How to obtain the greatest quality on a HDSLR

The best thing you can do to get a good image on a DSLR is to turn the sharpness all the way down. Anything higher than 0 looks like a cell phone video.

Shooting flat will only hurt your footage unless you REALLY know your stuff when it comes to grading (knowing how to use 3-way CC or Color doesn't count). And even then, whether or not it actually helps is debatable.

I know it's personal preference, but shutter speeds faster than 1/125 for slow motion look horrendous. Anything faster than 1/60 for regular speed also looks bad in many cases.

Never shoot wide open. Lower apertures like f/8 - f/5.6 are the "sweet spot" for lenses. Shooting higher gives DOF that's way too shallow and softens the image, and shooting lower reveals just about every other flaw (fringe/diffraction/CA).

Only shoot in native ISOs. The lowest you should go is 320.
 
any chance you could put up two example of what is 'good' and what is 'bad' to you? Just curious because ive shot slow motion at 1/125 and thought it looked terrible and think only slow motion with a shutter higher than that looks good.
 
I can't think of a specific example, nor do I want to shit on anyone's footage, but I see it in tons of ski videos. Every frame looks unnaturally crisp and clear with no motion blur whatsoever. It just feels so artificial to me.

The slow motion in this video was shot in 1/125. If you look past the crappy filming, I feel this is the most realistic motion blur possible.

 
Damn, my Pro account expired and I don't have my embed settings anymore. No idea how to scale it...
 
I strive to avoid motion blur, so i guess its going to be hard to appreciate the slightly blurred look...
 
this.. im not a fan of motion blur either especially on slow mo shots. i always keep the hvx shutter speed around the 250/500 range when i shoot. i think that looks most natural in when conformed to 24 imo
 
But you do not have to deal with rolling shutter. If you did, you would try not to ever shoot that high. I try to never go over 300, and even then i rarely use that.
 
I like to have just the right amount. In my opinion 1/125 @ 60p matches the motion blur of human eyesight. When the shutter is super fast it's too obvious that I'm watching footage, rather than letting the presence of the camera disappear as it should.
 
I was under the impression that those isos are just digitally stopped down? As in 320 is just stopped down from 400 and you lose some dynamic range in the process.

Am I just wrong here?
 
Close; you have it backwards. ISOs in multiples of 160 are native ISOs. ISOs in increments of 100 are digitally "pushed" from the native ones. So ISO 320, 640, 800, etc. are cleaner than ISO 200, 300, 400, etc. I also read somewhere that ISO 160, despite being a multiple of 160 is also "pushed" but I don't remember why. It's not really an issue since shooting 320 gives me a clean image and is enough to expose for daylight in conjunction with an ND and polarizer.
 
What if it's too bright outside to use the 180 rule with proper exposure and your aperture is already at 11?
 
So I usually try to shoot the majority of my skiing footage with a shutter speed of 50 and iso 100 but that forces me to, on sunny days, shoot with the lens basically wide open. What do I change to make it so i can shoot on an aperture of around 11 or is shooting the way I have been and sacrificing the lens being open worth sticking to the settings above?
 
Just curious Landis(or any once else who can answer this) I don't really tend to grade, but ive been shooting on neutral, what would the best picture style to use if i'm not grading, I thought maybe the standard one, with saturatioin 2 stops down, and contrast 2 stops down with sharpness all the way down..
 
you cant really determine that until your at the scene where you will be shooting. some people like to keep their colors constant, but its hard to have a pre set picture style unless your shooting neutral or flat. I know will has some pre set ones he likes to use. not really sure of them though.
 
kinda worded that second sentence wrong. obviously people like to keep there colors constant, if your shooting one day with the same amount of light, it wont be difficult. but when your shooting multiple days, and multiple different scenarios, its hard to keep everything looking the same. thats why i usually just leave it to post.
 
Simple...shoot whichever one you think looks best! Why would you ask someone else how your image should look?

Many people prefer neutral. I personally prefer Landscape. If I don't plan on grading, I turn down the contrast 1 notch and the saturation up 1 notch. Of course, these settings change about 20 times a day depending on changes in light, angle, lens, subject, etc. I never shoot a single setting all the time because that just doesn't make any sense. On a cloudy day in the city, I turn up contrast and saturation to +2 and adjust the white balance so that everything is extremely blue. Completely unconventional and unrealistic, but that's the beauty of it! If I want it to look a little more film-like, I'll shoot with low contrast (not "flat") and overlay a film grain in post.

The best thing you can do is experiment. Start by shooting the same shot with each picture profile with matched settings and determine which you like best. Then experiment with the individual levels to get the desired contrast and saturation, although I can't stress how important it is to turn sharpness all the way down on a DSLR.

Getting your colors in-camera can be a challenge, but in the end it will look better than shooting flat and grading if you become proficient enough. I know there's many (strong) opinions about this, but the thing is, it's a mathematical fact. DSLR footage isn't meant for heavy grading, and when you rely on it, you damage the image. And the only bonus is having more freedom in post, which isn't even a perk if you're patient enough to get your colors in-camera!
 
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