How to get perfect skin tones on a DSLR 7d or 5d

After filming on 7ds and 5ds for a year or so, I have realised that there is not much latitude with regards to perfect skin tones.  With these DSLRs it is really easy to blow the highlights and lose some detail in the face.  It can also be tricky to get the correct white balance, particularly in mixed light conditions, or where the face is small in frame, and therefore hard to judge manually.  A decent monitor can help with all of this, but it still means that a lot of guess work is being done.

Video cameras are set up for filming perfect skin tones: white balances are quick and easy to do, the black and white view finder helps assess exposure and zebras can be used to check skin tones or blown highlights.  On a video camera you would never just look through the view finder and think "yeah looks about right", without actually checking these functions, so why do it with a DSLR?  The following is a method I have found useful for getting accurate skin tones.

Firstly, we'll look at white balance.

 

How to get the correct white balance on a DSLR.

In some situations it is fine to use the white balance presets.  If it is a bright sunny day (around 5600 kelvin) then the outdoor preset will be about right; and the same is true if you are indoors using tungsten light, the indoor or tungsten preset will work (at 3200 kelvin).  However, most often when filming interviews the light tends not to vary from these presets.  You could be shooting indoors with a tungsten lighting setup, but ambient daylight could be creeping into the room, changing your 3200 kelvin light to somewhere thing much more orange.  One option is to look at the light, make a guess and say it is around 4500 kelvin and turn the WB wheel around to 4500 kelvin and make minor adjustments from that figure.  There is an issue in this though, how do you know your monitor or evf is showing the correct colour? The monitor colour can often be slightly different from that displayed on the back of the camera and in any case you are just guessing. A solution to this can be to us an 18 percent  grey card.

 

How to use an 18 percent grey card

When shooting with traditional video cameras I have always used a white card, however, it seems many photographers tend to use a grey card, the reason for this is that although both colours should give a correct white balance reading, a white card can occasionally reflect light directly into the camera lens, and give a false white balance.  The grey card should be held in place of the person you are shooting.  Make sure it is at head height as the light quality could be different elsewhere in the shot.

This is the menu screen for the Canon 7d (I imagine most cameras will be pretty similar and use the same icons).  (Excuse the terrible picture quality, my blackberry is not great for photos)

Stage 1:

Take a photo of the card, with the card filling the frame (if you are unable to fill the frame with the card, make sure the metering mode is on spot, so you are only metering off the card, and not the entire scene.  You can now use this photo to as a reference to set white balance.  Hit the MENU button, go to the 2nd page of menu items and hit Custom WB.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stage2:

A screen will pop up on the photo of the grey card you have just taken and ask you if you want to use that for your custom white balance.  Hit ok.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stage3:

After this you need to make sure you are using the custom WB reference you have just taken.  Again, press MENU, go to the 2nd page, scroll down to White balance, hit this and you will go through to a page with 9 options, pic the custom white balance option.  (The WB menu also has its own button on the top of the camera, I also have white balance set up in my custom menu so I can access it quickly as I use it a lot.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next thing to consider is exposure.   Monitors are a great way to check correct focus on DSLRs, but I am not sure they are that good for exposure. This is where the 2nd use for your 18 percent grey card comes in handy.

 

Using and 18 percent grey card for perfect exposure for skin tones.

This is a picture of my 18 percent grey card.  In this picture the exposure line was dead set in the middle.  The histogram should show a single fat line in the middle of the graph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a poorly exposed shot of the same grey card.  This was taken with the exposure line still in the dead centre, meaning that the shot as a whole is correctly exposed, however, the card is very underexposed.  If this was someone's face masses of detail would be missing from the image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For this shot I kept the exposure at the same setting as in picture one, I then re positioned the camera and took the shot.  The exposure reading was saying 2 stops over, which it is when you consider the whole frame, the high lights have blow out but the grey is correct - about the same as that on the original first image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last thing to consider with this is not everyone's skin tone is exactly the same as an 18 percent grey card.  A white skinned person, without a tan will be over the middle line by a stop and a back person will be under it by a stop.  It is still well worth taking a reading from an 18 percent gray card though, so you know where that middle is.

 

audio recording with 7d and 5d

How do you record audio when using a 7d, 5d mark 2 or other HDSLR?

There are several different ways to do this, and which method you choose will depend on the type of sound quality you need and your budget.

