Panasonic might have just turned the AG-HPX371 into one of their most popular cameras by significantly reducing the price.  This full size P2 camcorder bundled with a 17x Fujinon lens is now available for £5800 +VAT.  For the money you get 10bit, 4:2:2, 100Mbps AVC-Intra recording, variable frame rates and BBC approval.  The HPX371 is a 3x cmos 1/3" camera.  The benefits of 1/3" chips is that unlike 2/3" and 1/2" you can mount Nikon stills lenses with an optional adapter.  If you are into long lens work or wildlife filming don't forget the cropping which means a 100mm stills lens will be magnified by 7.2x.  A Nikon 60mm Micro lens will become the equivalent of 432mm lens.  A 300mm would become a 2160mm equivalent.  Learn more and buy the HPX371 here.

I’ve recently mentioned the difficulties and importance of getting accurate focus on your HD-DSLR in my blog contributions at www.highdef.co.uk so it was great to get my hands on a new toy that’s not only going to make this job easier, but will also give me some additional focus-shifting and control tricks to play with. Enter the Okii FC1 USB Focus Controller.  Click below to the right to read more.

Simon Beer at Production Gear spotted this little treasure on his holiday (sorry, business trip) to NAB in Las Vegas earlier this year and quickly introduced it to their inventory having realised its potential and value to Canon DSLR shooters. Retailing £276.50 ex VAT it’s not a cheap solution to remote focussing, but it’s certainly very clever and compact and does away with some of the skills needed to pull focus on a DSLR.

A bit on Okii

Before I move on to the product itself, I thought I should kick off with some interesting and relevant background on the manufacturer, Okii Systems. Based in North Carolina, Okii is an all-American company headed up by William Paul Tadao Roberson – affectionately known and ‘Will’ – and supported by his mother (Cookie), sister (Kristi) and brother-in-law (Fabio). Will’s background and education is in computer sciences but everyone in the company shares a passion for photography and filmmaking.

Fabio currently runs two production companies in Honolulu, Hawaii – ‘3Toad Films’ (specialising in corporate and business-based productions) and ‘Love Sick Video Journalism’ (producing wedding day films) and it was whilst on a trip to Japan with Fabio that Wills realised the need for something much lighter, smaller and more intelligent than the current mechanical follow focus systems. Shooting on Canon DSLRs, Fabio and Wills set about listing a range of lens controls that could all be accessed through the camera’s integral USB port – and Okii Systems was born.

All the circuit board design work and software development is carried out by Wills in North Carolina, with the circuit boards themselves being produced in Texas and all CAD/CNC work carried out in Nebraska. Whilst the company currently produce just two USB controllers and a range of accessories - its ethos, skill set, interest and enthusiasm are directed towards the development of a whole new range of tools for the digital image maker.

Introducing the FC1

Essentially, by interrogating Canon’s USB protocol, the FC1 gives the user control of various camera and lens functions without the need to carry a laptop around with you. It is compatible with a wide range of Canon DSLRs (EOS 1D X, 1D Mark IV, 5D Mark III, 5D Mark II, 7D, 60D, 600D, 550D, and 500D) and will function fully with all Canon, Sigma and Tamron auto focus lenses. There are some known issues with a 7D/Tokina combination when the lens command rate is set higher than the internal elements are able to move – but other than that all other combinations should work perfectly.

With a fully compatible combination, amongst other controls, the FC1 will allow you to adjust focus in a variety of ways. You can simply use it like a studio controller and twist the central dial (which you can reverse in software if you like) to take you from the far to the near stop of your lens’ focal range and obviously anywhere in between. You can also tap-adjust the focus using single button presses – and set the step-rate by which the focus is adjusted from one end to the next. At the finer end of the scale it’s hard to see the lens adjusting and I had to hold my ear to the lens motor to reassure me that things were actually still moving. At the bigger increment end it shifts from one extreme to the next in about three, jolting, steps.

This is all very handy. However, the function mode all DSLR users will love (in fact, all videographers) is the ability to set focus points (up to four of them). You can then either incrementally adjust from one focus point to another by holding down function buttons or using the twist knob to focus up to (and stop at) those points. Better still, you can use a one-push button command and it will automatically swing from one focus point to another – at user definable speeds.

You’ll also be able to use the FC1 with a manual focus lens fitted but you’ll be limited to camera settings such as record trigger, ISO, shutter and expanded view – so therefore not really a focus controller whatsoever in those situations! Needless to say that to be able to remotely control these functions without having to twiddle with your camera is still a bonus.

