DSLR News Shooter website

September 27th, 2009

DSLR News Shooter website

Posted by Ben in Imaging, Multimedia, Photojournalism, Videojournalism

dslrnewsshooter

Guardian photographer/videographer Dan Chung has set up a new website DSLR News Shooter aimed at those shooting news video on the new generation of DSLR cameras such as the Canon 5DmkII.

With the recent release of the Canon 7D and unconfirmed rumors that Nikon’s new flagship camera the D3s will feature full-frame 1080P video and 14fps stills shooting, the DSLR video race is starting to heat up.

Other good places to look for information and discussion of DSLR video issues are the Cinema5D forum, the DVInfo 5DmkII forum, the Planet5D blog, Canon 5D Tips, and filmmakers such as Phillip Bloom and Vincent Laforet.

What I’ve found with many of those sites though, is that most of the people there are using the cameras for what I’d categorise as a “slow” working environment i.e. documentaries, feature films, editorial work, etc.

Trying to shoot and edit video with DSLRs in a live news scenario is a heck of a lot different, so am hoping Dan’s new site will live up to its name and cater more to this field.

Other posts on this site that might be of interest:

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Philip bloom said:

Dan has the same problems as anyone trying to edit 5dmkII or 7d stuff fast and that is the h264 files. Until a DSLR maker can make a camera that records in decent format workflow will continue to suck!

September 27th, 2009 at 23:22 UTC
Ben said:

Hi Phillip,
You’re of course right that everyone faces the same problems with editing the H.264 files… but for those with looser deadlines they can maybe afford the time to transcode to ProRes etc, whereas if you have to edit video of a breaking news story for TV news on a laptop in the field, I’m not sure transcoding is really going to be an option.
I realise for a polished piece you’re probably going to want to transcode, but if it were me I think I’d just decide to do a rough edit with the native files and transmit it.
I’m still holding out some hope that someone will work some magic with OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch on OS X and the native files will become more reasonable to work with, but perhaps I’m deluding myself
Regards,
Ben

September 27th, 2009 at 23:32 UTC
Philip bloom said:

I still edit on the day stuff for magazine show and no way would I ever use a DSLR for it due to the editing issues. We need a fast FCP plug in for log and transfer or something like that.

September 27th, 2009 at 23:34 UTC
Ben said:

Yes, there’s a strongish argument in my mind that DSLRs just aren’t that well suited to shooting video news, both in terms of editing the files and also in terms of focusing etc.
On the other hand as a primarily stills shooter my 5DmkII gives me a high-def video option in a news environment without having to carry extra gear (with the exception of a small mic such as Sennheiser MKE-400), where otherwise I probably wouldn’t be carrying anything with video-capability at all… and for that I’m grateful, so I can live with the downsides….

September 27th, 2009 at 23:41 UTC