Option 1: Get a sound recordist to do it.  This is easily the best option, I nearly always use a sound recordist when shooting HDSLR.  All you need to make sure is that the Sound Operator owns a digital recorder so sound files can be recorded onto his or her hard drive and then synched with the HDSLR footage later.

This synching can be done quickly and easily with a programme called Plural Eyes.  Plural Eyes picks out the audio levels on the internal camera mic and the sound recordists files and puts them together.  For this to work YOU MUST ENSURE AUDIO IS SWITCHED ON IN CAMERA, you won't use this audio, but it is needed as a guide.

If the Sound Recordist is standing along way from the camera, the two sound sources may be different and therefore Plural Eyes will struggle to synch them.  There are a couple of ways around this. Firstly you can send signal from the Sound Recordist to the camera via radio mic.  A radio mic receiver will sit on your camera hot shoe and feed the audio recording into the camera.  You might ask, well why not just use this audio?  The reason is that the HDSLRs have their own preamps which mean you aren't recording high quality audio in camera, and with the 7d it only records audio on auto.  It is best just to use this as a guide track for Plural Eyes to Synch with.

If your soundie doesn't have a spare radio mic to do this, then you can synch simply with a clapper board, or even a hand clap at the start or end of each take.  Likely hood is, Plural Eyes will pick out this clap and synch the clips automatically at the edit stage, if not at least the editor will have something to help the process along manually.

Another option to aid synching is to film the sound recordists timecode.    If you lean over and get a shot inside the bag you will see the timecode and this will allow the editor to workout fairly accurately what bit of sound this image relates to.  Some sound recordist even hook up ipods which can display the timecode coming off their recording device, which is easier to film as it has a bigger screen.

Option 2: If you don't have budget for a soundie, and if the sound recording is very simple - say a sit down interview - then you might be able to use your own external recorder.  For this I would recommend the Zoom H4n The great thing about this device is it has it's own pretty decent mic. ideal for atmos, and it has XLR inputs with phantom power so you can plug in your 416 mic, radio mic whatever and record that audio to an SD card.  It is a decent quality product and very easy to use.  There are 2 XLR channels, and a clear read out that is well lit and easy to read audio levels from.

A word of warning: if you do go this route, get plenty of batteries, this thing eats them. (2 x AAs will just about last 1 day shooting if you are lucky.)  If you are powering a mic that needs phantom power, such as a 416, as the power in your battery gets close to low, the sound level will start to fall, so make sure you top up the batteries.  (It does come with plug in power, but I can't imagine using that much.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Option 3: If you don't really need to much audio and just want to get a bit of atmos only, then you could just get a Rode mic and plug it into the camera.  The are a few issues with this touched on earlier. The 5d mark 2 has controllable audio levels with a firmware release, but the 7d does not, so you will constantly be on auto with the 7d.  As this is just for atmos it may not matter to you.  The other issue is both cameras have low quality pre amps, so it is not going to be the best audio quality in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you can, get a Sound Recordist, there is enough for the cameraman to do on an HDSLR shoot without having to faff about with audio issues.

Using a 7d for broadcast actuality scenes

Most of what I shoot with my Canon 7d tends to be fairly controlled and set up, as this is where the camera really comes into its own.  Director / Producer Lucy Cutler from the BBC contacted me as she wanted to shoot a film with a different look and was keen to use some kind of DSLR for the shoot.  Initially it sounded like the wrong camera for the job, but I was really interested to see if you could shoot a standard fly on the wall or observational style piece with a 7d. For this project, it was impossible to control the scenes in this way at it was more of a "run and gun."

When shooting any actuality scene I find myself continually re-framing in order to help the edit.  If I shot an entire scene on a mid shot there would be nothing to cut to, so a variety of shots are needed in a very short space of time, and this can be a challenge on an HDSLR as the lenses just don't have the same range as a traditional broadcast camera.  Alternating between a wide and a tight on a 17-55 mill lens gave me just enough variety, along with moving position more frequently than you might need to with a full size camera.

The big difficulties are obviously lack of ND and iris control.  Following a presenter as she walks from dark rooms to bright rooms to outdoors with no ND filters or a smooth iris control was obviously pretty tricky.  I tried to control these scenes as much as possible, by stopping the action before going into a new room.  I used an ND fader on the front of the lens which I find essential for DSLR work, you can twist the ND ring to give you more or less light.

On the whole I would say shooting actuality on a 7d is difficult, but not impossible.  Check out the results below.

