Tips for shooting with a dslr

Ch.

Ch.

Member
Hey guize. I got a t2i for christmas today and was wondering if anyone have any tips on shooting with a t2i.

I googled a couple things and found out that :

-Shutter Speed should be 2 times the FPS

-You should avoid iso's 125, 250, 1000, 2000, 2000+ (because those are the grainyest for some reason.

Thats all I really found out. Do any of you know any good tips on this?

Thanks guize!
 
Stabilization is key, glide cam, tripod, hand held follows will suck and hand held shots will have to be damn steady.

Practice.
 
all of the T2i's ISO settings are native, so the above doesn't apply to your camera, plus it doesn't have those ISO's anyways
 
don't mess with your saturation and contrast settings in-camera, it will make color grading much more difficult
 
You'll find that there are a lot of different opinions on in-camera picture style settings. Many people prefer shooting with a "flat" setting. for example, Philip Bloom uses the following: Neutral Picture Style, along with...

Sharpness ---> No sharpness (all the way to the left)

Contrast ---> No contrast (all the way to the left)

Saturation --> -2 (two notches to the left from 0)

Color Tone --> Unmodified (0)

everybody has their own preference though, I use something like: no sharpness, contrast -2 or 3, saturation -2
 
Yeah, dslrs are so light and the rolling shutter tends to buttfuck you if you're not stable.
 
oh yea i'm well aware of that, i actually use that setting that bloom uses.
however, i just meant don't boost saturation and contrast. it's tempting for a lot of new users (i did it) because it makes shots look so good straight out of camera and it just makes filming more fun, but it makes grading a nightmare.
 
I would give the exact opposite advice. DSLR footage is so fragile to grade in the first place, that you will get a cleaner image by shooting it right the first time. And there is something to be said about the spontaneous magic of achieving colors in-camera. Plus, unless you are fairly skilled at grading, it will end up making your footage look worse like it does to 90% of DSLR filmers.

-The "rule" about the shutter denominator should be double the frame rate is bullshit. Shoot whatever shutter you find aesthetically pleasing, just know how your shutter will effect the motion of your image.

-DSLR footage tends to look its best and most natural with the sharpness turned all the way down. It attenuates the artifacting/moire and renders a more authentic image of your lens characteristics.

-STOP DOWN YOUR LENSES. I cannot stress this enough. Any skilled filmmaker will tell you that the magic happens in the glass, and getting to know the "sweet spots" of your glass is one of the best things you can do to achieve a good image. Also, it will set you apart from the drones of amateur DSLR filmers who shoot at the highest stops for the sake of DOF porn. Most lenses are their sharpest at roughly f/5.6 - f/8, and this aperture range will give you a good balance of workable DOF.

-Don't use polarizer filters with wide angles. Polarizing filters polarize light based on the angle of interception. Wide angles have varying angles of interception, and this produces blotchy, inconsistent tones. This rule can be broken on occasion, since the banding mostly occurs in the sky or other "solid" colors.

-Press the record button while in the 10x magnification in Live View. The beginning of the clip will have a flash frame, due to a glitch in the camera software (this works on the 7D; I haven't confirmed it with others).

-Memorize native ISO settings. All other settings are just native ISOs with added compression, so opting for native ISOs will give you a cleaner image.

That is all I can think of at the moment.
 
...provided you don't go overboard with the contrast and saturation settings. I've found having both on +2 gives good in-camera saturation and contrast without clipping.
 
Have patience. You can read as much as you want but it will still take a lot of practice before you can really use your camera well.
 
I have a question about my new 60d. last night I was using an 85mm 1.2L and i had it at 1.4 and not sure what my iso settings were at but I could notice alot of grain. I was suprised since it was such a sharp lens.

 


Dont Know if anyone uses this, but When I drop them on my 60d in photo mode like he said I got over to video mode and cannot use them. Why is that? Anyone know whats up with that?
 
except if you're shooting something with contrast and saturation boosted, there's a good chance you'll end up with distorted colors like orange skin tones, which suck to deal with in post.
 
yes it will... if somebody has a slightly orange skin tone naturally, then boosting saturation and contrast will give them a very orange skin tone that looks like shit. trust me, i know how to white balance. i film a filipino kid all the time and i guarantee you that even if i white balance correctly, high saturation & contrast will still make that kid look like an oompa loompa.
plus high contrast just gives you less image data (dark darks and bright highs) which gives you less flexibility in post
 
+2 contrast and saturation isn't "high" by any means. I feel that any more of a boost and you start to clip. Hell, even having them at 0 works, but cranking them down all the way looks like ass because you're compressing the image data in post to add colors that aren't natively there, and unless you're really fucking talented at grading, shooting flat is going to do more damage than good. And no, I would not consider Philip Bloom to be talented at grading by any means.

