Thanks rev. I actually was talking to this video dude while we were over there and he was telling me that Digital SLRs have pretty much taken over the world of filmmaking since they added HD video. I thought that was pretty interesting and I know that you've started shooting video here and there..
I will tell you that people shooting EVERYTHING with canon 5DmkII fucking sucks and is annoying. 99% of the people are getting shitty shaky footage that sucks and is too close.
Dann Thombs is one of the exceptions. his stuff is really good cause she shoots like a cinematic person using an 85mm f/1.2 (which is the standard cinematic lens for movies) and a 24mm f/1.4 which is just gorgeous. I sent him this link to post some of his videos. He recently started recording separate sound from the video and that is just superb.
I watched this right before bed. I had a dream I was in Europe trying to buy clothes and was attacked by some dirty Europeans and some thrash punks came to my aid. All I remember is a Rickenbacker bass flying through the air and then I woke up.
Appreciate the comments. I haven't seen much casual use of the 5D II, but I imagine DSLR footage will become more common with the Rebels and D90 range landing in everyone's hands. As stated it is very annoying, mainly due to a few factors. First you're still holding a camera, not something that is really mean to be held like a video camera. Additionally there's no autofocus. I end up eye-balling the focus and manually focusing on everything for 4-6 minutes straight. Not the most fun exercise.
The pro's of course are the extreme low light sensitivity. The ISO can be cranked up pretty high and once downsampled to the 2Mpx screen size of 1080p, a fair amount is removed or at least not noticeable. I try to use the lenses that let a lot of light in. Once in a while, I'll use a 70-200 f/2.8 but that ends up not being enough at times. The 85 f/1.2 and 24 f/1.4 work well for what I do. The extra bulk of the magnesium construction does help reduce the shaking, as interia works in your favor. I've posted a couple examples below.
In a perfect world, I'd have more than one camera, and the additional shots would actually from the song being recorded, but I don't have a few extra thousand, nor a crew, so I try to make the footage from the rest of the set match to a degree. That ends up being one of the main complaints, but it is what it is.
For sound, I have a Zoom H4n, which sits on a tripod in the back or somewhere the crowd won't break it, and I let it capture the entire set. Then in post, I try to find an obvious point where the video and sound sync up, and use that as a basic for getting the external source matched up. Isn't too bad really and sounds a lot better than the onboard mic, which is just terrible.
And as far as filmmaking goes, I am seeing more no/low-budget movies using them now. It's a low price point to start relatively speaking, and the only other option is mini-DV, which looked fine in 1999, but it's showing its age. On the bigger budget scale RED is taking over, which takes the same principle of a large digital sensor, and fits it into the traditional feel of film camera bodies. I almost attempted to get one of the lower models, the Scarlett, but the pushed it back so much, and kept raisin the tentative price as they found out the original quote wasn't going to cover the tech they had to produce.
I believe they made them in Canon, Nikon, and possibly Sony (whatever that mount is called). The APS-C and 2/3" sensor versions also had different options.
