The DSLR Cinematography Guide

This is an excellently compiled, vibrant guide.
Lacking an iPad or similar, I have printed it for easy reference.
Thank you for your work on this, it is a great resource!

Just been put onto your site. You’re definitely an unselfish bastard.
Should be proud of yourself, you’re becoming a great resource. I’ve become a fan in 2 days.
I’ll be an avid fan from now on.
Well done Koo.

Hi,

I have question regarding the statement on shutter speed (page 21). Here is what is says.
“There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to shutter speed, but if you’re not sure of what shutter speed to select, go with the setting that’s closest to half that of your current frame rate.”
Just above this statement, you say that if we have choosen 24fps, we should set an shutter speed of 1/48. So shouldn’t the stament say “”go with the setting that’s closest to twice that of your current frame rate”??? (twice insted of half). Please clarify.
Regards
Mohan

I’d come to concur with you one this subject. Which is not something I usually do! I enjoy reading a post that will make people think. Also, thanks for allowing me to speak my mind!

Valuable resource. Awesome links to additional resources. Must have for anyone starting out in DSLR video.

DSLR Video Creations is amazing, but its need more money for it, you’ll need a good lenses, stabilization gadget etc (or you think again to upgrade your HD Camera that you have)

Excellent guide, thank you! Someone may have already brought this up, but you say that a disadvantage of the T2i is the lack of manual white balance. However, the T2i does have manual white balance- I use it all the time. You take a picture of something white, and then use the menu to set the WB to that picture. It’s very easy and takes less than 5 seconds.

hey really nice ebook.

Hello there, it’s great we can found on the internet sites like no film school, suddenly, i’ve realized that in fact. i’ve learned more in the current year looking on the internet than in the whole time in my student years, when you get older, knowledge becomes a personal decision, and no film school bursts this decision, i’ve a question about hdsl footage, i’ve learned that if i shoot (i’m a t2i owner) with a flattened pictue style i’ve got more freedom to control the image in post, but i was wondering if the image sacrifies values such as contrast and saturation to increase the image quality? for example, if a clip it’s a 300mb size file, and so to speak, 100 mb represents the values of contrast and saturation, if i remove those values from being compressed, those 100mb are added to the video stream increasing it’s image quality? i would like to be informed in that, thanks a lot, and keep the great work, this are times for being a cinematogarpher.

Great guide for people getting into and learning more about shooting dslr style. Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to put this together!

Thanks for your effort.

Many thanks for the DSLR guide. Unfortunately English text is a bit hard to read for me. Good free application programs: you find long, long lists of free, opensource and other recommended programs in the download section of the Swiss and the German Websites: http://www.pctipp.ch, http://www.heise.de, http://www.computerbild.de. Cheers!

Nice guide and a pleasure to look at!
I just wanted you to tell that the battery section is a little outdated. There are now batteries with proper electronic …they also can get charged in the original canon charger.

Hey Koo.
This is a really awesome guide!
But I think you should add an important thing about stuck pixels.
I just got my new Canon 60D and had one stuck pixel in video mode
(one you could see really clear!).
After I used the manual sensor cleaning option for 30 seconds it was magically gone!
As far as I could read in the internet this worked for a lot of people.

So everybody should try this before sending their cameras back!
Keep up the excellent work!

All the best,
Amadeus

Hi Koo:
I like your DSLR guide. I have a Lumix GH1, and I’m sorry you don’t have much experience with it. I’ve read Kurt Lancaster’s book which is great, but mostly slanted toward Canon. By-the-way, all my other cameras are Canons. The best thing I found for my GH1 is David Busch’s Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1. David is a still photographer, so most of the book is devoted to stills. However, the GH1 menus are largely the same. What I like about the book, is the explanations of how various menu functions work. His practical advice on focusing, exposure, etc is just as valuable when shooting video. I haven’t had any issues with the camera overheating – I shot a 45 minute interview (continuously) without any issues. While the product guide states that 1920×1080 is only available at 24fps, my FCP clip properties claim that I have 1920×1080 at 30 fps clips in the timeline. I recently got a 20 mm aspherical fixed focal length Panasonic lens that opens to 1.7. I don’t think I’ll ever use anything else except for specific issues. I also like the color space: my XHA1S has a 4-2-0 sampling, while the GH1 is 4-2-2. So green screen is much easier in post. I think the greatest thing about DSLRs is the fact that you can take the basic camera and act like a tourist and film incognito, or you can rig it up to the size of a Hollywood camera and impress your customer.
I’m curious to hear what you have to say about the GH1, and I guess the GH2 is just around the corner.
Best regards,
Ed Gfeller

Hi
I wanne use the canon 7d with a sigma 50-500 4.5-6.3 DG OS. I tried last weekend to shoot in difuse light conditions to film skiers and snowboarders. I tried by aperture of 24 and more! I know that was a mistake. The result was that i had not even one sharp video but the photographs were pretty good.
Do you think i can get better sharpness when I use the pol and ND filter?
And who knows the different of the fade ND Filter AND the Fade ND Filter (ND 2-400) of lightwork?
Please help me to get sharp images!

