Filming with a DSLR

[Brian Saberton]

Just to let you know, in case you haven't seen it; this weeks edition of Amateur Photographer magazine (out today) contains the first of a new series on filming using a DSLR camera.

[John Roberts]

Thanks Brian - I had a rare venture into town to have a look, but spotted Digital Filmmaker's "The Definitive Guide To Filmmaking" at a more hefty £12.99 just above it so plumped for that instead. Certainly worth a look through (at over 300 pages quite a lengthy look through) and although a few of the articles are equipment or software specific, there was a surprising amount of generic hints and tips about all aspects of filmmaking that can be applied to just about any film project at all levels of ability, including several articles specifically written about DSLR filmmaking.

Worth a look

John

[Brian Saberton]

Yesterday I was in Edinburgh for the annual ritual of photographing the entertainers at the Festival Fringe who congregate in the Royal Mile to promote their shows. Whilst there I noticed someome filming a musician using an SLR which was mounted on something similar to a short monopod with a small platform at the bottom on which were a couple of weights, one each on either side of the column. It looked like a very effective stabiliser. Nevertheless I spent a considerable amount of time in Glasgow during the Commonwealth Games filming as much as I could of what was going on around the city with my Panasonic X920 which has a very good built in optical stabiliser and is much easier to carry around than an SLR and more unobtrusive.

I'm hoping that I have enough material to make something that will be good enough to enter into next years BIAFF but it's going to be a mammoth task. The only problem I faced when filming was that I would set up a nice shot which would then be ruined by someone walking in front of me at just the wrong moment. At one point I was filming a pipe band and having done a master shot I was doing my cutaways and had lined myself up to get a shot of the band as they started to play when a large gentleman, who was standing right beside me with a huge SLR on which was mounted a ludicrously large telephoto lens, moved right in front of me at the crucial moment, took a picture then drifted away quite unconcerned. I know where I would like to have put his big lens!!

[John Roberts]

There's no excuse for bad manners, no matter what equipment one is using!

Curiously, I've found filming with a DSLR (or more correctly a DSLM in my case) quite advantageous as people assume you're taking photographs and not shooting video, so I've been able to capture footage in places that will allow stills, but won't allow video! Many of the stock Panasonic DSLM zoom lenses have very effective built-in image stabilisers as well, although Olympus have gone one better and built 5-point image stabilisation into their new DSLM camera bodies. Probably the contraption you spotted was for a non-stabilised DSLR system, though I'm not sure I would be comfortable carrying around all that extra weight!

Regards - John