Weighing less than 5oz and of compact design, the FC1 can be operated handheld or mounted to a rig or tripod arm with a range of optional bracket systems - or simply screwed to a tripod or anything with a standard ¼” screw fixing. For my experiments I had it attached to a ball-joint head with hot shoe base and mounted on the camera. I also had a go at mounting it on a magic arm too, but I suspect (but couldn’t test) that the most natural position would be mounted on your tripod arm.

Though I didn’t get to play with it anywhere else but on a tripod I can imagine the FC1 will really come into its own when you have the camera mounted on a crane or jib. According to their blurb the FC1 has been tested with USB cable lengths up to 25 meters! This could save you hours of back and forth making adjustments to a hard to reach camera head.

Conclusions

As much as I love the FC1 it would be wrong not to mention what I think are a few basic shortcomings. Firstly, for the money it would have been nice if it came with a basic tripod arm bracket as that would probably be the most useful means of attachment. I also thought it mean that they didn’t include a mini-B to A USB cable – even though I seem to have acquired loads of spares over the years. Finally, it’s a bit naff that you have to remove two machine screws on the back plate to replace the AAA batteries which will only give you about 30-hours use. That means trusting the likes of me with a screwdriver – and that’s never a good idea!

There’s so much more on the plus side though. It does exactly what is says on the can, and I really like that quality in any product I review. Despite its compact size and featherweight, the FC1 feels like one hell of a tough nut. I can imagine it would easily be able to take the day-to-day bangs and crashes of videography and not flinch. And if you do give it a proper pasting then there’s a complete set of spares available from your Okii dealer.

I did have concerns that it might not work in conjunction with my beloved Magic Lantern but I didn’t experience any problems. Maybe the two companies can get together and extend the FC1’s capabilities to control some of Magic Lantern features too? Now that would be, in the words of our American cousins… Awesome!

The FC1 does kind of take the magic and mystery out of smooth focus pulling on a DSLR and will save you a bit of money on chinagraphs marking up your manual follow focus system – but these are good things aren’t they?  The FC1 is a neat tool that I’m sure you are going to fall in love with – check it out.

Kevin Cook F.Inst.V. (Hon.)

DSLR shooters are all too familiar with the fact that you never know what you want until you’ve got it – and when you do find something that’s really useful you wonder how you ever coped without it. Choosing what to invest your hard-earned on can be quite daunting though as there are lots and lots of cool and snazzy accessories for DSLRs. Some are handy, some are not – and quite a few will fall into the ‘nice but not essential’ category.  Click below to the right to read more.

However, there are a few things that you will definitely need to turn your DSLR into a practical shooting option and overcome their well-publicised shortcomings. Ranking high in my list of DSLR essentials would be a field monitor – and it just so happens that Simon Beer at Production Gear sent me through one of the new Bowens LimeLite 7” HD field monitors to have a look at.

Bowens LimeLite M7 7” Field Monitor

The benefits of having a reasonable field monitor are going to be nothing new to experienced videographers, regardless of whether you are shooting on a proper video camera or a DSLR. Viewfinders and camera mounted LCDs are fine but all too often when you get to view your rushes on something bigger you spot the expensive mistake. Maybe a spot on the lens that just wasn’t visible on the small screen or someone doing something they shouldn’t in the background. Whilst there’s no guarantee that a field monitor will reveal this at the time their greater size will certainly increase your chances of avoiding these types of problems.

However, for the DSLR shooter an external monitor is more than just a nice addition. Once you have one they will become one of your vital bits of kit as the built-in screens on DSLRs are not really designed for live monitoring of video. The optical viewfinders disengage when in video mode so they don’t provide a solution either. At the very least you’ll need an optical loupe to magnify the camera LCD but even these become next to useless the moment the camera is in a position where you cannot get your eye close to the camera.