Hola Koo:

Desde República Dominicana te escribe Pedro Camilo en español, ya que no sé inglés. Pues nada, traduje al mi idioma tu guía y ya estoy comprendiendo su utilidad para realizar vídeos con una buena calidad de imágenes. Todavía estoy en el proceso de asimilación de los conocimientos. Luego me comunicaré contigo para decirte cómo ha avanzado mi experiencia en este sentido. Un abrazo de Pedro.

Excellent site! Thanks so much. Very inspiring.

Hi from Cuba, your guide is very good, I own a 550d and didnt knew that I could use other than canon lenses. I eat the guide in 30 minutes I would like it to be 1K pages, here internet is 3kb/s so is ver, very good to find information that good on a single source.

Hope that sometime soon you decide to do something more advanced, but again, GREAT WORK :)

Saludos amigo,
Ee

Best guide there is. objective and neutral in view, it´s good that you offer cheap alternatives to buy things, and can go deeper into most subjects. Thanks a Million!!!

I believe most of us are photographers entering the video world. It`s odd how many videographers are not willing to change to start recording on DSLR. I guess it will give us the edge.

One,or maybe, the best DSRL guide i’ve ever read!
When a update is coming up?
I would like to know more about Canon 60D! I’ve heard people talking about this DSLR, even comparing with 5D Mk II and 7D (some of my friends are buying the 60D instead of 7D).
Thanks!

i have no yet received my DSRL guide

thank you so much for the useful information you are sending me.

Thank you!!!! Greetings from Ecuador :)

Great guide, thanks a ton! I’m still so a newb at video so I’m curious, why the need to use Streamclip to convert the native video from my 5D MK2? I converted a couple to formats mentioned on the site and played them in FCE in comparison to the native format – they looked horrible.

Thanks

Peter

I enjoyed the guide and was refreshing for me to adapt to what I knew of filmmaking/video to the DSLR’s hitting the scene.

Questions.
1) I think it was either the magazine DV or Videography newsletters that featured an online story of filmmaker and his company Pacific Pictures that shot a trailer for his upcoming production entitled “Flawless” using the Canon 5D. How did they achieve the wide screen 2.35 look? Cropped in post? If the camera can achieve that in-camera, I think we do have a major revolution here! LINK: http://vimeo.com/22593754?ab

2) The new Sony F3 claims to have a super 35mm image sensor. Is this the same size, thus same quality of the Canon 5D? The Panasonic AG-AF100 says it has a large 4/3′ sensor, so I assume that it is much smaller that Canon 5D. Sony is aprox $16,000 w/o lens and Panasonic is $4000 w/o lens. I understand that both are traditional camcorders with better sound and all that, BUT strictly image to image comparison are these cameras superior to the Canon 5D? (especially in light of the “Flawless” trailer link)

3) Based on the popularity of DSLR’s and specifically the Canon 5D, doesn’t it make sense for Canon to take the identical image censor in the Canon 5D and place it in their Canon XL H1A camcorder or some other new model? If so, I think they would have a competitor for the Sony F3?

4) On DSLR’s, if they have an HDMI out, is it feasible for that to become a video in for an external video recorder? Then have the LCD monitor out of the recorder thus you see what is being recorded onto the larger SSD drives?

Thanks. That’s it for now, Great site and school!

Looking to understand/learn aobut setting “exposure”. Using a 7D, in manual mode, with a Nikon Prime lens. Just learning about dslr video and I am a bit lost on how to set aperature (want tight depth of field, so looking for a wide open aperature), shutter speed and ISO. Can you point me in the correct direction for a tutorial? Thanks.

Bill

Can i translate it to Spanish?

Video camera rental place like us appreciate this kind of sharing and it will benefit many users.
Thumbs up!

Hey, should I compress T2I footage before bringing it into FCP? If so, which codec should I use, Pro Res 422 (HQ) right?