Live Portrait: Kathy

Live Portrait: Kathy from Shoot Luke on Vimeo.

(click here to view in glorious HD)

Through various photography community forums and my own hack research I figured out a lot (not all) of what went wrong technically with my prior DSLR-video attempts.

First off, when shooting (HD) video with a DSLR, always shoot in manual mode. Shutter-speed is incredibly important and can't really vary from the following: If you are shooting 24p, set to 1/50 (closest to the 180-degree shutter of classic motion picture cameras - there is no 1/48) and for 30p, set to 1/60. If you set your shutter-speed too fast, you're going to get overly-crisp and choppy playback which will look very odd-- fight scenes in movies such as "Gladiator" and the opening sequence to "Saving Private Ryan" were shot (though on film) at a very high shutter speed, which gave the scenes an intended aesthetic quality/look. Of course, this is up to you, but if you want your playback to look, well, "normal", then 1/50 for 24p and 1/60 for 30p is what you need to be at. I naively shot my previous live-portrait at 1/125 and you can absolutely tell.

**A critical note about shooting 24p-- a lot of us use Final Cut HD Express for editing (as it's 1/5th the cost of the full FCP); however bear in mind that the current version of FCP Express does not support 24p. If you import 24p footage, it will convert to a 30p timeline, which will result in jittery footage and weird motion noise. This is also evident on my prior live-portrait attempt. Some people are concerned that 30p looks too much like video, therefor opt for 24p. However, if your principle screening-venue is going to be the internet, via YouTube, Vimeo, etc... you're not going to be able to distinguish 30p versus 24p to a point that matters. So, don't drop the grand-plus$$ on a full version of FCP unless you're a serious film-maker who will be screening their video/movie/short in/on a larger venue, such as projector screen or television. If you're the casual videographer like myself, just shoot 30p.

Next is your aperture setting. Working without a good outboard monitor, making sure you have sharp focus on your subject proves more than difficult on a 3-inch screen ('sharp' being the operative word here), so I recommend a thicker DOF overall to help combat this. But you don't want to lose too much nice bokeh, so I'd go no wider than an f/8 if your subject is about the same distance away as Kathy is in this video. Of course, if you bust out the tape-measure and crunch the numbers given your aperture and focal length, you're going to start getting more reliable and accurate sharpness even without an outboard monitor, and you can increase your DOF knowing your math is sound.

...however, I am terrible at math, and to be quite honest, when filming, the scene and subject is (and should be) fluid and alive... things happen on-the-fly, so sometimes you just have to "run and gun"; so having a base of a "safer" aperture can help you focus on your subject/scene and not worry as much about sharpness.

But you still need to grab your critical focus; and for at least the 5d mkII model, AF "Quick Mode" is really your only option without a larger monitor. Yeah, there's ways of getting around that, but I wouldn't; the contrast-based method of Auto Focus while in live-mode can take very long, especially in bright lighting circumstances and it renders the footage captured while trying to achieve focus unusable, not to mention the onboard mic pics up all the noise of you pressing the AF button and the motor noise of the lens trying to re-focus. If you want to go for that aesthetic "rack-focus" look, just pull focus manually. But again, without an outboard monitor, it'll be tough to see how sharp you are once you re-focus.

Finally, a helpful "no duh!" is while in Live-Mode, make sure you are in 'Movie Display" and not "Exposure Simulation"; the later is great when shooting stills, but you need to be in the former to A) make sure your subject falls within the 16:9 crop, and B) you will not be able to manually adjust your exposure-- which is ultra-critical.

Back to sharpness for a moment: you may notice that Kathy's face, especially during close-up's, is not ultra-sharp. This is due mainly to the extreme back-lighting and sun-flares going almost directly into the lens, as well as not having a fill light or reflector bouncing back into Kathy's face. This is a somewhat purposeful aesthetic choice, as I wanted to portray Kathy in (my typical) "romantic, hazy, memory of a girl long since gone" motif that I do... but honestly, she still could have used some fill light; however, I did not have an assistant or P.A., so I had to make-do.

I still feel the intended theme I wanted to evoke shone through. Just have to keep shooting more and more and never stop trying to improve!