Anyway, back to the business.
After the fund raising round, we have just under 500 euros (~600 USD) to put towards the new camera.
For that price it seems I could get either a Nikon D5300 + AF-P 18-55 VR or the same but D3300?
D3400 is also potentially in reach.
I’m more or less ignoring Canon, just because as far as I understand there is really very little difference between Canon & Nikon and the Nikon naming is less confusing (I think Canon are using different naming schemes in the EU vs USA or something)
I don’t particularly understand whether the AF-P 18-55 VR lens is good are what I need. Will that be adequate or will another or different lens be needed (remembering this is for making acoustic music vids of just a couple of people in the shot)?
That lens is ok. It won’t do low light as well as a prime lens or look as crisp an expensive lens, but it’s not a bad. It does get nice and wide, which is really handy. If I don’t need a wide angle, I use a prime lens because it looks better basically 100% of the time, but when I need a wide angle, that lens works fine.
I think the 50mm version looks better, BUT (and it’s a huge but) it’s hard to use indoor for anything more than face shots because it’s just too zoomed.
It cost a lot less, but I’ve never used it, so I don’t know if it looks any better than the stock lens you already have. It will work better in low light, but I can’t comment on the quality.
Also within price range, actually cheaper than the Nikons are:
Reflex Canon EOS 1300D + Objectif 18-55 mm EF-S IS II
Or the same with what appears to be a different lens:
Reflex Canon EOS 1300D + Objectif Canon EF-S 18-55 DC III
As far as I understand the EOS 1300D is called the Rebel T6i in the US
And finally:
Reflex Canon EOS 4000D Noir + Objectif EF-S 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 III
The 4000D suggests to me that it must be superior to the 1300D but the price tag is about the same.
Is the naming and pricing of cameras purposefully obtuse?!
I think pretty much any modern DSLR should do fine for video. I got a D90 a few years ago for video, and the video part of it sucked. That was a huge waste of money. The D3300 has been great though. The higher end cameras will basically have more buttons so that you don’t have to dig through menus to adjust stuff.
Oh, one other thing that may be worth pointing out. The d3300 does not have a pop out LCD screen. That is something that could come in handy if you are filming yourself. It makes it way easier to frame a shot when you can see what the camera is doing. I have to put a monitor on the floor so I can see what the camera is seeing.
Yay! After much shopping around, the best deal I could get was on the d5300.
So soon we can get back to the original purpose of the thread - making a vid!
I just threw up a light on myself and exported the video.
I tried to follow the advice on this and @FluteCafe 's other thread and turned off all the ‘auto’ settings. I put the ISO as low as I dared (400 in this case…maybe I couldve gone lower) and I think the aperture (is that right? - The ‘F’ number) as low as I could too…it was at 4.
Auto focus was off. There is something called ‘metering’ which was set to ‘center-weighted’ (??). White balance was on auto mode actually…and so was something called ‘Active D-Lighting’
I also forgot to turn off the standard room lights…something to remember for next time.
My impressions:
The quality is dramatically improved. Yeah still some way off where I want to be in terms of the whole shot, but a big chunk has been taken off and a big improvement on my previous attempt
My eyes are like deep dark caves!
Microphone on the camera is noticeably worse, but this doesn’t matter since we will use other mics in the ‘real’ thing
Still lots to figure out about lighting
I have no idea how to approach the editing/post processing stage. I didn’t do anything for this clip…
Any suggestions for what I should try for the next steps?
The lighting as you mentioned it just a crap load of work. Some fill light will help with the eyes. It is lookign much better though. What are you planning on using for editing/post processing stage?
ok so as far as colour and light. i would take some time to tweak the settings to get the saturation, contrast, white balance, and mids close to where you would like them. Then you could get some luts and try them till you find one that you like. you probably have some that came with the program there are also some good free ones out there. https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/29-free-luts-for-video/ .
davinci resolve is free and a pretty amazing video editor. The free version just removes some of the professional options, but has really good color correction options. The learning curve is a little bit steep, but I find that’s par for the course with all video editors.
Thanks for the info…had to look up what LUT meant in the video world - total noob!
So, I’ve downloaded a ‘flat’ profile for the camera and loaded it up (‘cineflat’), and adjusted a few more settings for (apparently) the ‘best’ for creating video.
@bozmillar I downloaded Davinci Resolve - just at first glance it looks waaaay more powerful than PowerDirector
First problem is that it can’t seem to read the format coming from the camera. I’m getting .MOV files encoded with H.264. The only thing I can change on the camera itself is to choose between ‘PAL’ or ‘NTSC’.
I guess I will need some kind of format conversion software to get it into DaVinci
Hold your horses, young man… Power Director can do LOTS of stuff and I’d be surprised if you found a free version that was better. (Could still happen though).
There is full scale color correction in Power Director, as well as white balance.
I gave up on two different pro packages before settling on Power Director…