Some thoughts on the new Canon C300 compared to the RED scarlet and the Sony F3

When the Canon C300 was announced there was a collective sigh of disappointment from legions of Canon EOS shooters, who were probably hoping for a camera under 5000 dollars that fixed up some of the issues they had been having shooting with their EOS cameras for the past couple of years.  Maybe all our expectations had got a bit carried away, with rumors flying around about a new camera that shoots 4k at pro res while over cranking etc etc.

There is a lot that is good about the C300.  Firstly, it is made by Canon, it therefore will work, will be reliable and have plenty of places that will sell it and its accessories (or take it in to be fixed should anything go wrong).  Secondly, if you are already invested in EOS lenses, shoulder rigs, focus units and so on, you can continue to use those tools.  Thirdly, it records with Canon XF 50Mbps 4:2:2 MPEG2 codec.

For people that want to upgrade from the Canon EOS range, the next price step up is the FS100 and the AF100 that solve EOS issues (such as audio and short record clip lengths).  This is not the bracket Canon are aiming at with the C300.  The C300 is priced much higher, and brings it to the same range as the Sony F3 and now the RED Scarlet.

The RED scarlet does have some great credentials on paper - mainly that it shoots RAW 4k footage.  However, the biggest problem from my perspective is work flow.

Here is an example of how a conversation might run between me and a production manager with RED.

PM: "Do you have an HD camera we could use to shoot our next production."
Me: "Yeah, I have a RED Scarlet - it shoots 4K"
PM: "What is 4K, is it as good as 1080?
Me: "4k is higher res than 1080"
PM: "Oh RED, yeah we used that a year ago and our AVID shit itself, we had to take all the footage to a facilities house in Soho and it cost a million quid and took a year longer than expected."

Here is the same conversation with the Canon C300

PM: "Do you have an HD camera we could use to shoot our next production."
Me: "Yeah I have the Canon C300"
PM "Is it like the 5D Mark ii?"
Me: "Yes, it shoots on the same CF cards, but is has audio and you can record long clips and you don't have to convert the footage before editing."
PM "you're hired."

This may be a touch oversimplified, but you know what I am getting at.  So the next consideration is The Sony F3.  Sony is such an established name in the broadcast industry it doesn't need much introduction.  People are used to using SxS cards and they seem to be very solid.  The only real issue I have with the Sony F3 is the fact that it records at 35MBPS unless you go out of the camera to a nano flash.  This puts it out of the considered range of "HD" by many broadcasters.  The Canon C300 records at 50MBps in camera.

All in all I think the Canon C300 is a very interesting offering, however, with the price point being close to the F3, I am not going to be ordering one immediately.  The next thing to look out for is how Sony will respond, perhaps an upgrade to the F3 so it can shoot 50MBPS?

Screen Protector for TV logic Monitor

If you are looking for a screen protector for the TV Logic VFM-056W, you could either pay £100 for a thick piece of plastic from TV Logic that screws over the screen (and probably reflects a lot of light) or you could buy a stick on screen protector for £15 from Amazon.  The screen protector goes on well and gives the monitor a matte finish, cutting down glare slightly and protecting the screen from scratches.

Using a DSLR for Broadcast work

The Canon 7d and 5d mark 2 are HD, so they can be used for HD broadcast work right?

Read more: Using a DSLR for Broadcast work

What to look for when buying a DSLR lens for video

If you are looking to buy a lens for a DSLR camera to shoot video with, there are a few things that are
worth looking out for.

---

First question: Prime or Zoom?

The answer to whether to buy a prime lens or a zoom, really depends on the type of work you do. Although we would all love to shoot everything we do on primes, with a tiny depth of field, how realistic is this? For certain jobs there is the time to change lenses, a camera assistant to help out and speed the process along, and for other jobs there is no time. As your rig grows, it is easy to end up with a matte box or flare hood, an ND fader, a follow focus etc etc and all of this kit slows down the amount of time it takes to change a lens.

Imagine setting up an interview on a 50mm lens and the director asks you to punch in a bit tighter, you can either reset your tripod moving forward and re bubbling it, or change to another lens – some shoots there is time for this, and some not. I find having the flexibility to move in a touch, often mid interview to show some emotion on the interviewees face is a big help.  A standard zoom such as Canon’s 17-55mm for the 7d or the 24-70 for the 5d would be my first choice for lenses.   Both of these lenses are nice and fast (2.8 throughout the range).  If you are willing to sacrifice a bit on the speed of the lens you could get the 24-105mm on the 5D.  You gain a bit of extra length here, but the sacrifice is dropping down to a slower 4f throughout the range.

