Canon 7D movie – Another night in Beijing from Dan Chung on Vimeo.
So here is my first attempt at filming with a production Canon Eos7D just one hour after receiving it from my local camera store. Starting at 10pm I spent about 2 hours in total filming this in the Nanluoguxiang Hutong in Beijing, mostly at around 1600 to 6400 ISO. At first I had a few problems re-adjusting my head to the different button layout to the 5DmkII but by the end of the shoot I was getting used to it. The camera feels great in the hand and I get round to doing more testing and analysis later. For now I’m happy that it is producing the kind of results I want and at 25p, all ready for broadcast. For the news shooter this is the last major hurdle to proper production, there are other issues like sound and aliasing, but this was the big one and so we can rejoice. Several of my broadcast TV collegues are now interested in using these cameras for news coverage.
In my unscientific gut feeling test I think the images from the 7D in low light are slightly noiser than the 5DmkII but still amazing considering Beijing’s dark streets and dim lighting. Its a shame this isn’t a full-frame sensor, but its not a deal breaker for me.
Picture style was set at neutral and the whole thing was edited in Final Cut Pro with no colour correction, the reduced from 1080p to 720p in MPEG streamclip with just a slight contrast and saturation tweak. I’ll try and make the 1080p version available soon on Smugmug.
Lenses were the Canon 50mm f1.2L, 35mm f1.4L and the 70-200mm f4L IS. I shot mainly handheld attaching my Zacuto Z-finder straight to the camera, then added a prototype of the new Genus d-slr bars supporting their wide angle mattebox to prevent any excess lens flare. I also shot using a small Redrockmicro shoulder rig at times as well as on my fantastic Miller DS-20 tripod. Audio was from a Zoom H4n feeding the camera audio directly using a custom cable from Pinknoise systems (living with AGC to speed time in the edit).
When I shot the my original ‘One night in Beijing’ test reel on the Eos5DmkII ten months ago I new the whole video game had changed irreversibly. The 7D is the next logical evolution of the 5DmkII video capabilities, apart from the lack of a full frame sensor and the resulting low image noise, it does all things just that little bit better.
Canon EOS5DmkII, One night in Beijing. from Dan Chung on Vimeo.
My original 5DmkII movie also shot on the day of its shipping.
