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Author Topic: D-SLR chat Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 03-02-2010 04:43 PM                        I don't think so. Videogames only, and even then only some of them. All 1080/60 material is otherwise 1080i. Oh and they will add manual audio adjustment to the 5D as well. I wonder if the 7D is 24p or 23.976p.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-02-2010 05:49 PM                     I didn't think there was any existing 1080p/60 standard for live action video. It would take roughly double the bandwidth (or double the severity of data compression) to squeeze 1080p/60 video into a broadcast or cable TV application. That 60Hz clock in so much broadcast equipment does a lot to keep some strange standards in place. We can't have broadcast TV in 1080p/30. It has to be chopped into 1080i/60. 720p/60 seems kind of cool, but so many ABC and Fox TV shows aren't photographed in a native 60 frames per second format. The manual audio feature for the 5D Mark II seems interesting. However, to capture audio that's worth a damn at all with the camera you absolutely have to buy a shotgun mic of some sort. The built in mic in the 5D Mark II sucks. It doesn't record audio very well but picks up lots of wind noise. The 7D shoots 23.976 for 24p and 29.97 for 30p.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-16-2010 12:18 AM                     Well, Canon has just issued the new firmware update for the EOS 5D Mark II. Unfortunately the firmware update procedure seems really stupidly fucking complicated. All I know is I need to fully charge the battery for my 5D Mark II and maybe have a USB cable handy. It just seems like a real pain in the ass to gain 1080p/24 capability with a good dose of moire (unless I open the aperture to f/2.8). Oh well, I got a warm-up for this event via a Panasonic Blu-ray player owned by a couple of my friends. Their player was unable to play Inglorious Basterds. With some research I found they definitely needed to do a firmware update because Universal screwed the pooch when testing their disc on Panasonic players. That update was a PAIN IN THE ASS. They couldn't do it because their Roxio software and M$ Vista wouldn't let them author an ISO-9660 formatted CD-R disc with the latest firmware update software. FUCK. The damned BD player has a SD card slot and USB 2.0 slots yet you still have to burn a fucking ISO CD disc. What the mother fuck!? Goddamn! I want to sledgehammer an engineer's skull for not thinking about firmware updates via USB or flash card slots (kinda like the Playstation 3 can do --assholes!). Since I own a very old, aging laptop computer with XP, I was able to burn the proper ISO-9660 update to a CD-R and properly repair my friends' Blu-ray player. They were very happy. Then we had drinks this weekend and lounged in the hot tub. No time machine involved. No porn either. All respectable. Still, the instructions for the EOS 5D Mark II firmware update seem needlessly complicated. I'm sure I'll manage because I'm very very very careful about these kinds of things. Who needs to take chances on bricking a $2800 camera body?  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 03-16-2010 03:45 AM                        How is it complicated? The 7D firmware update seems easy. Download the file, put it in the root directory of the Compact Flash Extr33m 3 card, put card in, turn camera on, go to certain option in the menu, tell it to update. About a minute later, it is done.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-16-2010 10:29 AM                     The actual procedure of applying the firmware update isn't too bad, but it would be nice if the camera would just automatically detect the firmware update file when you turn on the camera and then ask you if you want to apply the update. Canon's instructions of getting there just seem to add some unnecessary steps. You download some self extracting EXE/ZIP file that turns out not to save as file size. They ask you to format the CF card before sticking the "5d200203.fir" file into the root directory. So you have to move anything you have on the CF card elsewhere. Anyway, I was finally able to apply the update. The real hassle turned out to be just downloading the update file. Canon's server kept timing out. Someone else at one of the photo forums posted a copy of the already extracted "5d200203.fir" file elsewhere on a much faster server. Canon may have to do another update. Complaints are surfacing about the manual audio controls. They don't "stick" at the same setting when you turn off the camera or let it go to sleep. If you don't check manual gain settings every time you shoot you may end up with video clips without audio.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 03-16-2010 04:25 PM                        quote: Bobby Henderson They ask you to format the CF card before sticking the "5d200203.fir" file into the root directory. So you have to move anything you have on the CF card elsewhere. No you don't. Don't do that! I didn't when I updated the 7D. Just put it in the root directory and it is fine. It worked.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-21-2010 12:26 AM                     It took only a day or two for Canon to address the audio level bug in the 5D Mark II version 2.0.3 firmware with new and improved 2.0.4 firmware! This time I tried the EOS utility method of updating the firmware since my notebook computer at home doesn't have a CF card slot. Seemed convenient enough. With the camera connected to the computer, use the remote shooting feature. It has a firmware update function. When used, the new firmware is copied to the CF card in the camera and launched.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 03-21-2010 01:26 AM                        Let me know when you have videos ready to view that you made with the 5D Mark Gulbrandsen II.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-21-2010 01:59 AM                     With the weather as shitty as it has been it could be awhile. Gotta be able to get outdoors and find some decent subject matter. Can't really post amateur porn here either!  