Ok, so you have your 17-55mm or 24-70mm standard zoom, this is a great start but if you do the kind of work that involves a lot of interviews, I find 80mm (which is roughly what you’re looking at with the 17-55 on the long end with the 1.6 crop factor) is not quite long enough. For a standard MCU (medium close up) in an interview you need to bring the camera too close to the interviewee. Having a camera right in someone face, if they are not used to being interviewed, can be uncomfortable for them.

Longer zoom lenses such as the 70-200mm will solve this problem, but can be very expensive, so what are you paying for? At the top end of the Canon range you get a much faster lens (2.8f) this is very useful as it gives you more scope to shoot in low light conditions and has a smaller depth of field. It is also stabilised, which is really useful for video. I was surprised at how good they are when I first started using them . Canon EOS lenses have IS in their name to show they have this function.

Should I just buy a cheaper zoom lens?

There are a few issues with lenses as you go down the price range. Firstly, they are slower with apertures around the 4.5 to 5.6 mark, this means they are not as great in low light and don’t have such a narrow depth of field. Secondly, the build quality isn’t as good, often the cheaper lenses are in plastic casing rather than metal. Thirdly, and most importantly for shooting video, the aperture changes throughout the zoom range. Imagine you are shooting a tight shot on the long end of the lens, and then you zoom back for a wide and you’ll be pretty over exposed. This probably isn’t an issue for a photographer, but it could be if you are shooting video. The next point is a bit of a killer. If you take a zoom lens, zoom in to the subject and make sure it is sharp, then go back to your wider shot on some lenses the focus point will have shifted slightly. This is a disaster from a DSLR video point of view. With a broadcast lens this aberration can be easily fixed with a backfocus chart, this is not the case with a stills lens. You can of course avoid checking focus in this manner by using the digital zoom on your camera, but – and it is a big but - not if you are already rolling. If you are shooting with a sound recordist and you synch up your camera to their external recorder, once you are rolling that is it, you can’t cut, and you can’t use your digital zoom.

 

My advice would be, if you can afford the more expensive 70-200 lens, get it, and if not buy the cheaper 70-300 IS, but be aware of its limitations, you can still get good results with this lens, theglass is still good quality and you will still get great images, but be aware of its problems. In between these options there are still other choices:  you can get a 70-200 that still has image stabilisation and it still has a constant maximum aperture through the range, but it is 4f not 2.8f.  This is a good option as it is almost half the price of the 70-200L 2.8IS.

So, in answer to the original question, as to whether to buy primes or zoom lenses,  the answer is, you may need both.  If you generally shoot in situations where there is enough time to frequently change lenses, primes are great.  Generally speaking, primes are built with less glass meaning they allow more light in, they tend to be better in lower light and have a smaller depth of field when wide open.  Even if you work on projects that are relatively quick moving,  getting a few establishing shots on a 50mm at 1.4 will give you some stunning small depth of field shots, and really add some value to your work, but is likely to be used less often that a standard zoom. I tend to put my standard zoom on the camera and leave it there for 70 percent or more for the shoot, so this is where I don't mind investing some money.

Which DSLR rig to buy

There are several different manufactures making rigs for the DSLR market for 5d 7d etc. Here is a short review of some of them.

Read more: Which DSLR rig to buy

Which lens to Buy for a Canon 7d when shooting video

If you have bought a 7d and are looking for just one lens to start you off shooting video

Read more: Which lens to Buy for a Canon 7d when shooting video

DSLR toplight LED light panel

If you are looking for a DSLR top light, I would highly recommend the Tecpro Fellini Click LED Camera light. It is very lightweight but has some serious power.  The light has a dimmer switch so you can get the right amount of light you need.  It also comes with coloured panels which magnetically clip on, so you can easily change the light from daylight to tungsten.   It has a ball and socket head which will fit on the hot shoe on top of your 7d or 5d.  For power you can either run if off 5AA batteries or you can attach an old Sony video battery (any of the following LF570, F770, F970 ,F550,F750).

I used this the other night on a shoot for the BBC.  The presenter was sitting in a car, and needed to be lit gently enough so it was still possible to see the small amount of light in the street as well as the presenter.  The Fellini click was perfect for this, I could just set my exposure to capture a small amount of the scene through the window and then dial in enough light so the presenter was well lit.

If you want to buy one from the UK I bought mine here.