Canon 5D Mk II = Making Video

2 February 2012 19 views

Sorry, I’m not going to show you how…

I just wanted to comment on the many videos that are now turning up on the web using the 5D as the video camera and some of them are just brilliant.

Ignoring the content, just looking at the visual quality. The combination of big lens choice (usually wide aperture, low depth of field choice), the sharpness of these lenses compared to typical video cameras and the low-light shooting capability means you can create some stunning material.

We recently shot a small commercial promo for office space using it, nothing complicated but again the images were perfect out of the box.

I have to say at the moment – I would still use a videographer (as for the shoot above) to do any real shooting, rather than a photographer who has a video-cam.

Why?

Well, videographers have a different eye for things, its not just simple composition, but all the other stuff, follow-through focus, pull-focus, when to steady-cam, when to wobble-cam. How the overall flow and narrative works and which different elements will need to be recorded to make a final video. It is not the same as simple, framed, still images.

On the other hand, we’ll be producing fashion catwalk style materials for a client shortly that will be shot with a locked off camera – they will make direct web clips. So it’s all simple and no “video eye” required.