I use semi or pro cameras these days, but I’ll always be a proponent of “you can do the same with less”. A number of people have emailed in the past year asking me which HD video-capable P&S digicam they should buy. I reply to them suggesting either the Canon SD780 IS or the SX200 IS, depending on their budget. Only to come back to me, within 24 hours, and say “but, but… what about this Panasonic model?”. Honestly, that’s pretty annoying. So I decided to write this blog post to explain why *for video*, a Canon HD digicam is better than any other in the sub-$300 range.

Image quality
Panasonic uses better lenses in most of their HD sub-$300 models, and worse in few others. However, Canon uses 24 mbps bitrate, while Panasonic uses 17 mbps (the format internally is essentially the same, AVCHD-Lite or not). Winner: Canon for footage with more movement, with possibly Panasonic being the winner for static scenes. So it’s a bit of draw here, it highly depends on the model in question.

Low light
Panasonic wins. While the sensor size is the same in the modern crop of P&S cams, Canon has been quite bad in low light lately. That Digic4 chip wasn’t all that it was hyped out to be.

Zoom while recording
Only one model from Canon, the SX210 IS, supports optical zooming while recording. However, as I have explained in the past many times, if you’re doing artistic and not random family videos, then you should not be zooming while recording. It’s a home-video tell-tale sign. Anyways, this goes to Panasonic.

Color Controls
Canon wins hands down. They offer sharpness, contrast, saturation, skin color, and even individual R, G, B manipulation, which can help you get the film look right out of the box! Shooting “flat” also has extreme value when color grading. Panasonic’s color controls pale in comparison. And even their most “flat” mode is not flat enough. It’s high-jacked on saturation and contrast like a 50-year old hooker.

Exposure and lock
Both Panny and Canon have exposure compensation support, but Canon goes one step beyond, by letting you lock exposure. Without locking, your video will look like amateur home video. It’s the No1 feature I personally look into a camera. Without this feature, there’s no sale for me. Even if you give me such a camera for free I wouldn’t touch it.

Manual Focus and lock
Some Canon cams, like the SX200/SX210 IS, have the ability to precisely control the focus (rather than just “macro”, “normal”, “infinity”). For these cams, Canon wins, for the rest, it’s a draw I guess.

Now, if you count the wins and the draws, the two manufacturers almost even out. However, except the zooming while recording (which is a feature that as a filmmaker I couldn’t care less about), Panasonic didn’t win anything with a big lead. Canon on the other hand gets ahead with its color controls and exposure locking (which as I explained is the No1 feature for me). So for the kinds of videos I shoot, and the kinds of videos I encourage people to shoot, Canon has a clear advantage, even if they don’t do everything right. It’s all about what kinds of videos you shoot, so different features have different weight. And I can only speak for the kinds of videos I do.

Now, if you just want to shoot the cat tormenting your dog, or your grandmother putting her teeth back, then a $70 Kodak Zi6 will do the job too. No reason to spend more in that case.

The next step for both manufacturers would be to offer selectable 23.976, 25.00, and 29.97 fps. Full manual control is almost impossible in video mode in these digicams (various hardware constraints), but frame rate selection is not. An adapter hook for a filter thread wouldn’t be a bad idea either, so this way we could somewhat control the outdoors high shutter speeds by using ND filters.

Here’s a great new band from San Diego you should check out: The Burning of Rome. On their first album (free downloads) they played a delicious kind of melodic “death-pop” music: think of 50’s Vampire movies and musical rock, mixed together. On their second album (free downloads) they jump from genre to genre, and have more complex musical constructs, but they still keeping some elements from the first album. Check their music video below for one of their few hard rock songs, shot with two Nikon D90s. While most of their songs are free for download at their PureVolume page, please do buy their music to support them.

Forget the 5D and the 7D. This is the new hot shit in the market: Canon’s Rebel T2i (aka 550D).

For $800, you will be able to get a great camera to shoot your masterpiece. You have no excuse anymore to not shoot a short movie, or a music video to help out your local rock bands.

The T2i supports all the frame rates that the 7D does, at similar bitrates. It has full manual control, and an audio jack. No new video-focused abilities are present in the cam compared to the 7D, however, it’s a camera that’s half the price. The still picture side of it is not as powerful as the 7D, but when it comes to video, it’s up to par with it (sample). It’s also a smaller/lighter camera than than the 7D, using SDHC instead of CF.

