Something for the Weekend: Pushing the HD Video Limits of DSLRs
by Agen Schmitz
on February 05, 2010
Here's a little eye candy to help you slip out of the workweek and into full-on weekend mode from cinematographer Philip Bloom, who was asked by some folks at Lucusfilm to come out to George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch and show them how to push the limits of today's HD video-equipped DSLRs (via Motionographer; hat tip to my colleague Jeff Carlson). Here's the video that he produced after working at the ranch for five days using a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon EOS 7D--both of which can capture video at 1080p HD resolution:
Skywalker Ranch from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.
Bloom's blog post about is a fun read even if you're not a lens-head, and it provides a hint at why he was asked to come out and play with producer Rick McCallum and post-production head Mike Blanchard:
Lucasfilm had just finished principle photography on “Red Tails”, a WWII film about an African American fighter squadron. They filmed this in Prague and needed to film pick ups early next year. Much of this was going to be intimate in cockpit stuff and flying shots. They shot the movie on the Sony F35 but this is a beast and utterly impractical for the cockpit stuff. Hence the Canon DSLRs. They were also looking at new ways to shoot the much anticipated “Star Wars” live action TV series. So they wanted to see how well the 7D and 5DmkII stood up with this in mind.
--Agen G.N. Schmitz
Jeff on March 23, 2010 at 11:06 PM
The video is awesome, the use of the Canon cameras provided some great depth of field, absolutely stunning job. Thanks
Dave on May 14, 2010 at 08:10 AM
The quality of this looks incredible. I'd never really considered doing video footage on a DSLR, becaue I thought the quality would be impaired. But this looks really good.