Canon 7D Subway Short

Rails

Rails on Vimeo

So I bought the body instead of the kit. The only lenses I had was a 28mm Nikon F2.0 and the EF-S 18-55mm 3.5-5.6. The camera was to 'M' with shutter 50, AEB, AWB and Auto ISO were left alone (mostly because I didn't know how at the time). I pressed a friend, who had been traveling for days, into service as the actor in my test shots. The first part was shot with the nikon set at F2.0. Despite the nice glass there was a lot of noise in the image. It must have been the Auto ISO. Next time I should try it in 160 or 320. I was thinking the 18-55 would be crappy indoors. Surprisingly it wasn't so bad, maybe the lights inside the subway were just that good. The DOF isn't as good but it worked.

All the shots were handheld. I was expecting crazy skew for my tracking shots but I didn't notice it much despite the camera shake. Fluke?

Editing was significantly more difficult than I expected. Neither my Q6600 quad-core nor my Dual-Core ION (with VDPAU) could preview the native MOV files properly. I ended up using the MP4 proxy method. Editing pure 16:9 might have been simpler but I wanted to use a 2.35 AR for this. Changing from proxy to full changed the AR a bit so now there are black bars on the side. Rendering direct to MP4 or WMV would lead to a crash. The only way I could make it work was to render to AVI YUV + uncompressed PCM. From there I re-encode to MP4.

Despite the limitations I'm pretty excited by the bigger sensor (compared to camcorders) and DOF control. Now I have to save my pennies to get some constant aperture zooms and nice primes.

[Chris Barcellos]

Mike: Download Cineform's NeoScene trial for editing in Vegas, and I think you will be happy with Vegas editing results. Cineform intermediate files will reduce the load required on you processors.

[Bruce Foreman]

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

Rails
Rails on Vimeo

So I bought the body instead of the kit. The only lenses I had was a 28mm Nikon F2.0 and the EF-S 18-55mm 3.5-5.6. The camera was to 'M' with shutter 50, AEB, AWB and Auto ISO were left alone (mostly because I didn't know how at the time).

Press the ISO button and using the "wheel" dial in the manual ISO you want. You see the effect on exposure immediately. Full manual exposure control (in M) and exposure stays locked, too.

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

The first part was shot with the nikon set at F2.0. Despite the nice glass there was a lot of noise in the image. It must have been the Auto ISO. Next time I should try it in 160 or 320.

I didn't see anything I would call noise. I watched it full screen on my Samsung 21.5" monitor and all darker tones were crisp. Looked real good to me.

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

All the shots were handheld. I was expecting crazy skew for my tracking shots but I didn't notice it much despite the camera shake. Fluke?

I ran my 7D on a project for the first time Thursday (Sun morn now), and did all on a SpiderBrace 2 Combo (home) with a CAVISION viewfinder assembly. It came out fairly steady and I'll be using that a lot more. Even was able to do a little successful "follow focus" by just riding the focusing ring on the lens.

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

Editing was significantly more difficult than I expected. Neither my Q6600 quad-core nor my Dual-Core ION (with VDPAU) could preview the native MOV files properly.
Despite the limitations I'm pretty excited by the bigger sensor (compared to camcorders) and DOF control. Now I have to save my pennies to get some constant aperture zooms and nice primes.

I had editing problems too. Q6600 on one machine and Core i7 on the other. Pinnacle Studio 12 doesn't support the full HD MOV files but PowerDirector 8 did, would not play them on the timeline right. It did, however, render individual clips to an AVC H.264 (full 1920x1080 30p) file which I could then put on the timeline and edit in PD8.

One thing I learned quick is that for shallow DOF in outdoor daylight I'm going to have to order more ND filters. I have a 24mm F2.8 EF and a 50mm F1.8 EF lens for that and for low light. Like you I'm thrilled with what we can do now.

I did enjoy seeing your test sequence. It helps all of us to see that kind of thing.

Thanks.

[Mike Dulay]

Mike: Download Cineform's NeoScene trial for editing in Vegas, and I think you will be happy with Vegas editing results. Cineform intermediate files will reduce the load required on you processors.

Hi Chris, what's your observation on memory load with cineform codec? The full MP4 would crash because my 32-bit Vista would run out of RAM (I have 3GB) when vegas hits 2GB just opening the clips.

I didn't see anything I would call noise. I watched it full screen on my Samsung 21.5" monitor and all darker tones were crisp. Looked real good to me.

Bruce, I think its the MP4 compression evening things out. The master file had some red and blue noise on the footage shot with Auto ISO and the nikon. I'm speculating that not being able to read the lens aperture is making the Auto ISO / AEB overcompensate. Or maybe its my unreasonably high expectations :-D. I was comparing the native footage to the lowlight shots I saw on the internet. Looking at native 7D side by side with lowlight HV20, the noise reminded me of the HV20 running at TV12, which isn't so bad once you do edit.

One thing I learned quick is that for shallow DOF in outdoor daylight I'm going to have to order more ND filters.

Yes, my secret collection of overexposed shots will attest. I've been spoiled by internal ND filters too. :-D

[Bruce Foreman]

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

Bruce, I think its the MP4 compression evening things out. The master file had some red and blue noise on the footage shot with Auto ISO and the nikon. I'm speculating that not being able to read the lens aperture is making the Auto ISO / AEB overcompensate.

Rendering to HD WMV also seems to do the same thing. When I first got my T1i I could see noise in some of the test shots done in my living room by just lamp light. I could actually see the noise on the LCD. When I rendered to WMV to show our photo club what the Canon T1i could do, noise was GONE!

What matters is how it looks in our edited delivery formats, so as far as what I see with both my Canon's noise is a "non issue".

Come to think of it on night footage shot with my Canon HF100's I've seen no noise either.

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Mike Dulay

Hi Chris, what's your observation on memory load with cineform codec? The full MP4 would crash because my 32-bit Vista would run out of RAM (I have 3GB) when vegas hits 2GB just opening the clips.

As I recall, I only run 2 gigs of memory on my Dell XPS 420, with a Core2 Quad chip, running Vista home premium.

I don't memory watch as I don't really have an issue. I am running a basic box. I have no idea what is being allocated to what. I can tell you with my set up, and when I edit with the Cineform codec, it reduces use of resources so I can get a better playback. Frankly, play back will slow the more filtering or effect you add to it, but it is ten times better than editing native AVCHD/mpg4. My understanding is that it is because Vegas does everything in the GPU, and does not utilize resources or acceleration on the video card.