Doing video is one thing and doing video on a Canon 5D Mark II is a completely different experience. I got my hands on the new camera Monday evening and had trouble putting it down. Former Northwest Herald staffer turned freelancer Justin Runquist brought one of his two (sheish) 5D Mark II's for me to play with during sushi night with the photo staff. Travis' girlfriend Jackie also attended. I was having so much fun that I almost forgot to eat, almost being the operative word.
Over the course of about an hour I shot 6 GB of raw footage in 1080 HD using a 16-35mm, 24-70mm, and 85mm f/1.8. I had no plans or an agenda and just shot on the fly. I didn't even know that Justin was going to bring the camera until about two hours before dinner. Having only shot video a handful of times and never with this camera it was somewhat of a learning experience. I didn't have a tripod, which turned out to be the biggest challenges of all. Compared to the Sony HD video cameras that I have used before, this camera is really light which makes it difficult to hold steady. A tripod would have been great but I imagine that I would get some rather interesting looks trying to use one in the middle of the restaurant.
I downloaded the cards on Monday night but didn't really do much with the footage until Travis invited me over tonight to grill out and edit the movie on his new Apple 30-inch Cinema Display. It is unreal to work on a screen that big. I'm writing this post on my 15.4-inch laptop back at my place and it's not the same, not even close.
After making an awesome dinner and throwing back a few Blue Moons we got to work. Using Final Cut Express made things really easy. After I narrowed down the useable clips Travis took over to make the cuts as we worked together to build the story line on the fly. Start to finish I think it took us around an hour and a half to put it all together.
I had a blast working on this small project, which has completely changed my feeling towards video. If I could shoot with one of these all the time I would definitely do video more often. I'm hoping that Canon puts video into their next flagship 1D series camera as I'm anticipating that will be my next big purchase.
I can't wait to play with a 5D Mark II again soon.
-JCE
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