Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Canon 5D MKII, iDC, M-Audio, merlin, Rascal Flatts, Rode, steadicam
We’ve wrapped the first couple of legs of our Rascal Flatts TV special shoot and I thought I’d share what we’ve learned so far. In terms of actual picture quality, I’m still blown away by what comes out of this camera. Yes, it has limitations which I will get to, but I’ve never used a small camera that can perform so well in multiple environments.
While I can’t say everything we’ve shot is perfect, for what we’re doing and some of the down & dirty situations we’e been in this little gem has moved passed the HVX200 (for now) for me. The DOF & versatility of lens options alone make it an incredible tool for the $$.
Now for some details. A lot of people have been asking how we handled the audio for interviews and nat sound. I’ve found, like most people the built in mic is pretty much useless…it works in a pinch but not for professional audio quality. For nat sound we used the Rode Videomic and we we’re very surprised at how well it performed for a $150 mic. The one main drawback of the 5D2 is there is no control of the audio input and it has a built in limiter which is really nothing short of a guessing game. For the interviews our setup was a bit cumbersome. We used a lexicon micpre with a USB interface and we cut the audio straight to my macbook pro. The end result was a success but this method proved to be to bulky and impractical in a run and gun situation. For the next leg of the shoot I bought an M-Audio flash recorder which I think is gonna be the ticket. It’s small, compact and has some key features…16-24bit, WAV files, +48V, etc…it’s about the size of a deck of cards.
As far as the video goes there are a couple of short comings to mention. Of course being able to lock in the exposure is a challenge. When shooting outside checking focus on the small screen is pretty challenging. I was sort of expecting a difficult time holding the camera steady, but even with a 70-200 it proved to be easier than I thought. HOWEVER…another lesson learned is to find some sort of rig/shoulder mount system to use. You will get much better results. Since there wasn’t much time between trips, I grabbed a “Dog leg plus” from Bruce Dorn over at iDC. He makes a rig called a U-boat that seems pretty cool too. I’ll let you know how the Dogleg Plus works.
The coolest gadget I bought for this shoot was the Merlin made by Steadicam. It took some time and practice to get it up and going but WOW we got some really serious results. One shot in particular, when the guys were headed to the set there was a long walk to the set. We picked them up coming out of an interview and stayed with them the entire way. We had a 16-35mm on the cam. The shot looked amazing, we wouldn’t have been able to do this without the merlin. For the $$, it’s a great investment for this camera.
Filters…this is key to getting great DOF. We were shooting in Park City Utah in 3′ of snow with sunny blue skies. I thought an ND6 would be enough but turns out we really needed an additional 6-10 stops to really get what we wanted….lesson learned.
Overall, I’m very pleased with the results. Our next leg will be shooting back stage and live concert footage. I’m excited about this leg because we’ll really get to put the rig to the test.
More to come.
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