Why So Grainy?

[Lisa Maxwell]

Yes, all points taken. Working on renting a studio right now. Looks like it's gonna happen too! Yey! For sure better background, I hear ya there. I just used the cleanest background I could find in my house. All other walls have windows.

And yes, a hair light would be great. And the background. Sigh. Wish I had my own studio. Maybe someday.

I love how you all pipe in and answer. That just means the world to me. Thanks again.

[Lisa Maxwell]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

Jumped at me right off the bat, and AFAIK, no way to win that battle...

What does "AFAIK" mean?

[Dave Blackhurst]

As Far As I Know = AFAIK.

I'm fiddling with how to set up some sort of "proper" studio, either in a spare room or part of the garage myself, so I feel your pain! Considering a low dough light and backdrop set off eBay to get something fast and cheap!
I'm working on the theory you only have to make what the camera can "see" look good, and it's not that big an area!

Lighting is an art I have yet to entirely get a handle on, but I have realized it's a HUGE part of getting a profesional looking result for the sort of shot you've got here. This video stuff is a bit more complex than it looks! BTW, your audio sounded great! That's usually the "worst" part of video, so nice job there!

I'd bet with a backdrop and some tinkering with the lighting (great section on DVi on that subject), you'd get what you expect from your camera. It's the old "garbage in" - the camera can only do so much with what's in front of it, no matter how much of a wizard you are with manual settings.

[Lisa Maxwell]

Ah, I see! AFAIK...got it. I feel so old sometimes, and I'm only 39! That's not that old, is it?

I'm excited to take a look at the studio tomorrow of a photographer in our little, teensy town. He has multiple backgrounds he's willing to let me use and maybe some lighting, although his lighting is primarily for photography so we'll see. I'm doing a shoot on Wednesday of a couple for their "love story", how they met video I'm doing for their early June wedding.

Ugh, I'm so nervous! I hope I do a decent job! You're right. This videography stuff ain't for no wimps!

OK, come on brain...concentrate on learning some more stuff now....

Oh, here's a couple links of some background stuff on ebay I've been thinking of:
6 X 9 ft White MUSLIN BACKDROP BACKGROUND - eBay (item 400166172529 end time May-19-11 09:32:18 PDT)

Photo Backdrop Muslin Standing Background Support 905S - eBay (item 180525108274 end time May-21-11 06:00:19 PDT)

[Lisa Maxwell]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

BTW, your audio sounded great! That's usually the "worst" part of video, so nice job there!

Thanks for the compliment on the audio...really must pay it to Maddy though. Isn't she amazing!?

[Garrett Low]

Lisa, the red you see in the strings is caused by chromatic aberration and originates from your lens. The aperture you select does have an affect on how much CA you experience as it all goes to how you're bending the light.

As a general rule of thumb, if you can control your light source, you should not be using the f-stop and ISO to get correct exposure. You need to know your lenses so that you can get the best out of each one. Under ideal situations you should select your aperture based on what the limitations of your lens are and what effect you want to achieve. Using an f 1.9 will give you a shallower depth of field (DOF) than say 5.6. Using an f 5.6 isn't necessarily bad as long as you have enough light and you want greater DOF. If you've got lights up using a 5.6 with an ISO of 320 shouldn't be that underexposed (of course depending on the lights). I'm shooting a movie with a 7D and just shot a low key boudoir scene to simulate a late 40's look. We used two 650w frenels and one 300 plus one bounce card for a hair light. the camera was set at ISO 320 and f 4.5 because back then they didn't have a lot of fast lenses to give sallow DOF. We had to use 1/2 and full scrims on the key and fill to get the right exposure.

Again, you need to know the limitations of your lens to select the best aperture. For instance I very rarely close the stock lens on my EX3 down below f8 because beyond that point the image becomes very soft.

I would actually caution against using AWB because you can get some pretty ugly color shifts as it tries to adjust. The best thing to do is use a grey card or white card and take a manual WB. If you want to warm up the look you can use a warm card to WB or if you have enough experience you can take a WB from a white/grey card then tweak a dialed in setting. I often do this but it doesn't take much to warm it up. Every camera that I've used, even when doing multicam shoots with the same models, read color temp differently. So I always WB to a card then tweak the setting to fit the scene (of course that's if the footage isn't going to be graded in post). For your fluorescent lights, say if you get a WB reading from y our camera of 4300K, going to 4500K will give a noticeably warmer look Going to 5000K will give a lot warmer look. The best thing to do is to take some test shots so you can experiment with the look.