Add in the mix a large-aperture prime, a wide-angle, and a zoom lens, and you’ll be in business. My [photographer] husband would suggest instead three prime lenses: one wide, one normal, one long (a good combo is 24-35-50mm). You should be able to buy the camera and three lenses of your choice for $1500 overall, which is a great price if you think that a high-end Canon AVCHD camcorder, or the 7D body alone, costs as much. Honestly, I think the Scarlet is in a bit more market trouble right now — even if it’s a much better camera. “Good enough” is what sells more actually. I see plain camcorders to also be in real trouble now. Except wedding photographers and travelers, the camcorder market will down-size significantly in the next few years.

Canon also announced their new digicam line today, which actually let me down. Their SX200 IS replacement digicam, the SX210 IS, is now 14 MP — at the same sensor size. The SX200 IS has low light problems, so stuffing more pixels in it will make things even worse. They added “zooming while recording” and a “stereo mic” as new abilities for the movie mode. Personally, I find these useless as a filmmaker. Actors only have one mouth, and zooming while recording is as cheesy as 70’s B-movies were. I would have preferred to see a 10 MP sensor instead, and the ability to also record at 24 fps in addition to 30 fps. That would have been more useful to the kinds of video I shoot (i.e. not random family videos).

So as far as P&S HD video digicams go, the SD780 IS remains the best bang for the buck for $180. Except of manual focus, it still has all the video features that the SX-series have.

FCC Disclaimer: The above are my very own personal & truthful opinions. Not paid or endorsed by Canon.

Official music video for “Solomon”, by the San Francisco rock band As A People. You can download the song for free at the band’s site, or the HD video at Vimeo.

I had immense fun shooting this video, the band was really cool, and the song rocks. I consider it the most complex, and best video work of mine so far. I learned a few new things about the process, and I believe that the next step for me as a videographer is rigorous story-boarding, and having a grander plan. It’s the only way to avoid weak spots of continuity, like the ones found on the first 30 seconds of the video.

I shot the video with a Canon 5D Mark II, at 30 fps, and then slowed it down at 24 fps. I can’t wait for Canon to at last release the 24p firmware, it’s a long time waiting. It was my first major video with the 5D. Overall shooting time was 3 hours.

On location tools: a tripod, and a shoulder rest. A single Canon 50mm f1.4 lens was used. Software tools used were Sony Vegas Pro, Cineform, Magic Bullet (tools that didn’t always want to co-operate very well, so editing took quite some time: crashing, and bugs).

Many thanks to my beloved husband, Jean-Baptiste, for his support and feedback. I wouldn’t be able to do jack without him.

I heard a lot of people wondering: “Why doesn’t the radio play less known artists? There are some amazing songs out there that are lesser known and need to be heard. Commercial/ClearChannel radio sucks.”

However, it’s not the radio that sucks. It’s the listeners.

Consider the following: The music director at San Francisco’s Live 105 (owned by CBS) is Aaron Axelsen (who I’m a fan of). Aaron decides what’s get played by the DJs during the day, but he also has a show of his own on the station: Soundcheck, every Sunday night. In it, he plays the kind of music we are longing to listen to during daytime: From Manchester Orchestra, to The Temper Trap, to Surfer Blood, to many local Bay Area bands that caught his ear (scroll down for his latest playlist).

However, the rest of the daytime programming is terrible: the same 20-30 hit songs are playing on a rotation. How many times it happened to me already: driving for sushi lunch, Phoenix’s “1901” would be playing on our car’s radio. Coming out of lunch, and Phoenix’s “1901” would be playing AGAIN. The rotation is so fucking short that it’s not even funny.

Now, it’s easy to put the blame on Aaron or his corporate overlords, but it’s not really their fault. They are just doing what makes sense for their business. And what makes sense is to keep the listeners from switching channels.

You see, the vast majority of the radio listeners don’t listen to music. They hear music instead. There’s a difference. They put the kids on the SUV, and drive them to school, and turn on the radio in the meantime. Or, they’re stuck in traffic, pissed off, and need to listen to “easy” music to pass the time. Or, they’re sitting on their sofa, reading a magazine, and have the radio ON as a background.