I reached this point in my DSLR tool-kit expansion a few months back and did something that, during my IOV admin years, I’d been telling others to avoid doing at all costs. I bought a 7” HDMI LCD monitor directly off a Chinese manufacturer through eBay (numb-nut). The specification was impressive, their reviews were brilliant and the cost was about a quarter of the nearest UK-sourced equivalent available at the time (about £250). The parcel arrived and didn’t attract the interest of the duty inspectors – although I was expecting and willing to pay the usual demand from the courier. However, opening the box was the only pleasurable experience as inside I found that my ever-so helpful eBayer had included a free UK plug adapter which had been placed loose inside the box. At some point in transit the box had obviously been at the bottom of a pile and, as you’ve probably guessed, the adapter’s plugs ended up piercing the LCD panel itself. I’m going to cut out the part about my negotiations with the manufacturer, but the story ended after I’d had to pay couriers and the Chinese duty on a broken monitor when I returned it, and then further UK duty on a replacement monitor once the manufacturer conceded that the original was beyond repair (all in about another £100). This whole episode took about 8-weeks – and has reminded me why I banged on about not doing this for so many years!

Had I known the Bowens LimeLite M7 was soon to be launched I’d never given the eBay option a second look. Almost identical in size and weight, but a tad more nicely finished and better specified, the LimeLite is retailed by Production Gear for £260 plus VAT – so a little less than I’d ended up paying for my self-imported Chinese model and without all the agro to boot!

To give you the spec, this is a 7” HD field monitor with component, composite and HDMI input – plus a HDMI loop through for those wanting (and able) to feed a portable HD recorder. It has a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels – which is a noticeable improvement on other monitors in this price range. It comes with a mains adapter and has both XLR and dual-pole connectors for attaching to an external power supply (6-24v). It also comes with a range of different battery connection plates – including Canon LP-E6, Sony L series (NPF batteries) and the industry standard V-Lock bracket. There are also optional Panasonic DU-21, Sony NP-QM and Anton Bauer battery adaptors available – with the Nikon EN-EL15 mount due by end of April 2012.

The monitor has a built-in (but detachable) foldaway sunshade which is a marked improvement on the bolt-on cloth-type shade on my eBay purchase – and also provides protection to the screen when stored or in transit. With a contrast ratio of 700:1 and a viewing angle of 150 degrees it’s a highly useable monitor in all situations – whether hand held, attached to a camera hot shoe (via a useful multi-angle bracket device), screwed to a tripod (3/8” thread) or mounted on the supplied table-top stand attachment.

There’s a wide range of menu settings to give you control and ultimate compatibility with whatever you are attaching it to. Screen settings include 4:3, 16:9, Underscan, Overscan, pixel-to-pixel and centre markers – plus there’s easy to use dials for brightness, saturation, tint and contrast.

LimeLite Conclusion

The rise and rise of DSLRs witnessed an ever increasing range of LCD monitors and monitoring solutions to address their shortcoming. There are some exceptional products out there, the best of which are quite expensive in comparison to the cost of the DSLR body itself. At the cheaper end of the scale the specification and resolution tended to be so poor that they offered little more than the built-in LCD. The LimeLite has bridged this gap and offers the performance to match the capabilities of any DSLR.

I really don’t have anything significantly negative to say about this monitor, only that I’m no fan of mounting anything of this kind of weight or dimension on the hot shoe plate of my camera. It seems far too flimsy to me and I could see the camera plate breaking before the bracket or monitor fixing should it get a significant knock. To overcome this I normally mount mine on a magic-arm device which is screwed to the tripod directly.

A proper bargain - and an excellent addition to any shooting kit (DSLR or otherwise).

Things would have probably stayed the same in terms of video shooters and their use of optical filters and matte boxes if DSLRs hadn’t come about. Before their advent, the most you could have expected to find in the average video shooters kit bag would have been a screw-on skylight protection filter to stop the main lens face from getting damaged – and in most cases you wouldn’t even find that! There could have also been the very occasional polarizer filter – but that really is about it.  Click below to the right to read more.

You also might have found a matte box here and there though I suspect this was more about the shooter trying to make their camera look a little more beefy and professional. If it did have a practical purpose then it would have almost definitely only been to add a little more shade to the front face of the lens – a good enough reason but maybe not enough to justify the investment. By the time cheaper and more affordable matte box systems had reached the pro-video market the need for optical effects filters had past as pretty much every effect (grads, soft focus, star bursts, diffusions etc) could be simulated in post – and without all the hassles of having to apply irreversibly looks to the picture.

The lack of appetite for filters and matte boxes was added to because pro video cameras have pretty much always had the most important filter, the ND filter, already built into the camera. There’s nothing I really need to add to that subject as I think I covered it in the ‘Manual Iris’ blog. The only thing to reiterate is that DSLRs do not have built-in NDs and you will struggle to use one without one. You’ll certainly not be able to experiment fully with your depth of field – which is probably one of the main reasons why you went for a DSLR in the first place.

