Prepping Your Canon 5DM2 for Cinema-Quality Productions

The Canon 5D Mark II is a game-changing, cinematic-grade powerhouse of a Hollywood-grade production camera.

I’ll bet you knew that already.

If not, don’t take my word for it. Let the Hollywood heavyweights convince you in their own words. Watch Lucasfilm Producer Rick McCallum talk about how footage from the Canon 5DM2 is “indistinguishable” from footage shot by Sony’s F35 CineAlta Camera. [How expensive is the F35? Let's just say that Sony doesn't even list its price on its website (beside similar cameras that have price tags ranging from $44,950 to $95,000).]

Add to this the voice of Shane Hurbult, Cinematographer for “Terminator: Salvation,” who recently spoke at a conference hosted by Blend Images.

The Canon rep who spoke before and introduced Shane advised us to “strap on our seatbelts and prepare for a wild ride,” and he wasn’t kidding. For the next 90 minutes, Shane blasted us his unbridled energy, inspiration, and above all, helpful information about how to get the best possible production quality out of the 5DM2. I’ll do my best to summarize what I downloaded from Shane and also what I’ve learned from my own production experience with the 5DM2, in the hopes of helping streamline this process for you.

1) Game On!

If you had any doubt up to this point, now’s the time it gets crushed. The 5DM2 truly is the cinema-grade production camera you’ve been waiting for. And not only is it being used in Hollywood, it’s shaking up business-as-usual there, helping studios slash production budgets and giving DPs opportunities they’ve never had before to work fast and light, to shoot in tight areas, to shoot in lower light, and in summary, to do things they never dreamed of being able to do with traditional full-sized production rigs.

Think you need the Red One for all of this? Think again. In Shane’s own words, “Red is dead to me.” The capabilities are already here, in the 5DM2. It’s all about the big and beautiful full-frame 35mm sensor, and the depth of field that this opens up. Are you concerned about the 8-bit compression of the 5DM2 files? True, it doesn’t shoot RAW, but in Shane’s words, the compression creates noise that makes the footage look more filmic, more like film grain. Nuff said.

2) Optimize Your Settings

ISO: From this point on, only ever use the following ISO’s when shooting footage with the 5DM2: 160, 320, 640, 1250, & 1600. Because of the design of the chip, these are the lowest-noise, most optimal settings.

To be totally clear, 160 is much lower noise than 100… and a recent study shows that ISO 1250 is actually lower noise than ISO 100. [Hard to believe, I know, but that's what the data shows... see for yourself.

The Canon rep acknowledged that this is true. The explanation of why this is the case is complicated and ultimately doesn't matter, unless you're a sensor geek, in which case, you already know this.

In-camera Settings to Turn OFF:

- Highlight tone priority

- Auto-light optimizer

- Noise reduction

- Sharpen tool

Shutter Speeds: Don't shoot faster than 1/50th, unless you specifically want the choppy, dropped-frame effect it creates (like the Normandy invasion scene in "Saving Private Ryan."

Picture Style: Set to "Neutral"

3) Camera Stabilization and Movement

Shane does a lot of hand-held shooting, and likes to weight down his camera to reduce the camera shake that's inevitable if you're shooting handheld without any additional weight and leverage on your camera. Shane uses rigs from Red Rock Micro, including Captain Stubling and a shoulder-mount rig like this. There are an infinite number of options for camera stabilization and movement, including tripods, jibs, dollies, cranes, SteadiCams (I use the Merlin with my 5DM2, which works pretty well, after some trial, error, and a lot of practice), and the list goes on forever. The point being - particularly for still photographers who are in the process of expanding into shooting footage - this is an important issue that must be dealt with intelligently in order to be able to produce engaging footage.

4) Use Good Glass & Filters

You're probably aware that lenses built for shooting stills have very different focus mechanics than those for shooting footage. A slight twist on a stills lens produces a far greater shift in the field of focus than it does for a cinema lens. If you don't have the budget for cine-lenses, use the best ones you can get your beg, borrow or steal. In Shane's words, good lenses make the 5DM2 into a Porsche...

