I’ve been making short films with friends off and on for the last three years. It’s always fun and one of us always seems to find a short film competition to have a go at. This year though I plan to get a bit more serious. No more competitions (well, fewer anyway). I plan to take my time making the next few films.
To get myself in ‘serious’ mode, I got myself a Canon 7D just before Christmas. I know it has it’s faults but to be honest, I don’t really care. I see this camera as the training wheels before heading to something more serious from RED or maybe some of the other manufacturers if they start using this tech in actual video cameras, which I’m positive they will in the very near future.
Not having any Canon gear at all, I got the 7D with the 18-135mm kit lens. Not the greatest lens in the world but I remember someone saying in a podcast (Red Centre, maybe?) that they felt that 18mm through to 135mm covered all their film making bases. They were talking prime lenses of course but hey, this camera is just for me to learn with so a zoom will do. I hit eBay and also picked up a Canon f4/75-300 zoom, and an old Nikon f1.8/50mm manual lens for use in low light situations. I’ll probably pick up the so called ‘nifty fifty’, Canon f1.8/50mm lens if I can spot it on eBay sometime.
I can’t say much about using the 7D just yet. I only used it once the week I got it and all I can really say from that experience is that DSLRs are an ergonomic nightmare compared to video cameras. I was also surprised that, even though a chunk of the short film was shot at night, I didn’t need the faster lens. the f3.5-5.6/18-135mm zoom did everything I needed. There were a couple of shots where I added some hand held lighting (torches pointed at the actors) but that was it.
The film was made for the 48 Hour Film Festival and should be on the web somewhere. I’ll see if I can hunt up a link.
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