Matte boxes and, more specifically, matte boxes on standard rail systems, help to address that other very challenging thing about working with DSLRs and a shallow depth of field – and that’s critical focussing. You’ll soon realise why a matte box rail-mounted follow focus system is one of the fastest growing accessory markets out there. If you don’t have one you will certainly be longing for one even if you don’t know it at the moment. You can of course live without one but believe me, in handheld mode your filming will be so much easier with a properly configured matte box and rail system firmly anchored to the camera body and lens front. The rail systems themselves are also handy for mounting various other accessories (monitors, aux sound recorders etc).

The other good reason to add a matte box to your DSLR is that they tend to stop people thinking you are just a stills photographer. Now, there might be situations where this is a bonus, but equally there will be those where you will need those around you know that you shooting movies (with sound!). You’ll also get in situations (especially in the world of corporate video) where your client will expect you to be using “proper” tools. If you’re using your DSLR bareback it’ll not look much different from their home stills camera – so anything that you can add to it to disguise its meagre exterior is going to help.

With a matte box in place the addition of a few drop-in effects filters is not going to be a great investment. Whilst digital post effects filters are great, the ability to practice and experiment with optical filters on location will only add to your creativity. With a simple drop-in filter matte box you can always shoot the same shot again without any filters in place to give you that safe shot.

A matte box will not be your first DSLR addition, but believe me at some point you are going to start hankering for the benefits they can offer.  Check out the great range of matteboxes from Genus here.

If money is not an object you could of course go out and buy a range of brand spanking new, top of the range lenses for your DSLR camera - and if you want the absolute best images then this is obviously the way to go. However, 35mm film cameras have been around for a long time and fundamentally lens technology has not changed. What made a good lens 25 to 50-years ago is pretty much the same today and with adapters most of these will fit on a DSLR. Click below to the right to read more.

The great thing about these so-called ‘Vintage’ lenses is that there are millions of them out there sitting in lofts and garages unloved and gathering dust. Whilst the days of picking up super bargains on eBay are probably over - there is a very active marketplace and you could pick up a complete set of very good quality lenses (A Wide, Standard & Telephoto) for less than £100. Dig around at jumble sales and you could still find them a whole lot cheaper. Even better you’ll find a family member or friend who has no further use for their lenses.

I’ve now built up a reasonable set for my 550D this way - including a Sigma 28mm f2.8 (though soft when fully open), a Fujinon 50mm f1.8’s (which I love), a Pentacon 135mm F2.8, a Fujinon 200mm f4.5 (a bit slow but equivalent to 320mm on my 550D and the optics are great) and a Fujinon 75-150mm f4.5 (just as slow - and really heavy!). I had to buy a new lens to cover the wide-angle and opted for the Tokina 11-16mm ultra-wide zoom.

There are some things you need to look out for when buying used lenses. The most common problem you’ll hear about is fungus inside the lens which comes about when they are stored in dark and damp conditions – i.e. the loft! Whilst the fungus itself is killed once exposed to daylight it spreads itself over the lens surface and will give a cloudy/hazy appearance to your recordings. If you really know what you are doing you can clean this off – but it is a proper hassle. Dust will also be a common problem as well as scratches to the lens face - however both of these are often not visible on the picture.

You also need to remember that with a vintage lens you’ll be running focus and exposure manually all the time and it’s a right nuisance if the lens has a stiff focus or iris ring. If the iris shutter blades are over-oiled they will often attract dust which eventually makes them hard to adjust. Finally, if you come across a vintage lens which is described as “rare” that normally means its rubbish. Any lens that was any good sold in its thousands.

Whilst you might find that you fall in love with them and never move on from your vintage lenses, the benefit of buying them is that they’ll let you practice with different lens types and lengths without spending thousands. You’ll soon discover which lens lengths you use most – which in turn will direct you to the right modern-day replacements.

There are three main groups of lens lengths. These consist of ‘Wide-Angle’, ‘Normal’ and ‘Telephoto’ lenses. After a while you’ll have at least one lens from each of these categories which will give you a workable set of story-telling lenses with which you’ll be able to cover most situations and create the right FoV. Click below to the right to read more.

