Canon T3i for movie making.?
Question by : Canon T3i for movie making.?
Hi!!
I’m prepping a project for the summer and plan to shoot video using the Canon T3i Camera. Doing research, a lot of independent filmmakers (movie makers) are using DSLR’s for their short films because it’s efficient, cheap and gives you great results– not to mention playing with various kinds of lenses depending on what shot it is– unlike a video camcorder that just gives you just one lens and that’s it. The video’s posted online of what the T3i camera does is astonishing and I’m pretty excited for what it can do for my short. I have a few questions that I can’t seem to find the right concrete answer for.
Sound. This is a big one that I often keep searching. I plan NOT to use the mic with the camera but use an external one, a Sennheiser K6/ME67 & ME66 microphones for crisp sound– attached to a boom-pole and producing sound from the actors that way. There are lots of video’s posted on users using external microphones with the camera and it sounds pretty crisp to me so I hope the one I ordered will do the job the way I want it too– with easy attachment to the camera also rather than buying some kind of extra adapter just to plug the cables of the microphone into the camera. Just wanting to hear from other users on how their sound quality ended up while using the camera.
Lenses. Planning to get 2 lenses. 1) Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens (that most of the T3i’s come with) and 2) Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS Autofocus Lens (f/4-5.6 IS). I might also get the 55mm lens with the low f-stop setting for shots that are pretty dark. Good choice? I have a lot of shots in the script where the camera moves (zooming in and out) on various objects/characters… in the style of Michael Mann and slow zoom-in’s as seen in Kubrick pictures. I also have the camera swooshing a lot from one character to the other. How’s the shutter on that? I hope it’s not ‘chunky’ and can give me smooth movement when I’m handholding the camera moving it around. I do plan to shoot the movie at 30fps and probably doing camera tests on various shutters would give me the ideal answer for that yes? Will these lenses, in video mode, give me smooth movement? From what I read it will but it would be nice to hear from any experienced Canon users on this question and how it acted on their projects.
Battery Life. I’ll be shooting mostly video’s with this camera. What’s the battery life on a full charge? I do plan to get extra batteries for the camera but would be nice to know how long they last.
I do have an editing system– Final Cut Pro Studios that I will edit the movie on. Just thinking about the file space of my short that will run at about 30-35 minutes in running time… I do plan to get an external hard drive to store the footage but, again like my previous question about the battery life, would be nice to know how big the files are on a 1 minute shot for example. I’ll be shooting full HD– 1080P with this project and maybe on a 4:1 ratio of takes to actual shots used for the final project.
Memory Cards. Because I will be filming HD 1080P– will I need some kind of special memory card at maybe 16GB or 32GB in size to give me the native quality that I’m shooting on? I see a lot of SDHC memory cards out there– SD (Standard Definition??? I’m guessing)– so that takes my quality down from HD to SD doesn’t it? Or am I mistaken and it stands for something else? Any HDHC (whatever the HC stands for) out there to give me my native quality that I’m shooting on?
Any help or personal thoughts about the T3i or Canon products for movie mode would be greatly appreciated. I’ve also been looking at the 7D camera but the price kinda kills my wallet. Hope to hear some feedback. Thank you! Take Care!
Best answer:
Answer by fhotoace
There is much more you need to shoot video as you propose.
http://mauromedia.com/cameras/dslr-shoulder-mount-mauromedia-tech/
While it may seem that many independent filmmakers are using dSLR’s, that is all it is. Most still use video cameras with 3-CCD’s and all the necessary on camera features that NO dSLR has.
Here is a short list of the things missing on a dSLR
* High-10 and High-422 profiles,
* Uncompressed 4-channel, full 48-kHz/16-bit digital audio recording,
* genlock,
* SMPTE time code,
* composite video
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