Shooting Video on Canon DSLR cameras

Shooting Video on Canon DSLR cameras

Shutter speed
When using the camera to take photos, the shutter speed can be used as a way of controlling exposure. This isn’t ideal when using the camera to make videos. If the shutter speed is too high, the movement in videos will have a jittery feel rather than the smooth motion common of cinema. This is why you should try to keep your shutter speed at 50.

Exposure
Because the shutter speed is locked at 1/50th of a second, exposure is instead controlled with aperture and ISO. Higher ISO values create more visible noise in the image, so needs to be kept under ISO 1600 for video, ideally working within the ISO 100-800 range. Another way of controlling exposure, especially in bright light, is with a Neutral Density filter on the lens, demonstrated below. This enables the videographer to keep the shutter speed at 1/50th of a second, while using a wider aperture - i.e f/2.8, f/1.4.

 
ND filter

Settings
In the camera menu select Movie exposure > Manual. It is also possible to make videos in auto mode, but this is not desirable because it gives operators far less control over the final images and produces poor quality videos.

Movie Recording Size
To select the size and quality of the video open the ‘Movie rec. size’ menu and select from the drop down menu. 1920x1080 (25) will give you the best quality HD video. The ‘25’ is 25 frames per second which is PAL (New Zealand broadcast standard).














Slow Motion
If you want to make slow motion videos, it is preferable to use the 1280x720 (50) option, which shoots videos with less resolution, but at a higher frame rate. Once the video is imported into Adobe Premiere the images can be slowed down to create smooth slow motion videos.

When Shooting for slow motion, it is best to set the shutter speed to either 100, 125 or 200, instead of the usual 50. This will mean you will need more light, by either increasing the ISO or opening up the aperture.


Note: It is very difficult to shoot slow motion unless you have a lot of light.

Don't forget to change your settings back to 1920x1080 (25), when you've finished shooting your slow motion scenes.