river - A 5D Short

Last week I finally got delivery of my new Canon 5D MkII and I have not been able to put it down since. Iv mainly been taking photographs with it as the only lens I currently have that will fit it, is a 50mm f1.4 SIGMA , which is great for portraiture.

However I had been thinking about what I could film to try out the video function. I Had seen first hand what this camera could do in this mode when shooting adrift. So I spent an evening down at a local river close to my girlfriends house, which had a great little bridge over it and lots of colour this time of year.

I loaded up the car with my tripod, Glidetrack and Jib, picked up a helper and headed off to the river. We got there and it was a beautiful british summers evening, with the low sun breaking through the tree and glistening onto the water below it all looked a perfect setting to film. We grabbed the gear and set up the jib to get the first load of shots. The 5D had to be fitted upside-down on the jib head as the wide handgrip would not allow for it to then aline with the thread, so I flipped it and then flipped the image back in post. Filming on the jib with only the 50mm was a little restrictive in terms of getting the wide establishing shots of the river, but it dint prove too much of a problem. The balance was great and I was able to get some great low shots of the water and under the bridge following it.

Afterwards I decided to wander around with the glidetrack and get some pick up shots from around the surrounding area. One great thing with using the 5D and the glidetrack together was that I was able to lay the camera straight back pointing upwards with no protruding back of the camera to get in the way allowing me to shoot straight upwards from ground-level, while tracking, something which I have not been able to do before.

After importing the footage back into my mac, I could qucikly see just how much clarity was being captured with this camera and how easily I could grade it as it had so much information to grab hold of and nothing was really getting lost.

Basically I love this camera already and it gets me excited about making my own films again, I can get such a cinematic look straight out of the camera and it costs less than my first HDV tape camera. It is a revolution and I’m very pleased that I can now be part of it instead of just watching these beautiful videos on Vimeo.

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