The first lens you should start with is a ‘Normal’ lens. This will be the lens you turn to first in most situations as it produces a FoV that is similar to human vision. The focal length of this lens will be roughly the same as the diagonal measurement of the senor. On a 35mm sensor (which is actually 36 mm by 24 mm - giving a diagonal measurement of 43.3mm) this will equate to a 50mm lens. A 50mm lens on a full frame sensor will give you an angle of view of about 47° - which is just a tad shy of human vision but close enough for creating a natural human perspective. On my 550D, which has a cropped sensor, I’d have to use something nearer to 30mm to achieve the same FoV.

Anything wider than 50mm is considered to be ‘Wide-Angle’ - and a common lens length will be between 24-35mm. A Wide Angle lens is ideal for establishing shots where you want the viewer to take in the location and position your subject within an environment. Anything below 24mm is an ultra-wide, and anything below about 14mm can be considered as a fish-eye lens. By the time you get down to 6-8mm you are talking proper, circled fish-eye that’s great for an effects shot but probably nothing else.

Anything above 50mm is considered to be a ‘Telephoto’ lens. As with Wide Angle lenses, Telephoto lenses are divided into different sub-groups. Again, on a 35mm sensor, lenses from 85mm to 135mm are referred to as ‘Medium Telephoto’ - and produce a field of view from about 30° down to around 10°. Anything of 300mm or above will be referred to as ‘Super Telephoto’ and at the extreme end can produce a field of view of less than 1°.

If you are shooting close-ups of people then it is going to be more complimentary to use a longer lens than a Normal or Wide lens. This is because using a longer lens will enable you to move further back from your subject and avoid close-proximity lens distortion (i.e. making them look like they have a huge nose or chin – even when they don’t have one!). It will also help you to create separation of the subject from their background. Lenses of 135mm used to be called a ‘Portrait Lens’, but in reality portrait lenses can be anything from 85mm up to 200 or 300mm – depending on the room you have available and the effect you are trying to create.

You could of course opt for a combination of prime lenses at the extreme ends and a zoom lens to cover the middle ground. This makes a lot of sense and a popular middle ground zoom lens for the 35mm DSLR guys seems to be the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L. With a cropped sensor camera you’d only then have to sort out something to cover the wide angle side of things.

Whatever the length of lens you are looking at buying there is one golden rule – the more you spend the better the lens will be. By ‘better’ I mean less chromatic aberration, better colour reproduction, better build quality and able to produce pictures with less light. Building a lens is not easy, and never has been – which leads me on nicely to the hint of the next subject I’ll be covering on this blog, ‘Vintage Lenses’.

The cost of the main body of your DSLR will be minuscule in comparison to all the other bits and bobs you’ll need in order to make up an everyday shooting kit. Among all the “things” you’ll have in your kit bag the biggest and most important investments are those you’ll make in lenses. But don’t despair, and don’t rush out and spend thousands and thousands on the latest glass until you really understand what you are trying to achieve and what should look for in a lens.  Click below to the right to read more.

We’ve already looked at zoom lenses and their usefulness to the DSLR shooter in a previous blog. The other benefit of the zoom lens that I didn’t mention is that it will let you experiment with various focal lengths all within the same lens. The lenses that come packaged with a DSLR are usually zoom lenses – often at the cheaper end of the range – and though you will soon want more than they can offer you they will at least give you an idea of which focal lengths you use more often and guide you to your future investments in prime lenses.

A prime lens (one with a fixed focal length) has fewer elements and moving parts. They are also normally smaller and lighter than a zoom lens. Furthermore, with a less complicated lens arrangement, they are also less susceptible to chromatic aberration (separation of colour – normally towards the outer edges of the frame) – and, more importantly, they usually have a larger maximum aperture than zoom lenses and therefore require far less light in order to get a good image.

The focal length of a lens is the distance between the centre of the lens and the DSLR’s image sensor. The effective field of view (FoV) obtained with a prime lens will depend on the size of your camera’s sensor. With full-frame sensor DSLRs (Nikon D800, Canon 550D MkIII etc.) the FoV will be unchanged. However, if you are using cropped sensor cameras (DSLR or large format video camera), you will have to do some simple calculations in order to work out how this changes the effective focal length of the lens. For instance, if you use a 35mm lens on an APS-C sensor camera (say a Canon 7D or 550D) you will have to multiply the focal length of the lens by 1.6 in order to work out the FoV.

