| Digital SLR Movies for All |
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| Written by D. Eric Franks | |||
| Thursday, 29 January 2009 22:07 | |||
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Video shot with 35mm lenses is huge right now. Whether using 35mm adapter screens on consumer camcorders or shooting with the new video features on Digital SLR cameras, selective focus control, depth of field and rack focusing are the latest "cinematic" techniques that everyone's gotta have. I mean, you can't call yourself a filmmaker if you can't rack focus, can you? In the Digital SLR camera realm, the Nikon D90 ($1,200) shoots 720p video and the Canon 5D Mark II ($3,000) shoots a spectacular 1080p, when paired with the right lenses, of course. Now a clever Russian has figured out how to record the output from the LCD panel on Nikon and Canon digital SLRs, effectively turning basically any of these still cameras into video cameras. Really?! First, the good news: Yes, it works, at least with the Canon EOS Rebel XS ($500) I tested (as you can see from the two screen grabs from the video I recorded). This probably means it works with all Canon cameras with the Live View LCD feature. It worked on my edit bay (Vista64), but not my old slow laptop (WinXP). All you need to do is hook your camera up to your computer via USB and run this magic little app and you'll get live video from your camera on your computer. It is that easy. You get all of the selective focus control and rack focusing goodness that you could ever want, if only you could figure out a reason to rack focus. Don't think you are going to get a $2,500 camera for a fraction of the cost, however. As you probably suspect, the resolution isn't that great at 768x512, but it's a sliver better than SD (the screenies here are cropped, but actual size). And the frame rate is, uh, strange at 21fps. The low light performance is mind blowing compared with any consumer camcorder I've ever seen (sorry, I'm obsessed with night shots and teeny tiny light sabers). The software encodes the video steam in an MJPEG format at 40Mbps, which is high. Overall? No, it's not 1080p60, but despite the SD resolution, the slowish frame rate, no audio and the fact that you are tethered to a computer, this is a dang cool trick for free and is the best Webcam I've ever seen! There's no way I would buy one of these cameras with this in mind: it's a new free gimmick if you've already got a compatible camera. I anticipate everyone and their sister will be uploading test videos and music montages with very shallow depth of field and rack focusing on random stuff for the next few days. Now if I could just find a reason to rack focus... References:
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