60D video experience

[GoldenDaze]

For those of you concerned about the 60D's video capability, I've been shooting a teenage musical show for the past few nights. The show is about 1:45 in two acts, plus some announcements and orchestra footage, making about 2 hours total. I bought a second battery to do this, but I needn't have bothered -- after 2 hours, the battery indicator still shows about half. Camera temperature is not a problem at all, it's barely warm to the touch.

Slightly annoying things: the camera cuts off at the 4GB size limit, about 12 minutes, with no warning at all. It also provides only about 15 seconds of warning when the memory card is full. I also wish I could show the zoomed display for focusing during recording.

The file size is huge compared to my Canon HD camcorder. I'm going through about 35GB a night. Just bought a new 2TB disk to hold it all.

 

[Chris R-UK]

Did you actually change the focus point during recording? If so, how did you do it?
Did you have any problems getting focus lock in the low light?

I have a low light video requirement in a couple of month's time and the main problem that I am wrestling with is how to move the focus point during shooting. I may have to get a follow focus.
--
Chris R

 

[GoldenDaze]

During the first show, I used manual focus the whole time. That worked okay, but it was difficult to tell on the small screen how good the focus was at any point. For the past two nights, I've set autofocus to center stage, then left it there and shot at f/16 or higher to give a deep DOF. Manually moving focus during recording is not very smooth, nor is changing zoom. Fortunately this is one of three cameras, so I can cut all that out later in editing. Contrast AF did work quite well even in poor light, though of course it's slow. This was with the 18-135mm, by the way. My 50/1.8 is great in poor light, but too narrow and too shallow a DOF for this use.

 

[joe47]

How brightly lit is the stage, what setting are you using, any problems with noise?

 

[photobug4741]

I love my 60D&7D and they do take some great video, but as you have noticed there are trade offs from not using a real video camcorder.

With my Sony CX550V I can take many hours of HD video since it has a 64GB flash memory, I can zoom in and out and it quickly focus's without needing any manual adjustments. also no heating problems. Battery life is super good.

For some videos a 60D or 7D will work, but you need to know their limits.

 

[GoldenDaze]

Stage brightness varies a lot, from dark with black-light florescence (very hard to get a good image of) to very bright spotlights. I was unhappy with how auto exposure metering was working (too much aperture most of the time, and blown-out spotlights) so I adjusted manually -- constantly. ISO was 3200 most of the time, but occasionally 1600 or 6400. 6400 is noisy, but 3200 looks fine in video, which is more noise-tolerant than stills. Aperture varied the whole range, but usually from f/8 to f/22. Shutter speed was usually 1/30, but to get the spotlights under control, sometimes as fast as 1/250. In other words, it's a lot of work to get good results.