As for the Asian thing...well, Asians just look goofy in general. Quit blaming the camera. Besides, if he looks like am oompa loompa, you can fix the saturated harshness by applying some basic color theory without stripping your camera of its color and relegating it to the lifeless trend that is "shooting flat."
 
when did we start talking about +2? i kept saying 'boosting,' which most people know implies cranking them up. and i don't crank all the way down, i never suggested doing that.
i'm also saying that the camera only exaggerates the color of his skin tone, creating a problem that doesn't need to be there. i didn't say the camera makes his skin tone orange in the first place. i know how to fix that stuff, but it's just helpful for beginners to know that it's not all about cranking colors in camera.
i'm pretty sure most professional photographers and filmers don't mess with colors too much in camera. they would rather have bland colors out of camera that give them a lot of grading options. i shot with a RED this summer and the director and DOP definitely weren't that worried about colors while they were shooting aside from cooling the colors and going for a DFN look.
and bloom doesn't always hit it out of the park with his videos, true. but sometimes he does a pretty damn good job. in my opinion his grading in this vid is pretty beautiful
Salton Sea Beach from Philip Bloom on Vimeo./static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
 
i'm curious about these picture styles.
on an HVX, the scene files are just variations of the different settings.
Is it the same with these picture styles? In other words, could you achieve each picture style by just adjusting sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone in different ways?
 
I did this and in video mode it does not pop up? I followed step by step and it still does not work.

it pops up in picture mode but not video?

ughhh please help me out.
 
I was talking about moderate boosing (+2) originally...maxing out any setting in either direction looks bad (except for sharpness all the way down), I think we can agree on that.

However, I feel the flat vs in-camera is sort of apples to oranges. Sure, people operating RED cameras want to shoot it flat and yada yada, but it is very visible in the end product. I'm not doubting the capacity of the RED camera or its users, but every single time I have seen RED footage, I have instantly been able to recognize it as being very digital. I am not a big fan of overtly post-processed colors. As an example, compare Fargo to O Brother Where Art Thou?. Fargo was shot on film stock, and O Brother was the Coen Brothers' first venture using digital grading, and the footage looks vastly different from each other.

I started out on my 7D shooting flat, and it was fun grading the footage and all, but what I realized that its even more fun not having to spend as much time behind the computer. Plus, I like the philosophy of shooting it right, and constricting yourself to the less-forgiving spontaneity of in-camera adjustments.

I shot this video using in-camera settings. Saturation/contrast was +2 (+3 contrast for a couple shots), sharpness all the way down, and the only adjustment I made was I cooled the blacks on 2 shots. I basically got this result without compressing the image data, and it looks are more lively than my flat footage did.

Whatcom Falls from Landis Tanaka on Vimeo.
 
word, i was talking about maxing out because a lot of people tend to do that at first, myself included.
personally, i'm a big fan of the digital/post-processed look that REDs can sometimes have, so I guess that kind of explains the way I feel.
you make good points though, I've actually been testing out shooting with saturation and contrast bumped up a tiny bit lately (+1 or +2) and I'll mess around with it a little more after reading your post.
 
Also, you may find bumping the saturation/contrast to be ugly if you're in Standard Mode, in which case I agree, it looks awful and MS Paint-y. I shoot everything in Landscape mode and am pleased with the balance between saturation and detail.
 
aha, so there is a difference between landscape, standard, etc. outside of the saturation, contrast, color tone, sharpness settings?
for some reason i always assumed that each one was just a variation of those four settings.
 
nope. Put all the settings at 0 in one of the custom rofiles, then cycle through the Neutral, Landscape, Standard, etc. and notice how it changes.
 
canon 7d has the native isos as multiples of 160. All of the other isos are digitally gained off of those. Stay with those native isos if you can. Above 1260 you'll be in grain city either way.

On picture settings, I don't know much about them but i've looked up a lot of the super flats and stuff and those are engineered if you want a film look. I don't like that stuff for skiing especially. I usually am in either the landscape or portrait (mainly the 1 or 4 or 5 that looks best) setting depending on backdrop.

I'm usually higher than a 180 degree shutter for motion blur reasons.
 
one pumps reds, one blues, one greens, i don't know which does which but yeah. I think it says it in the camera manuel.
 
Not to thread jack. But i have been shooting with a t2i a little bit and is there anything that i MUST know to make my life easier in either post or when i am shooting?
 
Don't drop it in a bucket of oil????

Anybody get the latest skijournal?? Great short story about and poetry from Karl the Gnarl.
 
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