Therefore a 50mm lens effectively becomes an 80mm lens. This can be positive when you need additional reach, but at the wide end of lenses this crop effect is a drawback. A 28mm lens (which would be considered to be a wide-angle lens on a 35mm camera) ends up being equivalent to approximately 45mm – and so on!

Whilst positioning your camera nearer or further away from the subject will overcome this crop sensor variation, repositioning the camera will also change perspective. A wide angle lens will exaggerate perspective – whilst a telephoto lens will compress it – so whilst moving the camera might result in the same shot size for your subject the overall look and effect might be quite different. And don’t forget – moving camera position might not be possible at all!
Next time we’ll cover the main groups of lens lengths and how they help you tell your story.

The web is awash with blogs reporting on what some are calling the star of the show at NAB, out of knowhere Blackmagic Design have thrown us a curveball and given us the choice of an alternative to the expanding army of video DSLR and large chip cameras.  Featuring a sensor thats roughly the size of S16 film the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera doesn't offer a chip as big as the 5D MKIII, the question remains - does size matter?  Click below to the right to read more.

On paper the Cinema Camera boasts some impressive specifications, in short they are:  2.5K sensor with 13 stops of dynamic range, Canon EF lens mount, uncompressed RAW recording, Avid DNxHD and Apple ProRes compressed formats, capacitive 5" touchscreen with metadata entry and a built in SSD recorder.

I was fortunate enough to wade through the mob at the NAB Show in Las Vegas earlier this month and spend some time hands on with this camera and ask a few questions.   

My first thought when I saw the camera that had been press released hours before was the shape, its rectangular and small - not what I was excpeting.  Blackmagic say the camera is made from a block of aluminium with rubber front and rear for grip, like other Blackmagic Design products it felt solid, no doubt if you were unfortunate enough to drop one of these they would bounce well.  The next thing I noticed was the lack of buttons, their are in fact the sum total of 10 actual hardware buttons on the unit.  Some of these double up (at least at the moment) with the forward and back buttons also working to adjust aperture.  The touch screen feels and works in the same way as my iPhone and the menus were simple, quick and easy to navigate - nothing about this camera felt overly complicated.

Blackmagic Design were demonstrating the cameras with both Canon EF lenses and a Zeiss CP2.  The cameras were connected via SDI to HD monitors and were filming a (badly lit) scene, depth of field certainly wasn't as shallow as a 5D but still gave a nice cinematic look.  Talking to other manufacturers at the show work has or is beginning on a range of shoulder mounts and rod support systems specifically for this camera to allow you to cinematise it with a range of accessories including matteboxes and follow focus units.  My only crticism of the camera would be the powering, also similar to the iPhone the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera has an internal battery that charges through the camera, it has a run time of 90 minutes and takes 2 hours to charge, it's not removable and should you be mid shoot and your battery dies you will have to rely on an external power source.  That being said it's a small negative for a camera that offers so much at what is a very competitive price. 

The Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera ships in the UK in July 2012 and comes budled with a copy of Davinci Resolve, the camera may be preordered from Production gear by clicking here.

One of the features that a video shooter will be accustomed to is having a single zoom lens camera.  It wasn’t too long ago that there were no professional-level video cameras with an interchangeable lens system – so it wasn’t as if you had any choice about this. Unless you added extenders or wide angle adapters/converters, every focal length you ever used was contained within the lens that was irreversibly bolted to the front of your camera.  Click below to the right to read more.

Those days were put behind us a short while ago with the advent of interchangeable lens cameras akin to those used on broadcast cameras for decades.  However, the standard-fit lens options were not really about varying focal length.  Amongst all the lenses produced for professional-level cameras there was not one prime lens amongst them (one of fixed focal length).  To add a prime to your video camera would mean adding third party adapters, and even then images were never quite as expected with the limitations of the smaller imaging devices used in older video cameras.

Zoom lens options were more about variety in the quality of glass, their speed and zoom range; but it was probably even more about the manufacturers being able to fix an attractive ticket price to the camera body and let the user decide how much they invested in glass.  Very few professional-level camera owners would have owned more than one lens for each camera, and the one they did own very rarely came off the camera.

This is probably one of the biggest differences a traditional video shooter will face when looking at investing in DSLRs.  You are not going to find one permanently attached lens for every application. You’ll have your favourites for sure, but unless you have several matched DSLRs, each with a different lens attached, shooting is much more of a stop-start process whilst you physically change lenses (and sometimes your rig and attachments too).   And unlike traditional video cameras, what you spend on a camera body will be nothing in comparison to your investment in glass – more on which in a following blog.   

