Shooting video with DSL camera
Back in the day, shooting video used to require a camcorder, mini DV tapes and other bits of specialized gear. Today, filming has trickled down to cameras in all shapes and sizes including DSLRs, small cameras and of course all the smartphones in your pocket today.
While shooting video today is just as easy as switching to video mode and/or hitting the record button, there’s always room to improve and perfect your home movies. With that in mind, here are a few things you can do right now to improve your movie-making skills with a camera.
Although almost everything can record video these days, different cameras still vary in their feature set. Whether you’re looking to pick up your first camera or an upgrade, here are a few models to keep your eye on.
Canon arguably has the best autofocus system thanks to its dual-pixel technology found in the 70D, 80D, 7D. Alternatively, Canon’s 5D Mark II and 5D Mark III are well regarded in the video production world. The company’s most recent full frame system, the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, also shoots in 4K.
If you’re looking for more options for recording in Ultra HD, Nikon jumped on the 4K ship much earlier with models including D500 and D5, as well as three compact DL-series cameras.
Similarly, Sony has your 4K video needs fully covered with small compact cameras like the Sony RX100 Mark IV and its super-zoom RX10 Mark III.
Sony’s a7 series also features a unique on-sensor image-stabilization system to help steady videos shot on its full-frame mirrorless cameras. Sony’s flagship mirrorless full-frame a7R Mark II features one of the highest resolution 42.4 megapixel (MP) sensors in the world.
The Sony a7S Mark II is also a unique outlier with its 12MP sensor and ability to shoot in virtual darkness – it’s also the camera we chose to use for this guide.
Before we can even get started with shooting movies or hitting that record button, the first crucial step is picking the right movie format for you. There’s a handful of varied file types, but here’s a brief rundown of what’s available today:
- MP4: This digital multimedia format compresses movies into a smaller files making them optimal for streaming and quick uploads.
- AVCHD: Short for Advanced Video Coding High Definition, Sony and Panasonic co-designed this format for HD camcorders. As such, users can create high-definition files at 720p and 1080p or higher. The resulting files are a bit bigger than MP4, but they’re still bite-sized enough for uploading to Vimeo and YouTube on top of being burnt on DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
- XAVC S: If you have your hands on a pro-level Sony camera, XAVC S is the way to go for added editing flexibility.
- XAVC S 4K: Essentially the 4K flavored version of XAVC S, this format supports even higher bit rates, a wider color gamut and, of course, an Ultra HD resolution.
Frame rate dictates the number of individual frames captured in each second of video you record. For instance, if you were shooting at 24 frames per second, the camera would be essentially recording 24 frames every second.
While the concept is simple enough, picking the right frame rate is a bit more complicated.
- 24fps (‘the cinematic look’): Most movies are shot at this frame rate. Movie houses in the late 1920s established 24fps as the industry standard since it was the slowest – and thereby, most economic – frame rate that would still support audio playing off a 35mm reel of film. Lower frame rates also capture more motion blur, which helps to make movements seem more realistic and fluid.
- 25/30fps (best on TV): Although these two frame rates are only slightly faster than 24fp, they’re a better match and are exactly half the refresh rate of modern televisions. Picking between these two really depends on the how quickly your TV set refreshes. In the US you’re more likely to run into a 60Hz panels because of the NTSC standard, meanwhile, the UK and other countries follow the 50Hz PAL color encoding system.
- 60/50fps (best for action): You might be asking why not just set video to record video at the same frame rate as your TV? The simple reason not to is you capture better resolution images with sharper details at lower frame rates. However, don’t write these higher-fps options off all together. 60fps and 50fps are great for fast action and you can also slow the video back down to 30fps for slow-motion video.
- 120/240fps (slow-motion): If you want to get even more extreme with slow-motion footage, bump up your camera to these excessively high frame rates.You might have noticed an ‘I’ and ‘p’ next to the frame rate options you were just looking at. These simple letters actually denote the two different scanning modes – how each frame of video is rendered on the TV screen – available in video known as interlaced and progressive.Interlaced layers frame on top of each other with only half of the picture actually appears at a time, though, it happens faster than the human eye can see. Progressive scanning, on the other hand, paints the entire image all in one go and this can help reduce flickering.
Generally, you should record in progressive mode if it’s available as 60p will always produce a sharper and more defined picture than 60i.
That’s enough for now. Next blog we’ll keep going .