Very few people actually drive somewhere in order to turn on the radio and listen to music. Or sit on their sofa, closing their eyes, and listen to just music. Normal people instead, are so busy with their lives, their problems, the quick pace of this civilization, that simply don’t have the time to discover new music. Listening to unknown kind of melodies, or new kinds of sub-genres altogether, takes them out of their comfort zone. Listening to something like Dan Deacon instead of Lady Gaga, for example, while the kids shout at each other at the back of the car, makes it difficult to level your head. Not only you have your problems, but you have this new ‘annoying’ music playing instead of the music (or kind of music) you already know so well.

Basically, commercial radio works as a kind of a depressant for the masses. At first, it feels like music is exactly the opposite: an excitement that is, but in reality, in the large scheme of things, as far as FM radio is concerned, it’s nothing but one of the ways that helps you kept in check. No, this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s just how things work. Listeners want it that way too.

And that’s the reason why you’ll never be able to hear Fever Ray, Antlers, or Local Natives on commercial radio, during daytime, at least in the US. Unless indie bands hit it big on their own, their music will play only late at night, or at specialized radio stations like college radios, KEXP, and Indie 103.1.

So stop hating the radio stations for doing their job. Either hate the system, or the listeners, or don’t hate anyone, and listen to your favorite music in your own accord. But don’t expect the population to follow too. They won’t. They have mortgages to think about rather than HEALTH‘s awesome off-beat noise.

I shot the following interview with the Bay Area band Geographer last Sunday, for The OWL Mag. One of the tracks heard on the video below is unreleased as of yet. I shot it using the Canon HV20, since I had to save the battery of my Canon 5D MkII for the As A People music video that I shot an hour later after this interview. It was a busy Sunday. But I loved it.

Well, we lived to see that too: a major product by Apple that misses the mark. The iPad.

Where do I start with this?

Flash? No. How the hell is this supposed to take over netbook market? Without Flash it is a no-go. I can eat the bullshit that the iPhone can’t do Flash for this or the other reason, but not having it on the iPad is a major mistake. Even if Apple adds it eventually, the damage is done for this product’s prospects in the minds of consumers.

Keyboard? Not only this keyboard requires both your hands, but it requires your lap too. How’s that any better than a freaking netbook? Instead of implementing a RESIZABLE split-keyboard, and have the full screen keyboard only as an option for when you sit on a couch, they go with the full screen keyboard by default. This is a MAJOR mistake. The large bezel and screen makes it IMPOSSIBLE for people with small hands to type when in vertical mode either — our fingers are not long enough to reach the middle of the screen. This is where the *resizable* split-keyboard would be a LIFE SAVER. [Update 1: Gizmodo on the terrible input method. Fully agreed with them.]

No multi-tasking? What the hell? Again, how’s that any more useful than a netbook? Just because it looks nicer and has a nicer interface doesn’t mean that it’s essentially more useful than a netbook. Again, Apple puts form over function as a priority, but I have the feeling that this time that strategy won’t be so kind to them. People wanted something better than the iPhone, not just an enlarged version of it. Daily Finance wrote it best (thanks goes to Dominique for the link).

And then, just like Andreas wrote, no camera for video chat? Sure, I get it. AT&T wouldn’t want to overload their towers, and I respect that. But Apple could easily have implemented an iChat or VoIP SIP version (or having Skype do it) that would only use WiFi. You can lock down that shit in application level. But, nooooo….

The last part is that with AT&T’s 250 MBs per month for $15. I’m sorry, but 250 MBs are not enough for a netbook-killer device. For $15 bucks per month, that should have been at least 1 GB of data. The last time I checked, just Engadget’s front page is 1.3 MBs usually. Even by doing light web browsing, the 250 MB per month will be eaten up within a week by a modern internet-er. Easily.

Finally, Gizmodo also has a nice list of 9 things that suck on the iPad. Thanks for the link @AsAPeople. [Update 2: Not to mention the lack of a microSDHC (or SDHC) slot. Sure, the iPhone has the excuse of being a small device and not having extra space for a slot, but the iPad doesn’t have the luxury to lie to us about it. Selling the cheap version of the iPad with just 16 GB of storage, with no expansion option, is a slap in the face of the modern consumer.]

Jeez. What a freaking over-hyped piece of shit of a product this is. Sure, I still expect the iPad to make its R&D money back, but this is not the next “iPhone”, not by a long shot. This is not the next big thing. Not with this implementation anyway. It’s half-baked at the points where it counts. My main concern though is that this product is not half-baked because Apple didn’t have the time to work on these points, but because these were their design decisions. And this shows a possible problem at Apple right now. It’s very possible that they’re suffering from the Microsoft/IBM syndrome: that one of the dinosaur.

