had crappy low light shooting.

Enter the T2i. $830 (for the kit, with Bing cashback, RIP) and it shoots even BETTER video than the $4000 video camera. For the pieces my wife writes, I'm usually on a tripod doing a wide shot anyway, and I'm usually indoors where it's low light, and the results from the T2i are stellar.

Unfortunately, being a "still camera that also does video" it does have it's drawbacks. I can't hit record, then leave it for an hour... it only shoots about 12 minutes of 1080 footage at a time, and the last time I shot about 45 minutes of footage, I started to get overheating warnings on the camera.

Nonetheless... this is the beginning of something awesome. Professional video is about to go the way professional audio went.

These party videos are from the first time I used my 7D. Even though the focus is wack I was pretty excited about the quality of this video. This is after filming skateboard videos for years using VX2000s and the like.

http://vimeo.com/rdouble/videos

I've since got a special lens and a Zacuto z-finder and have been very happy with the results after practicing a bit more.

Philip Bloom's blog is an essential resource and he just wrote an article about what DSLR to buy for video:

http://philipbloom.net/2010/06/06/whichdslr/

Ken Rockwell is a contrarian, and that's what I like about him. However, I took his advice on buying a camera once and ended up with a fiddly touch screen camera that I found out I did not enjoy once I got home from my vacation. In his writings he prefers ease of use to complexity of control. I have seen some great videos done with the 5D's manual focus, like on Canon's Beyond The Still contest. http://vimeo.com/groups/beyondthestill

I disagree on his recommendations. I was looking around for a good entry level DSLR (narrowed it down to Canon & Nikon). For the "Best Serious Camera" he recommended the Nikon D5000. I couldn't be happier with this camera. It's easy to use and takes fantastic pictures:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm

Just got a Canon T2i dslr last week and the video quality is amazing - an order of magnitude beyond any consumer video camera I have used - highly recommend going to a store to try it for yourself. Here are some samples on vim - http://vimeo.com/videos/search:T2i Shoots 1080 at 60fps, the depth of field makes incredible shots and you can film well at night. I'm sure autofocus on a $250k video camera is great, but this is only $800 - you can probably afford to do another take if you don't like the first and maybe buy a decent house to go with it.

I'm currently machining a Merlin type zero g holder like this http://vimeo.com/3803065

I haven't kept up with developments like this over the last couple of years, but I have done a lot of commercial and personal video. The new DSLRs with video seem like a great addition to anyone's tool set.

Question: _Regular_ video cameras don't allow "through the lens" focusing either. You focus by looking through an electronic view finder or by watching a monitor hooked up to an external video source from the camera. Is there not such for the DSLRs? If not, hey, great market opportunity...

I always wondered how they shot the season finale of House MD with a Canon 5D, now I know.

Summary: DSLRs can't autofocus when shooting video. On movie sets there are people hired to pull focus manually, so it's not a problem for Hollywood. You are better off using a camcorder or even a compact camera.

Some good points.

Video through DSLRs is not there yet. But it does work in some situations. Since image quality is most associated with lenses, if they get all the bugs worked out video DSLR should be a dramatic improvement over the average flipcam (and you're not taking my flipcam away from me!)

Different tools for different things. Wait for version 3.

"If something moves, you need a focus puller and a special rig with special Hollywood focusing hardware to shoot with a DSLR.

DSLR video is for serious professional production, which is why you'll see it promoted as being used on big productions."

So amateur/indie film makers cannot use manual focus. Riiiight.

With a crew size of 1 for a film with lots of moving shots, maybe not.

Time to bring back the 2x4 steadycam from Evil Dead.

For what it's worth, I know personally Ken does very well financially with his 1994 website.

Here's a Canon with iPad software that manually does the follow focus http://vimeo.com/12182384

and here's an incredible shoulder mount for the canon that adds a monitor http://vimeo.com/10594154 (no english video yet)

An excellent article with detail on video shooting and how hollywood is different than shooting a wedding.

I've been encountering Ken Rockwell's diatribes against digital photography for years. He's a stuck-in-the-mud traditionalist who is secretly afraid that the ever increasing accessibility of newer technology is going to put him out of business.

No, he just has chosen his audience — those who like to take a pictures, a bit above point-and-shoot level, but not much. His writing is targeted at people like that. For anyone with higher ambitions I'd recommend http://bythom.com/

Oh, I don't know. He seems pretty keen to invest in the new technology, if only so he can write about it on his web site to generate funds to buy more new (and old) stuff.

Would you think any differently of this article if it said 'Canon 5D Mark II Video: Why I Don't Care what you can do with this camera right now in 2010'? Because I don't read the article as saying 'video on DSLRs will never be useful', just 'this is why video on DSLRs isn't as useful right now as you might think it is', and that's a useful piece of information if you're thinking about buying one of these cameras today.

That said, what's probably odd for a technology review is that the only bit of futurology is the sentence 'DSLRs are not yet optimized for focus for video shooting as are camcorders and pocket cameras.' Subtle use of 'yet' there: everything else discusses the here and now.

I've seen him start dozen-page flamewars on photography boards over how "wrong" it is to print digital camera photos. He's notorious in photography circles as either a great defender of film or a troglodyte, depending on the reader's current tech investment.

Funny, his review of the Nikon D40 (http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40.htm) helped convince me to take the plunge into DSLR land.

He does rail against much of the conventional wisdom, eg. more megapixels is better -- perhaps this is the source of your impression.

In my experience, more megapixels is better, but after a point, other aspects make much more difference to the overall quality of the image for most purposes. Going from a cheap zoom lens (the sort of which often comes with the camera) to a cheap prime lens makes a huge difference... an extra 4 megapixels, not so much.

Of course more megapixels is better, everything else being constant. But nothing's for free. Putting the money into better optics, which is by far the factor limiting image quality in a compact camera, is likely to yield better results. The only problem is that it's not a number you can claim is better than the other guys.

It's like with standardized testing: sometimes a number can hurt you, even if it's true, because its plain, seductive nature causes you to forget that it's not the end result, only a proxy for it.

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