Rootclip

Hey, since there's been some interest about it, I thought I'd post a little about how it was to work with a DSLR instead of a regular video camera to shoot chapter 3 of Hole and Corner!

The reason for choosing the D90 over a usual video camera was mostly the small DOF and the "look" the camera produces. I had been eager to test it on a project for some time, and a rootclip seemed a perfect fit! What I gave up by using the D90: Manual controls over ISO (gain)/shutter/aperture, and a sensible camera to hold hand held. The latter is both because of the way the D90 is built and because of the now infamous jello: http://s477.photobucket.com/albums/rr134/jamesmel9/?action=view&current=DSC_0012.flv Only one of the shots in the chapter was hand held (the one lit with the lighter).

In preparation, the first and big thing I did was to read a whole lot over here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/forumdisplay.php?f=143 That's the best D90 video resource out there, with lots and lots of great tricks.

Although the D90 doesn't support manual controls (only exposure locking) as mentioned, it can be tricked by showing it something light when the aperture is set to 8, locking the exposure and then pointing it towards your subject and opening the aperture manually. It's a bit of a dance... and has to be done every time you turn of Live View (viewing the live image on the LCD monitor). Lots of good info on this here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=146661 We used this trick on most of the shots.

As mentioned earlier, we had a Zoom H4 with a boom and a mic for sound. The D90 does record sound, but only in 11kHz so it's pretty useless for anything remotely professional. What it's more than good enough for, however, is sync sound. Every time we were ready for a shot, we started the audio recorder and the D90, then I made a clap and said the scene number and take number aloud. Later, in the editing process, I merged these clips using the clap as a sync point.

Keeping the shots in focus was an interesting challenge, of course. We tried to shoot with an as open aperture to narrow the depth of field as much as possible. Most of the shots were fairly static, and with those we zoomed in on the LCD display and then adjusted focus (it's pretty much impossible to set focus exactly without zooming in). The hardest one was the shot of Ben walking towards the camera. On that shot, Ingvill did the camera movement while I was staring at an external LCD monitor and trying to adjust the focus as he was walking from ~10 meters to 1 meter. As you can see, it wasn't easy (that was the 6th attempt or so), but it worked :)

One battery was enough for us - barely. We shot two evenings, about 5 hours each time, and both days the battery was more or less completely empty when we were done. If I were to do a more serious project, I would need to get at least one more battery.

As Final Cut Pro doesn't like the AVI files the camera produces, I converted them all to ProRes 422 before editing. In hindsight, Apple Intermediate would've done the job as good, but with much smaller file sizes.

After editing, I sent the whole sequence to Color and did the grading there. Color is advanced, but it's really, really fun! Here's a before/after shot: http://eivindnitter.no/filer/color.jpg

Finally, I converted it to Quicktime H.264 568x320 with a video bitrate of 1200kbps (double of recommended.. I wanted it as good as possible) and audio bitrate of 160kbps, I believe.

All in all, using the D90 was a great success for us. It's not the easiest to use (by far) nor sharpest camera, but it has "the look" which is oh-so-important.

I'll recommend everyone to try to get your hands on a D90/5Dmk2/500D for a project (rootclip or otherwise) - if you have a regular video camera in addition, use that as the mike (bring it close to your actors), and use the DSLR for video! I don't think you'll be disappointed :)

Hey, thanks for reading this far. I'm sure I forgot something, so feel free to ask!

Sounds like a lot of work, but it got you a great picture. ;) Thanks for posting!

New to the D90, interesting about battery life, tried the extra battery with the MB80, it adds extra weight to steady an SLR!