My wife and I took the dogs up to the park today. I took the T2i and a monopod and my lenses. Here are my thoughts after actually shooting with it in a run ‘n gun capacity with no support (except the monopod), no filters, no follow focus and no audio:

1. Focus – This will be impossible in a run ‘n gun capacity without viewfinder amplification (I ordered the Z-Finder)
2. Exposure – This will work without a histogram if you a) use the built-in light meter by b) practicing.
3. Support – You will not get a steady shot without some sort of support, I thought my monopod was awesome, not to mention cheap. I would like a single handle though.
4. Focus 2 – Trying to keep steady and focus will not happen if you don’t have some sort of follow focus assembly (still looking- traditional FF’s are just way to big and appendage-y for what I need.
5. Exposure 2 – Forget trying to do anything faster than F/2.8 if you’re a one-man band and moving- you simply WILL not be able to focus well- MAYBE F/2 but that’s pushing it. Static interviews will probably be okay though.

What I have noticed is that anything out of the HDLSR also has a hybrid “look” and by that I mean, it’s not quite your typical DV look but it has a crispness that lends itself to almost looking fake. The following shots are simply colored in First Light by adjusting lift, exposure, saturation, and contrast. I wanted to make the mailbox stuff look a little vintage but wanted to see how colorful I could make this piece in it’s “crispness.”

FYI: My T2i settings are pretty simple- I pulled every setting down to it’s maximum decrease

I am VERY pleased with what I can do with this H.264 stuff after I transcode to Cineform. VERY pleased. The results I get just frankly, blow me away and I’ve worked with about every codec out there now. I’m VERY happy and struggle to really find that I need anything more than this.

I have a whole bunch of real gear coming and a couple real gigs. In a change from what I usually do, I’m going to look at a workflow where I edit in Avid “offline” then do my final online in Premiere and After Effects. Avid just blows Premiere away in terms of easy use, and responsive editing.

Tags: avid, cineform, downtime, hdslr, tech, tools, video

*Please note: I’ve gotten huge traffic from this post and looked the responses on all the forums: I am not doing a simultaneous record to camera and MXO- this is ONLY the MXO while the camera is not recording so the image/capture below is indeed a cropped 1080i there is no simultaneous HDMI output when recording to the internal media- hope that helps*

I got my T2i in the mail about three hours ago so while I was doing some audio capture on one machine, I ran out and bought a mini HDMI to HDMI cable and hooked the T2i up to my MXO2 Mini.

Here’s a screen capture of the the captured source:

I dumped into Cineform’s ReMaster which told me it was a 1326mbits stream *EDIT* I was told this is the same regardless of pre/post stream* I’ve never tested this crap so cut me slack - stream notes are identical to the uncompressed HDMI output on my Z7U. I converted it to Cineform 4:4:4 with pulldown removal and ended up with a cropped 1920×1080p24 clip.

Ideally, I would dump it into First Light and apply an offset 2.35:1 crop on it. However, that stupid little focus box (even with focus off) just sits there a few pixels above the bottom crop. If there was no gray bar on the top, I could be fine with the offset and mark my camera during a shoot.

What does work if you want to do this, is bring your transcoded piece into your project and apply a 2.35:1 or 2.40:1 crop and expand the clip slightly in a 720 timeline- perfect (esp. for web). You might want to keep a stock of wide angles around though. Keep in mind if you want to shoot this way you’ll want to mark your Cinedeck or computer monitor because guess what?

No LCD readout when the HDMI is plugged in- none, nada, zip, zilch, nothing. Hit video record on the T2i and you lose BOTH screens! Definitely intended for playback only. But still the good news is that it does appear to be uncompressed. So you’re limited to a studio or Cinedeck setting and the Nanoflash need not apply.

My greenscreen skills suck but here’s the final output (sorry for the soft focus, I didn’t dial it in completely):

I do have a Cinedeck beta coming so I’ll test it with that straight-away. And I’ll be honest, I’d really like a 720 center crop on capture that would eliminate these display issues though not ideal- I tried with my MXO2 Mini but the thing kept crashing (no surprise there).

So in closing, $800 for a camera giving you uncompressed 720 capture? Sweet. And I find myself cropping everything anyway because as someone on Twitter said the other day: “16×9 is so 4×3″ or something like that- my interpretation: “2.35/2.40:1 looks cool as hell…”

*EDIT 16 (or something like that) @SalaTar gave me some insight into testing it for MPEG4 breakups so I’m going to really push somethings on the camera and see what I can eek out.*

Tags: cineform, hdslr, t2i, tech, tools, video, workflow

Just got a tweet that B&H has the “no-brainer video cam” in stock so being the impatient chap I am, I cancelled my Adorama order and promptly ordered from B&H. Should be here early next week.

I have a beta of something (I think) even cooler coming in a couple more weeks as well. Should be good times here for me with new gear, a couple new projects and super high-quality production for independents and non-profits.

Tags: cameras, cineform, hd-dslr, tools