Finally, what are you using to set exposure? If you're using the camera's lcd and how it looks there you have to stop that right away. The camera's lcd screen is not calibrated and you can't rely on it. If you don't have a monitor with a waveform and other scopes use the meter on the camera, take the exposure reading and make very slight adjustments as needed from doing test shots. That's one of the greatest things about this digital age. Instant gratification. You can set up your lights, Do a quick 30 second test.

Good luck and keep shooting,
Garrett

[Stephen J. Williams]

LIsa, one of the best things that I have purchased has been my background kit. Like this

Calumet Heavy-Duty Background Support

I love having this option for pre wedding videos. I usually just shoot them in the couples house or apartment. I ask how much room I'll have ahead of time so I know what size paper I need to buy. But there's obviously several options as far as background goes.... they can choose their own colors. Or sometimes in order to help tell the story I'll have them draw out a (cutesy) background with pastels.

Steve

[Lisa Maxwell]

Oh how I wish I had Donald Trump's money, Einstein's brains and Steven Spielberg's knowledge right about now.

[Peter Manojlovic]

Originally Posted by Lisa Maxwell

Ok, got it. So I should have used:

60fps with 120 shutter or 24fps with 50 shutter
100 or 160 ISO
1.9 aperture
2500K
..

Almost there..

Quoted from Vimeo
"As a rule of thumb, you want the denominator of your shutter speed to be approximately double the number of frames per second that you are recording. In other words, if you are recording at 30 frames per second, you want your shutter speed to be 1/60th of a second.."

So if you're shooting 24FPS (frames per second), then shoot 1/48th shutter speed..

[Garrett Low]

Originally Posted by Peter Manojlovic

Almost there..

Quoted from Vimeo
"As a rule of thumb, you want the denominator of your shutter speed to be approximately double the number of frames per second that you are recording. In other words, if you are recording at 30 frames per second, you want your shutter speed to be 1/60th of a second.."

So if you're shooting 24FPS (frames per second), then shoot 1/48th shutter speed..

Unfortunately the Canon DSLR's don't have 1/48th as an option so 1/50th when shooting 24fps is the best alternative.

-Garrett

[Ryan Czaplinski]

I really don't think your footage turned out as bad as you advertised, haha! I thought it was decent and definitely far from terrible. :)

[Michael Simons]

Originally Posted by Ryan Czaplinski

I really don't think your footage turned out as bad as you advertised, haha! I thought it was decent and definitely far from terrible. :)

Ryan, I agree. When I watched the video, I thought I was viewing the wrong one.

[Lisa Maxwell]

Aw, thanx guys. After yesterday, seeing that makes me start my day on a much better foot.

I know I need work (ain't THAT the truth!)...I use the best videographers out there as a benchmark and I fall so short. I have hope though, I'm still learning. I have drive, so I know with time and applying what I learn, results will follow.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Lisa -
Always remember that it's easier to be critical of every flaw in your own work, you KNOW the flaws are there, so it stings... As you get an "eye", you'll be surprised how much poorly done footage makes it into "the big time".
Smurf-esque WB is one of my personal faves every time I see it on TV! There's a prominent financial channel that when doing their international broadcasts has the most interesting array of fleshtones imagineable... every day! One anchor is bright orange, another is greenish, the third is "sorta right"...

Why does 99.999% of the viewing public not notice all the flaws? Because the content goes by so fast that they never even notice it almost all the time! And ultimately it's the CONTENT that makes media work (or not, as the case may be). If the content is there, people WILL watch, although certainly you want to make it look as good as you possibly can, if for no other reason than professional pride in your craft!

If guitars weren't a major part of my life, I prolly wouldn't have even noticed the strings and pickguard reflections! I thought the video looked and sounded quite good, you needn't worry!

[Danny O'Neill]

Another thought... did you enable highlight tone priority?

If so then that bumps up the iso in the darker areas of the image. We no longer use this (used to).

some other things to remember.

iso 160 on these cameras is cleaner than 100.

You will only want to film at 60fps if your looking to do some cool slow mo. Otherwise stick to 30fps (for regular old US TV) or 24 for that film like look. then use a shutter speed appropriate for that fps.