Regarding filters, use the same-size 77mm filters for all lenses. For lenses with smaller filter sizes, use step-up adapters to the 77mm size. That way, you'll only need one set of filters, not specific filters for a range of different sized lenses. And in bright scenes, use a ND filter to reduce the light so that you can have your aperture in the f4, 5 & 6 range, for that cinematic depth of field effect. My friend and fellow photographer-crossing-over-to-filmmaker, Chris Gramly (shown below), loaned me his Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter, and I loved it. The variable ND enables exposure adjustments of incredible subtlety and precision.

5) Focus

It would be great if we could get by using auto-focus for many of our shots, but great as this camera is, you probably know that auto-focus won't cut it. Nothing kills a shot like AF seeking for focus. According to Shane, your focus-puller is your greatest ally when you're shooting. Shane works with focus-pullers who work without monitors, just by the power of Zen (his words, seriously). If you've got to be your own focus-puller while you're shooting, you're going to need all the help you can get. If you're using a still camera lens, a follow-focus device like this one from Red Rock Micro will be a huge help. If you want to step it up a bit, Red Rock Micro just announced a rockin' wireless follow focus device at NAB (click here to watch a RRM rep demo it at the NAB 2010 show). However you do it, find a way to get your focus dialed. This is particularly important when you're working with the shallow depths of field that the 5DM2's large sensor and wide apertures enable.

6) White Balance

Treat the compressed 8-bit footage from the 5DM2 like reversal film stock. You can't push color and density values much without it getting funky. Therefore, it's important to get the color settings as dialed in-camera as possible. Before shooting, make sure you get your white balance setting dialed. Don't just fire away, thinking you'll "fix it in post," as we so often do in the still photography world. The 5DM2 gives you gives you real-time previews of the color temperature settings by holding the WB button and scrolling. The geniuses at Canon think of everything, don't they?

7) Sound

The in-camera sound is good (and the latest firmware upgrade made it better), but if the sound is an important element of your production (it's not for stock), you'll probably want to use a dual-system - a digital sound recorder mounted on the hot-shoe of your camera, or on a boom, captured in addition to the in-camera audio.

Since there wasn't much discussion of audio at the presentation in Palm Springs, here's some additional information from Vincent LaForet's presentation at Creative Live.

Vincent LaForet recommends the Zoom H4N Audio Recorder:

Here's Vincent demonstrating a shotgun mic on a boom with a dead cat wind muff (which is essential to avoid audio distortion):

Now that you've made it though these notes, it's time to sit back and some behind-the-scenes footage and watch Shane but the 5DM2 through the paces (including throwing it in the air as if it were a baby):

"The Last 3 Minutes" Behind the Scenes from Shane Hurlbut, ASC on Vimeo.

[If you'd like to see the finished piece, click here.]

Back to the Blend Images meeting, here are a couple photos of my photographer/filmmaker friends, Stewart Cohen (on the left) and Chris Gramly (on the right), inspecting Shane’s 5DM2 rigs, which he laid out for us to check out after his presentation:

One final interesting story, before closing. Remember that Canon rep I mentioned who proceeded Shane’s presentation? He acknowledged that Canon had no idea how huge and disruptive their addition of motion capture capabilities to their DSLRs was going to be. In fact, he said that they added it almost as an afterthought, because they thought that it would be helpful for journalists on assignment in the field. They didn’t imagine that it was going to revolutionize the way that many Hollywood films were made, and how this would empower independent filmmakers. Pretty amazing to see how this afterthought on Canon’s part has opened up the creative horizons for all of us.

Obviously, there’s a lot to learn, buy, and remember when you’re on a DLSR footage production. Writing this summary was a helpful exercise for me, requiring me to distill all the information I’ve been collecting since I bought my 5DM2 (what feels like ages ago), and I hope you’ll find it useful for yourself as well.

Friends, colleagues, Twitter buddies, fellow denizens of the blogosphere, if you have anything to add, by all means share the love in the comments field. Let’s pool our collective wisdom, get our cameras dialed, and get out there and create some breathtaking, visionary footage the likes of which the world has never seen…