Brad Crawford – Strata Studios A Canadian Filmmaker's view of the industry

Equipment, Part 1: The Camera

Over the years I've worked with and purchased a great deal of equipment from Cameras and Lenses, to Lights, Shoulder mounts as well as all kinds of other gadgets designed to make my life easier and my films better.
The following posts will be a series of thoughts on my current gear that I own, why I chose that gear and the pro's and con's of what i'm currently using.

This first post in the series will deal with Cameras. From a young age I have always been interested in cameras, my father always had an SLR around and enjoyed taking photos recreationally. I begun seriously playing with  film (photography) and SLRs when I was in Junior High School. In High School I was fortunate enough to have access to a dark room where I really got to experiment which led to me studying Fine Arts in University and focusing on Photography and Video.

I now run a small production company and have worked on films ranging in budgets from $100 - $16,000,000. I have had the chance to work with many different cameras and while I have shot on film and worked with film cameras, I much prefer the ease of use of Digital equipment right from the capture phase through to post-production.

Camera's that I will be discussing are the current trend for budget filmmakers and are all Digital Video Cameras.

What I currently own and Primarily shoot with: Canon 60D.

As you may or may not know, the Canon line of DSLR cameras can shoot in 1080 24p or 720 60p. Starting with the 5D Mark II ($2300*) Canon also released the 7D ($1800*), the 60D ($1200) and the Rebel t2i/550D ($800) all with similar features. Now I don't want to bore anyone to death with technical specs so I will only touch briefly on the differences of each, this has been covered much more thoroughly on other more credible websites.

*Please note, all prices are approx. retail prices for the body of the camera unless otherwise specified

There are several reasons why I choose to shoot with a DSLR camera. While the ergonomics are not ideal and the cameras a certainly not designed primarily as video cameras, they produce excellent images for the price and are very compact and light and allow you to film in locations that you otherwise would have a great deal of trouble getting into.

For me the price tag is a fairly large consideration at this point in my career, if i had unlimited (or substantial) resources I would purchase a Red camera, they are simply the best thing on the market in terms of value/quality. I just don't have the necessary funds to create a solid camera package when the body of the camera alone is $25,000.

Regardless, DSLRs are quite capable video cameras and gives the user a lot of freedom to create some beautiful imagery.

The sensor size of DSLRs are the biggest selling point. On a 7D/60D/t2i you are working with a 35mm equivalent sensor, in essence it is similar to shooting on film (movies) the depth of field and field of view are very similar.

The frame rates of these cameras also help create that organic film-look. Until recently, most video cameras filmed at 60 or 30 frames a second, this tends to make everything VERY clear, too clear. There is no blur when things move quickly and it ends up looking very fake or "digital". DSLRS, on the other hand, offer Full HD 1080 video at 24 frames a second. This frame rate is something that reads as very natural to the eye with some motion blur that creates an organic look. It is the combination of sensor size, depth of field and frame-rate that creates these film-like images and using some creative colouring in post-production can really sell the film look.

There are several other factors which lead me to choose this type of camera for my film-work. Interchangeable lenses is another great

option. Other professional video cameras such as the Panasonic HVX200 or Sony EX-1 have fixed zoom lenses. While these lenses are usually high-quality and have fairly good ranges from Wide to Telephoto, you really don't have much in the way of other lens options. If you want a wider lens you have to put an adapter on the front which will degrade the overall quality of the image.

A DSLR allows you to put any 35mm lens on the camera, some people have even modified the cameras to accept professional PL mount lenses. Which is maybe going a little too far in my opinion but the option exists...

Since I began as a Nikon still photographer I happen to own a number of very nice lenses and luckily there are simple lens adapters for these cameras that allow you to mount Nikon lenses on a Canon camera body.

I will go into which lenses I own/have owned in another post but I have a range from 11mm through to 200mm with everything in between and that allows me to shoot whatever I want.

Another excellent aspect of these cameras is the Low-Light ability. Just like when shooting still photos, you are able to change the ISO of the camera when shooting video. ISO is the sensitivity of the sensor and while high-ISOs such as 800 and 1600 are not ideal, the ability to change this setting in camera is revolutionary. Mix this feature with a nice fast f1.4 lens and you can get great images with very low-light.

Finally, one reason why I choose to shoot with these cameras is the portability. They are very small, compact and inconspicuous. When filming in the arcades in Japan, I often had to be somewhat secretive or unobtrusive. People mistake these cameras as simply used for photography and tend to not care as much when you're wearing it around your neck. The newly released Canon 60D takes this to the next level with its flip-out screen, allowing the operator to be extremely stealthy and capture moments without intruding.

With the lens removed the cameras are very small and slip into any bag which allows for quick and easy travel.  I rarely leave my house without my camera.

Not everything is perfect in DSLR world however. The biggest glaring issue that I've come across in extended use of these cameras is the high-rate of compression used. You are shooting 1920x1080 video on a sensor designed to take 18 megapixel photos. What this means essentially is that the detail of the image isn't always great, there can be some bad artifacts and often a lot of Moire (weird lines through the video when dealing with small detailed patterned objects).

Sky by Philip Bloom
(Be sure to click on some of the other links in this article for more video content)

The digital files are saved using the H.264 codec which isn't the greatest, especially for editing. When using software like Final Cut Pro for editing, it creates a bit more work to get the file ready to edit. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but post-production contains more than a few "work-arounds".
The camera also uses what is called a Rolling shutter. This means for example if you're trying to shoot a television screen that has a quick or slow refresh rate and you'll see the waves of the TV's video as it is updating. If you pan the camera too quickly, you will see some distortion in the video or another example is if someone shoots a camera flash while you are filming, the bright white light of the flash will only fill about half of the screen because of the "rolling shutter".

The other con that will definitely come up when filming is the recording time. The way that the memory cards are formatted in the camera is an older technology called FAT32,

this format only allows for 4 gig files. Which means we can only film for 12 min. in a row. Any longer than that and the camera will automatically stop recording and you'll have to press the record button again. For narrative films this isn't really a problem as you'll very rarely have shot that lasts longer than 12 minutes.

When shooting a documentary however, you want to capture as much footage as possible and this can be annoying. When filming

something like an interview, you can plan ahead and make sure your subject understands that you'll need to stop every 12 minutes, its an inconvenience but certainly not the end of the world. You have to sacrifice some usability for the images that these cameras make.

Last but not least, one of the more important aspects of film-making is Sound. I'll be very honest here, these cameras do not record good sound. There is no real way to get good sound directly from the camera, it's not worth the effort to get usable sound from them. Get an external audio recorder (i'll talk about these in a future post) and record audio onto that. It isn't very difficult to sync audio in post and the quality is infinitely better.

There are many situations where these DSLR cameras make great video cameras and for the price they are hard to compete with but if you are recording things such as live concerts, long interviews or objects/places with lots of small intricate details then I would go with a different camera system. Panasonic recently released the AF-100 which may have addressed many of these concerns although it is brand new so if you want something tried and true for a more robust filming experience, Sony's EX line of cameras are excellent choices for the budget minded with a Red or Alexa being the best digital solutions if you have the money.

I hope this helps explain why I use the camera that I use. I also hope that this isn't too wordy and drawn out, it's tough to explain all aspects of my choices in interesting but informative fashion.

Thanks for reading! Future posts will cover my lens choices, my support gear including shoulder mounts, tripods, monitors, follow focuses etc. as well as lighting and sound equipment.