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Allcam/eStudy camera courses and film making tips and tricks. The technical aspects of film and television.

DSLR Video – Turning a setback into a superior feature!
(With the help of a little pocket device)

DSLR’s employ excellent interchangeable optics and larger image sensors, which results in superior picture quality.  A larger sensor doesn’t provide any higher resolution, rather it allows for narrower depth of field by controlling the aperture and focal length of the lens. The narrow DOF allows the videographer to isolate a subject from the scene and therefore give the scene a more “filmic” look.
Now with HD recording, video images are in the same ballpark of professional video cameras.
Even the recording media (flash memory) is often the same with both camera types. Video compression and output is often the same, AVCHD codec, which allows you to use the same video editing platform.

What is holding you back?
Of course, camcorders and photo cameras are purpose built. The camcorder has features that the still camera hasn’t and vice versa. For starters, DSLR’s lacking a power zoom, LCD viewfinder and exposure aids like peaking and zebra you find with professional camcorders. Last but not least there are no adjustments to the resolution and frame rate, which is important when you have to match and mix your footage.
In this article I will address only one setback of a still camera, when it comes to video filming, the sound or audio. Often DSLR’s are equipped with simple monophonic microphones, which don’t allow any electronic adjustments whatsoever. So if you can’t connect an external microphone, you end up often with a pretty poor sound track on your production.

The Solution is an independent high quality and extremely versatile audio recorder.  If applied properly, the results can be as good as using a wireless microphone in a camcorder setup for a fraction of the price. The featured audio recorder is so small and versatile, that it can be positioned close to the action. With just centimetres or a few meters away for interviews or stage performances, you bring your audio in the final production to a whole new level.
Caution!
The audio recorder needs to be synched with the camera and/or cut and shift the audio timeline to the appropriate video clip.

The Bonus!
This is a real beauty. While you are on location, you may as well take advantage of your DSLR and take some nice still shots of the scenery, objects and people. Add these pictures into your production, if you want to emphasise a point or make a statement.

How do we put it together?
Now here comes the real advantage of the setup. Let’s start with the part you perhaps thought of already:

• First you open our favourite video editing program and import the pictures and video from the camera and add the relatively poor sound track from the camera onto one of the audio tracks.
• The stereo sound of the audio recorder goes onto the other tracks of the editing program.
• Now here is a trick, use the sound track of the camera as a reference to synchronise the audio recorder sound tracks. When you are happy with the result, you may remove the camera sound track.
• Once you have completed your fine tuning and editing, you can end up with amazing results in your overall production.

When done properly, the audio from the voice recorder gives the impression as it is recorded by the camera.

Summary
Even though the DSLR has its setbacks as a video camera, the video capabilities are nothing short of a revolution.  The creative videographer will embrace them because of the new tool they provide ‘shallow depth of field’.