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 03-27-2010 10:56 PM                    You guys mentioned "sports photography". My wife and I are trying to figure out what to look for in that regard with digital cameras. She teaches Irish Dance, and we'd like to be able to take clear - non-motion-blurred pictures of our dancers when they're on stage. Up until now, our cheapy digital camera seems to have a real problem with that. It's one of the pocket model cameras. One thing I hate about it is when I know a particular shot is coming up that will look cool (because I know the dance routine), I'll time my press of the button - only to have the camera hesitate for what seems like a random amount of time to try to focus or whatever and then miss the shot. So we're ready to make the leap into D-SLR I think. But we don't want to spend a ton of money. We just want to be able to take decent non-blurred pictures of our dancers while they're dancing. We don't need 20 mega pixels or anything like that. Honestly 8 or 10 is probably fine. Can you guys give me any tips, or recommend any reasonably priced cameras that are good enough for what we want without breaking our bank?  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 03-28-2010 12:38 AM                        Do get too disillusioned, DSLRs hesitate just as much as the pocket cameras when they are in autofocus mode. But the nice thing about DSLR is that they don't HAVE to be in autofocus. Just put it in manual, focus on the dancers once and leave it. Getting non-motion blurred shots is really tricky in dark situations, and I doubt the dancers perform in bright sunlight. The key is to have a high shutter speed (aka short exposure). 1/150 should be enough to eliminate most/all motion blur on all but the fastest moving objects. To compensate you'll need a larger aperture and a higher ISO. The higher the ISO, the noisier your image. If you zoom in, your aperture cannot be opened as wide. So tell the light people to make everything extra bright so you don't have to turn up the ISO too high. Check out the Canon T2i. I think it is around $700 or $800 with a lens included. You can get fairly cheap remote shutters for about $25 or so. That way you don't need to touch the camera itself to take the shot.  |  IP: Logged Julio Roberto Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 938 From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain Registered: Oct 2008 posted 03-28-2010 01:01 AM                    On the high end-ish of things, you should look into the canon 7D and T2i. The T2i (AKA 550D) is only around $1100 with a nice lens kit (with optical stabilization, which helps with hand-shake motion blur) and can take videos at 720p at 60fps for brief periods of time in hot weather (say 30m, since it overheats a bit), which should help with motion blur/interlace related artifacts on appropiate TV/monitors (60p is well supported). If you want something cheap but REALLY want to get into the "sport" mode and don't mind low-resolution too much, some Fuji camera models, like the HF10, offer shooting speeds of up to 1000fps and 30X nice zooms for around $500. The high speed comes of course at much lower resolutions. They work quite well in low light situations. Still, they have 240fps modes which are not too bad. With that, you can capture motion quite well with about the same resolution as a VHS tape and can do clear slow motion. Or 120fps at about NTSC-DVD resolutions. Casio (i.e. Exilim pro ex-f1) and Nikon Coolpix P100 (around $400) also offer high speed modes (i.e. 120fps at good resolutions). The Casio can do 300fps at a useable 512x384 and up to 1200fps!!! (at 336x96 post stamp size ) Plenty of choices. Just research them all and decide what your best option is. The most recommended camera overall right now is the canon t2i/550D, but may not be the best option for your specific needs besides being a tad expensive.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 03-28-2010 01:06 PM                     Sports photography, and other forms of "action" photography can be pretty tricky. One piece "point and shoot" cameras are generally pretty bad at action photography. First of all getting the shot is more a function of the camera lens than the camera body. It is nice to have a camera body that can shoot at least 5 or more frames per second. There is no one, single lens that will be perfect for all purposes. Shooting distance and lighting conditions will dictate what kind of lens should be used. If the lighting is dim at all -such as indoor fluorescent lighting in a gym, the lens will need a large aperture to get enough light into the camera for faster shutter speeds. Zoom lenses usually don't give you any larger than a f/2.8 aperture, and you have to spend quite a lot of money for zoom lenses that maintain that big f/2.8 aperture throughout the entire zoom range. Less expensive zoom lenses will have a variable aperture, such as f/3.5 to f/5.6. An f/5.6 maximum aperture is pretty slow and not very useful for light-challenged indoor sports photography. Prime lenses can be an affordable alternative. Both Nikon and Canon have good quality, affordable primes in 50mm, 85mm, 100mm, 135mm and 200mm focal lengths. Some of these lenses have apertures that open up as big as f/1.4. That's going to allow for much faster shutter speeds than most any zoom lens will provide. Image sharpness from corner to corner will be better than the results of most zoom lenses too. You just have to be more careful about picking your shooting position since you can't zoom. A shutter speed of 1/160 is fast enough to stop most action in the frame, but it isn't fast enough to stop camera shake if you're zoomed out to focal lengths of 200mm or more. Image stabilization can be very valuable in something like a 70-200mm zoom lens and is mandatory for a 300mm or 400mm super telephoto lens.  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 03-28-2010 08:53 PM                    Great info. Thanks, guys.  |  IP: Logged

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