Shooting video on your Canon 5D Mark II or 7D
Isn’t shooting video as simple as switching into Live View mode, and pressing the record button?
Only if you don’t care about your video quality.
Admittedly, you’ll probably get a pretty good-looking video, given the fantastic quality of Canon DSLRs and lenses. But if you pay attention to a few key details in the camera settings, you’ll shoot noticeably better videos and your life will be easier when you fire up your video editing software. I didn’t do some of these things for my first year of shooting videos on my 5D Mark II, so you can now benefit by learning from my mistakes.
First, if you’re shooting with a 5D Mark II and haven’t upgraded to the latest firmware (2.0.4 at the time I’m writing this), stop reading this and go straight to Canon’s 5D Mark II download page to upgrade your firmware. The early 5D Mark II firmware only supported shooting video at 30 fps – not the NTSC standard 30 fps (which is actually 29.97 frames per second), but precisely 30.0 frames per second. If you already have videos shot at 30.0 fps, no worries, I’ll cover how to transcode them to a more useful editing and publishing frame rate in a future blog post.
Here are the primary camera settings you need to get right:
- Video size – 1920×1080 or 1280×720
- Frame rate – 24p, 25p, 30p, 50p, 60p
- Shutter speed
The video size choice is easy on a 5D Mark II – you only get 1920×1080. On the 7D, you’ll need to consider file sizes (720p will take up less space), your editing software (can it handle 1080p video?), and where you’re publishing to (if this is for web publishing, most sites only support 720p). Personally, I’m a big believer in capturing all of the data you can up-front, and then throwing away bits at the last possible moment (say, right before publishing).
Choosing the “right” frame rate is a little trickier. Note that the 5D Mark II is limited to 24p, 25p, and 30p frame rates with the 2.0.4 firmware. In lieu of a pretty flow-chart, here are the questions you need to ask yourself:
- Does video need to be PAL (European standard) compatible? –> 25p
- Publishing to a high-quality destination like Blu-ray or Vimeo? Do you want a “cinematic” look to your videos? And are you using Final Cut Pro? (Forget it if you’re using iMovie or Final Cut Express) –> 24p
- Using a 5D Mark II? Your only other option: 30p
- Want to do slow-motion on your 7D? 50p (PAL) or 60p (NTSC)
And finally, shutter speed: don’t you just set this to match your frame rate? That is, if you’re shooting 30p video, shouldn’t the shutter be set to 1/30? That’s what I naively thought until I started doing some research and came across this excellent 180 Degree Shutter blog post. The takeaway is to always shoot with a shutter speed that’s at least twice your frame rate – for example, choose 1/50 shutter speed if you’re shooting 24p. Anything slower than that, and you can get a “smeary” look to moving objects in your scene. This video provides a good example of this – watch the full HD version on Vimeo:
Effect of shutter speed on fast moving objects from Alain Pilon on Vimeo.
And watch out – shooting video in Av mode (aperture priority) has the risk of the camera choosing a too-slow shutter speed. While I shoot most of my still photographs in Av mode, I shoot nearly all of my videos in manual mode, just so I can make sure I have the right settings. (I’m finding the new histogram overlays in manual mode are invaluable for getting the exposure right.) Tv mode (shutter priority) could work, too.
So, to wrap up, here are the settings I use on my Canon 5D Mark II when shooting video:
- Camera mode: Manual
- Frame size and rate: 1920×1080 @ 24p
- Shutter speed: 1/50
- ISO: <=2500 (anything higher looks too noisy to me)
- Aperture: varies based on the scene (check the histogram)