One workaround people talk about is to use a prime lens or fixed focal length and mount the camera on a slider or track and physically move the camera nearer or further away from the subject.  Do remember though that unless you are working with a deep enough DoF you will have to track focus during this move.  And also remember that this type of tracking shot is not the same as a zoom as your field of view will be different.  It is really a different shot altogether although it’s much closer to what we do as animals when we want to get a closer look at something – we move our butts!  

The above solution is not a practical if you are trying to simulate the often extreme magnification offered by a proper video camera lens – which could be as much as x20 from its widest to longest focal length. There are obviously photographic zoom lenses but very, very few that will be ‘parfocal’ – meaning that they will stay in focus throughout the zoom range.  There are even some super-zooms (ranging from ultra-wide to long) that will almost match the x20 zoom video lenses but normally at the expense of speed (the intensity of light processed through the lens). But, as far as I know, there are no off-the-shelf photographic lenses which have a servo zoom control like those found on video cameras.  Its all going to be manual control, and whilst you’ll reduce the number of disassembles on a shoot, to use them live and on the hoof you are going to need a lot of practice and probably a follow focus and additional zoom arm attachments to make it workable in the way you are used to.

The last and easiest solution is to forget zooms – and there will be plenty of people that will think this is a very positive outcome.  However, as much as they are overused in video production (and a tell-tale sign of a novice shooter) a zoom does have its uses and they’ve become part of the grammar of television.  Whilst human beings can’t zoom (go on, try it!), it is a useful tool to change a focal point within a scene and to take the audience with you. Their erratic use has also become part of the 24-7 hand-held style - and where would the wedding day videographer be without the long sloooooooow zoom during the wedding service?  

There are in fact many situations where only a zoom will do, and to do one easily and accurately you’d be better off not using a DSLR at all.

Unlike auto-focus, the auto-iris setting on video cameras is trusted and used most of the time by most video shooters. Whilst photographers will also use automatic or priority controls on the iris, they are far more used to manually tweaking this adjustment in order to attain optimum exposure and controlling the depth of field (DoF). This is relatively easy when trying to capture a single frame, under unvarying lighting conditions, but it’s a different story when shooting video on a DSLR.  Click below to the right to read more.

On a DSLR you will have three main parameters under your control – otherwise known as the ‘Exposure Triangle’. These are:

Aperture
Which enables you to control the size of the opening of the iris or shutter.

Shutter Speed
This traditionally allowed you to vary the period of time the iris or shutter was open – but with digital cameras this refers to how long the sensor is active on an exposure.

ISO
This allows you to vary the light sensitivity of the sensor.

However, when recording video on a DSLR you are going to be pretty much stuck with 1/50th of a second Shutter Speed for PAL (1/60th if shooting NTSC) – that is unless you are trying to achieve a specific effect. Shooting outside at these shutter speeds will lead to varying levels of blurry video if you set it lower and staccato footage if you set it higher. My 550D is set to 1/50th of a second pretty much permanently.

With a video camera we are also used to having built-in Neutral Density (ND) filters to reduce light coming into the camera and help us attain correct exposure without adjusting the shutter speed. DSLRs do not have built-in NDs so in strong light situations, or when you are using a fast lens (one which has a large maximum aperture), you are going to have to add additional ND filters. These are either sold as glass screw-on filters with specific ND values, as drop-in matte box filters with specific values or screw-on variable filters (ND faders). The latter is the most popular choice amongst DSRL shooters and, in my books, is a vital part of your shooting kit. Have a look at the Genus ND Faders which come in all lens thread sizes.

One of the big attractions to DSLRs is the wonderful shallow DoF shots you can get when using fast lenses in conjunction with the DSLR’s large image sensors. In order to attain this you will need to open the iris of your lens to its maximum (the wider aperture = the shallower DoF). In good lighting conditions this will require you to set your ISO at its lowest level (least sensitive), but you will find that even then your picture will be overexposed. This is where the addition of ND filters will become vital to you.

Manual iris control and exposure in general is something that video shooters have not had to worry about too much. The auto settings are that good. With the relatively miniscule imaging devices found in video cameras, video shooters have not been able to control their DoF too much either (without the hassle of using a 35mm adaptor that is). However, with all the additional control and opportunity offered by DSLRs comes the need for additional skills and knowledge in getting the exposure correct. This will only come with practice.