Some straight dope on shooting with DSLR cameras

composite1
Moderator

Some of you are already shooting with DSLR rigs like the Canon 5D Mk II, Canon 7D and the Nikon D90. Meanwhile, many like myself are very interested in the tech but are still waiting to find out more about workflows and glitches before we make any purchases.

I came across this article by Oliver Peters and he gives some 'straight talk' about the pros and cons concerning working with the new DSLR's. Take a look and hopefully, it will aid in your decision on whether or not you want to go the DSLR way. One thing is for sure, DSLR's are the wave of the future.

HDSLR's and Video's Tapeless Future

http://www.dv.com/article/89226

H.Wolfgang Porter, Composite Media Producer
Dreaded Enterprises Unlimited, Inc.
http://www.dreadedenterprises.com

Posted 2 years ago #
Dave G
Member

Thanks for posting this. I've been looking for an article like this as I consider buying a DSLR. The article points out a few challenges that I hadn't considered.

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

Dave,

Amen to that. That thing about why the '12-minute rule' is hard and fast on the 5D is annoying. You would think the manufacturers would make the media capable of manual formatting so you could choose NTFS (PC) which doesn't have the same file size limits as FAT32. Or at least the camera makers could allow you to bypass the built-in recording system by letting you record directly via HDMI to a portable harddrive.

Now there are a couple of options that I've looked into concerning portable 3rd party media recorders which may allow you to bypass the built-in recording setup and also let you record to 2 or more cards consecutively. I don't have the names of the products off the top of my head, but I'll put them in my next post.

Posted 2 years ago #
Don
Member

The pentax dslrs can record for more than a half hour, up to the capacity of the sd card... only drawback is the motion jpeg format, clearly the cameras are being held back due to the fact that many dslr owners would not have computers fast enough to edit other video formats...

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

Dave,

As promised, here are a couple of potential candidates as options for as add-ons for a DSLR;

Focus Enhancements FS-200 http://focusinfo.com/fsh200.asp

Nexto Video Storage http://www.videomaker.com/article/14455/

Convergent Design NanoFlash http://www.convergent-design.com/CD_Products_nanoFlash.htm

Now, the FS-200 is not listed as supporting the Canon DSLR line and it's not mentioned in the article that the Nexto could directly capture video via the eSATA input or the USB (for eSATA you'd need an adapter that plugged into the cardslot and had an eSATA plug on the end. I don't think I'd want to try to capture video via USB.) However, the one potential 'capture gold mine' may lay with the NanoFlash as it does have an HDMI input. Therefore it may be possible to capture directly from camera to a portable harddrive or laptop via some funky cabling magic.

D0n, thanks for the info about the pentax's. Yeah, that motion jpeg thing does present an issue.

Posted 2 years ago #