Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Last Days of Autumn - A Canon 7D film

My first short using the Canon 7D camera! It arrived too late for me to capture the full colors of fall, so this is the tail end of the season here in Upstate New York. All the particulars are at the end of the video but I'll mention them here too:

Camera: Canon EOS 7D in 1080 30p.
Lens: Tamron SP AF17-50mm F 2.8 XR LD ASPHERICAL (IF)
Highlite Tone Priority - OFF (To access 100 ISO)
Picture Style- Standard
All Shutter/WB/Aperture settings in Manual Mode
Tracking shots using the 36" indiSlider Pro
All color is straight from the camera, no post color correction.
Shot in 1080 30p transcoded to XDCAM EX 35mbs VBR using MPEG STREAMCLIP.

I LOVE this camera! I've been using my XDCAM EX1 and a Letus Extreme 35mm adapter. As I shoot scenics in nature, the small lightweight form factor of the 7D is incredible. While this was all shot in one loction in a couple hours, I can't wait to go on a serious hike with this thing. It'll be soooo light weight to carry compared to my other rig. The small size is also a treat for using on the indiSlider. I was pushing the weight limits of it before with my 20lb EX/Letus combo. I have an older MAC edit system, so I need to transcode all the H.264 files before I can edit, that is a time consuming process and a drag, but the footage is just lovely and worth the effort.

Finally the music is from Digital Juice Stack Tracks buy out library. Volume #50, "The Country".

I'll be shooting more with this camera soon as I'm still learning it. I need a Vari-ND filter for my lenses in order to shoot at F2.8 (when needed) and still keep the shutter at 60. Some of these shots used a higher shutter since I was using 100 ISO and F2.8. Without ND filters I had to increase shutter to obtain proper exposure. I only used 1 lens for this. The Tamron 17-50mm is perfect for most situations and I leave it on the camera all the time! If you can only get one lens, I highly recommend this one to start with.

Enjoy!