AACIL – UM Art Collaborative Celebration, Shot on Canon 7D from Ted Chen on Vimeo.

After the recent release of Access magazine, the Ann Arbor CIL called me up to see if I was interested in covering their celebration event, which showcased the final works of a clay course. The course was held over several weeks in the fall, in collaboration with the University of Michigan.

Although I have been mulling over new video equipment for the past couple of weeks (was eyeing a viewfinder enlarger and some kind of stabilization system), financial constraints meant I would still shoot with the same Canon 7D and Rode Video Mic. Not that you can’t do a good job with it, but being hand-held, there is still some noticeable shake in the video.

One of the bigger problems from the day was the incredibly cacophonous background conversations. The exhibit area — where most of the video was shot — was no bigger than a conference room. With everyone trying to shout above each other and the walls echoing those voices, I might as well had been in a dance club. And here’s where I feel the Rode Video Mic performed admirably, picking up the interviewees voices above the din even though they were speaking to us in a low, muffled volume.

Solely relying on the 7D’s LCD screen to acquire pin-point focus is inadequate, I’ve come to realize. While the 7D screen is marvelous, it’s just too small. When I re-watch my video several times, I noticed the faces aren’t in exact focus (even though it’s close). I’ll need a viewfinder enlarger pretty soon, and I’m leaning heavily towards the LCDVF. I shot most of the video at f4, which doesn’t give thin depth-of-field at all, so it’s so hard to achieve focus accuracy at f4, imagine how bad it’ll be at f2.

I have to thank my colleague, Helen, for helping with asking the questions while I made sure everything was going right with the video recording. Hand-holding the camera requires deep concentration to keep it steady!

In case you’re wondering, the lenses used were:

Canon’s 24-105mm f4L
Sigma’s 15mm f2.8 fisheye

In future I definitely hope to have some kind of stabilization in place, and maybe I could try switching to prime lenses to get more separation between subject and background. But like I’ve said in all my previous video posts, photography is still number one for me, and should make sure it gets priority when it comes to gear. Good lenses can be used for either still or video, but stabilization is catered only for video and doesn’t help in still photography.

Prof Inuzuka talks about the importance of art in his life and the impact on his disability

Buca di Beppo with the Canon 7D from Ted Chen on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago, I declared video to be the next big thing, and every photojournalist/photographer would need to add the new dimension of motion to their repertoire. Then I took the big (money) step to purchase one of the latest hybrid DSLRs, which can capture both quality images and full-HD video.

And yesterday, I brought that Canon 7D on a lunch trip to Buca di Beppo. The Italian restaurant is famous for its family-style portions and vintage decor. While I have also been building my audio equipment list, this set up was still short of ‘professional.’ I had no rig, everything was hand-held and manually adjusted. For sound I had the Zoom H2 recorder, which I’ve had personal experience using while I was at Columbia’s journalism school.

Shooting video is tough. Extremely. You have to predict motion more so than photography, and visualize how every small clip is going to be put together in the end. Then there’s audio. In this video I cheated a little by having background music, despite recording all the ambient sound within the 7D. Sure I could have used the Zoom to record audio, but only for ambient sounds. You’d have to put the Zoom really close to whoever’s speaking to get a good signal. Plus, I was also in the middle of eating the sumptuous food at Buca di Beppo!

As far as video shooting went, I shot everything from the same spot, choosing carefully what I wanted to capture and using selective focus. Keeping the camera steady while filming was a little bit challenging. What I’m really pleased is how the 7D performed at ISO 3200. The video is still cleaner than many other camcorders out there. It won’t beat the 5D2, but I am sufficiently pleased. Besides I really need the better auto-focus and frame rate of the 7D. Once I had the source video and audio files, I put them all together in Final Cut, adjusting the color balance and a little bit of the gamma.

From here, I hope to produce more videos, while slowing expanding the video rig I have. There are way better options for audio out there (like switching to XLR inputs), but right now the Zoom works well enough for me. Also, I need to try and get everything right in-camera while shooting. It’s much easier than tweaking the settings (such as white balance) in post-production.

That’s it from me! Check back on the website often to see if I have new videos up!

Taking video with the Canon 7D at the Italian Restaurant Buca di Beppo