Leaving the house, we drove straight towards the Hinterland. Threatening rainclouds hung low over the hills, ready to disgorge the contents of their swollen bellies. It wasn’t looking good, but come hell or high water (or summer rain storms) I was going to shoot Kondalilla falls. . .After a rocky start with a sun shower hitting us just as I was about to film the views from halfway up the mountain, everything went smooth as silk. . .
This outing, whilst obviously focusing on getting shots of Kondalilla falls was really just to get more acquainted with the new 7D. Of course it’s a camera like any other, but I have to shoot my first job with it tomorrow and I don’t want to look like a kook. There is no better way to learn, than to do. Well, as someone who’s been completely self-taught, I have to believe that don’t I?
With my lovely lady, Katie, in tow, off we set, looking forward to seeing Kondalilla as we’d never been there before.
Katie was my wonderful walking model for the shoot when I needed just a little bit of movement. We only noticed when we got back to look at the footage that her tag was hanging out. Needless to say, she was mortified. I’m sure we’ll be able to deal with it in time, but for now the pain is too near 
I did assure her none of you would mind the tag, probably preferring to study what the actual picture looks like, how much noise there is in the shadows or the depth of any particular lens.
I used 4 lenses for this shoot – the Tokina 11-16 f2.8, Sigma 30mm f1.4, 50mm f1.8 and the 75-300 f4-5.6. I wished I could have got closer to the falls, but I definitely wasn’t going to swim over there and that was the only way it could happen.
First off, Low Light. I am impressed. The Kookaburra shot at the start was shot at full telephoto on that sloooow 75-300 at 1000 ISO. Sure there’s grain in it, but I definitely couldn’t have done that before. The 500D would have been pushing an automatic 1600 ISO and been completely unusable. Very pleased with that. I found that even in the dimmest filtered light I didn’t have to go much above 400 ISO, which was a very pleasant surprise.
The actual image it puts out is lovely. Is it as sharp as the Sony EX1? No definitely not. Is it still acceptable for a 1080P image, of course. I didn’t see too much aliasing at all on this shoot. I would say this is because it’s largely very dense confusing foliage and there isn’t many straight lines for it to work it’s ugliness on.
The ability to manually set a kelvin temperature as a white balance is an invaluable tool when shooting video. It’s something I have missed immensely and yesterday it was wonderful to have that at my disposal. It has been agonising using presets with the 500D and the whole “set a white balance off a still image” tool is positively useless for what I need. I don’t want a correct white balance, I want one that looks good. So this Kelvin setting is just great! If you haven’t tried it, give it a go!
You may wonder why I didn’t pull a really great shot of the water cascading down through the air at 60P. That would have looked great in slow motion, wouldn’t it? Well I didn’t do that for one really good reason. I forgot that I could! Ha! I totally spaced it and forgot I could shoot 60P. Kind of funny really, considering I did it the day before. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. One thing I do wish though, is that you didn’t have to change the video mode to NTSC to select the 30P and 60P frame rates. That is a little annoying and I hope they get it fixed for the 7D MKII.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I had better go and spend some time with the gorgeous one out there in the lounge room, she is already concerned that the 7D is the new flavour of the month and has knocked her off the perch. Can’t have that now, can we?
I’ll get around to doing a bit more of an in-depth review when I am better acquainted with the camera. . .
More soon
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Well i didn’t notice the tag
. But i noticed the nice cookabara and wanted to visit australia again. Also funny that you use the word “Hinterland” wich is a german word so it seems a bit strange to me a german. All in all nice test keep going.
Hey Braunbart,
Thanks for the kind words mate!
Not sure about hinterland, sure does sound german, but it seems to be what we call our picturesque, elevated rural areas. Thanks for the bit of trivia though, will definitely look into how we ended up using that word.
Having a day of rest today, hopefully get some footage for the site tonight or tomorrow.
Hey Christian! Nice work you do there! Thanks for sharing. I notice in these videos a certain “unnatural” lack of motion bluring. Is that due to the codec ot the camera or VIMEO or because of a fast shutter speed?
Which shutter speed setting did you use? I know that 1/48 is the standard movie setting. But moving objects in your videos somehow do not look exactly like they would on film or other video cameras… can you help me pointing out the difference?
No criticism intended. I really like your work!
Take care!
Hey FixMix.
The lack of motion blurring is due to me shooting fast shutter speeds, it’s not Vimeo, the codec or anything else.
The Waterfall could have used a slower shutter speed, absoluteley, but I prefer depth over motion blur and without an 8 stop ND filter, higher shutter speeds are the only way to achieve that. (An 8 stop ND is on the cards. . .as are many other things. . .why does the wish list only grow and never shrink?)
There is always a lot of talk about shooting at 1/48 second, making things look ‘filmic’. But IMO it comes down to personal preference for the subject matter and for some people a sentimental attachment to the way it’s always been.
1/48 of a second just comes from the 180ยบ shutter on a 24fps film camera. Originally 24fps was used only because it was the slowest possible frame rate to convey realistic motion with. For some reason people have fallen in love with what is now, unquestionably, an antiquated frame rate and it’s still available on most pro cameras even though the capabilities of technology have changed drastically. . .I wonder how long it will be before all cinema’s are screening full 6 or 8K images in 60P? 120P? Who knows? 100HZ motion on a plasma sure looks terrible to me, but apparently the masses love it, otherwise it wouldn’t come standard on almost every set now. . . .but I digress. . .
I do shoot at different shutter speeds depending on the shot, but without the a super ND filter, I’ve been shooting high to get the depth. But all this ranting doesn’t change the fact that I was wrong. . .I should have pulled those waterfall shots at a slower shutter speed *hangs head*
What you say is kind of interesting.
I have to throw in a few things. As you said 24 fps is partly because it is the slowest framerate without the eye seeing individual frames (i heard that could actually be lower; more like 20 fps). The first filmmakers had to face two problems: costs and film-speed(sensitivity). They could have gone to 30 fps but then film cost would have increased by 25% and they would need more light (better lenses, film emulsion etc.) to compensate for the shorter shutter time.
Because of 24fps being just a bit more than what the eye does, it mimics what the eye sees quite naturally (bearing in mind that the eye doesn’t have a shutter and resolves motion differently). Hence maybe the preference of the audience. Of course there is a lot of “getting used to” involved. I still don’t like 30fps.
In the cinema each frame is actually presented 2 or 3 times to reduce flicker (48 or 72 frames a second with each frame shown 2 or 3 times in succession). That is what the Plasmas do with their 100hz (or even 600Hz) screens as well (and they also interpolate new frames between the original frames; that is probably what you and I don’t like to see).
High shutter speeds are often used in sports videography because you can then easily analyse individual frames. And we all like to see where and why the referee screwed up so badly
So, go get some bucks and buy a ND8 filter. They are around 50 bucks, right?
(What are the standard filters people buy? I mean, which brands?)