Update 3: Thanks to Guy for the video link!

The following video, shot with the Canon 5D MarkII, contains snippets from a video I shot at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco last Friday, for As A People, a local post-punk and politically charged band. Parts of the live recording will be used for the music video I’m putting together for the band. The second part of the shoot, under a day light, will take place soon. The track we shoot the music video for is “Solomon” (free download here).

UPDATE MAY 2011: Canon engineers, along some specialists from Hollywood, developed the Technicolor CineStyle profile. It’s even flatter than superflat or extraflat profiles, with better color accuracy and dynamic range in the shadows. Don’t waste your time with any other profile, just get that one.

As you probably know, it’s important to shoot “flat” with your video camera, in order to help color grading in post, especially if you’re after the “film look”. Since I got the Canon 5D MarkII, I made sure I shoot as flat as possible: with the “Neutral” color setting, modified to have the contrast/saturation/sharpness settings on minimum, and its tint on +1.

So far, I’ve only shot two videos with the 5D, and I was not happy with the visual result. Yes, its picture quality is amazing for the price, but as the occasional filmmaker & colorist that I am, I need the kind of look directly out of the camera that I could get with a film camera, or the RED One. And the 5D, with tricked out color settings, it would still not give me what I wanted: the videos came out over-saturated, and over-contrasty for my taste. Sure, the videos were magnitudes less contrasty/saturated than when using the “auto” color modes, but they were still not what I wanted.

I tweeted about it yesterday, and some people suggested I try the Canon Picture Style Editor, which lets you edit these parameters even more. So I downloaded this famous package, which includes a Panalog-like curve (which I didn’t like), Marvel’s EX1-like Cine curve, one called “superflat”, and a pseudo-Velvia one.

Well, I’m still not happy with the results. None of these downloadable styles are what I wanted exactly, and to make the matter worse, the curve utility inside the Picture Style Editor sucks goats: you can’t move the two edges of the curve. Photoshop’s curve dialog can do it, but Canon’s utility can’t. Because of that, it’s impossible to get more detail in the dark places directly out of the camera. You see, whatever you can do IN-camera, is MUCH more desirable than doing it in post processing. IN-camera processing is higher quality, so what you get out of it is purer, and doesn’t bring out as much the h.264 artifacts when lowering contrast in post. But without a curve dialog that let’s me do more, I can’t tell the camera to shoot that way. To be fair, this feature didn’t need to exist in the past, because photographers don’t care about it, but filmmakers do. Now that dSLRs can shoot video, hopefully a better curve dialog will be implemented in the future by Canon.

So, I had to do with what I had. I edited Neil Stubbings’ “superflat” style, and created a new one called “ExtraFlat”. My version uses the “Neutral” look as a base instead, and it’s a tiny bit less contrasty, but a lot less saturated, and it doesn’t have the “red face” attribute of the video look. Of course, we should not forget that Canon uses extra processing when sizes down the sensor image to 1080p, but that’s a kind of processing we can’t control.

You can download the ExtraFlat style for your Canon vDSLR camera here. Instructions on how to upload it to your camera after unzipping it, here. Make sure the “EOS Utility” is installed on your computer. Check the ExtraFlat style compared to the rest.

Now, please don’t start commenting again about how you prefer the “standard” contrasty/saturated look. I don’t care if it looks better as a FINAL still picture. Don’t think of this frame grab as the end result. Video footage of any artistic work HAS to go through color grading, and for that, you need a FLAT look to work on.

Look at how the pros do it. Check this 2k frame grab, directly out of the RED One camera (ungraded). Notice how it’s extremely low-saturation, low-contrast, and the people’s skin is almost PINK-GREY and not red as the consumer camcorders do it (check this HV20 frame for reference). With a Canon consumer camcorder, even if you use Cinemode+custom color settings, it’ll still look red-ish, compared to what the RED ONE does. Panasonic consumer HD cams are way worse, since not only they don’t go as far in color settings, but their footage is processed to be very red by default.

With the ExtraFlat style I get almost what I want out of the 5D, but more dynamic range could be acquired in-camera if the curve dialog in the Picture Style Editor was better implemented. The camera CAN do it, we just don’t have a way to TELL it to do it right now.

Update: Shot a small video of me testing the flesh tones of the ExtraFlat today. It was flat and non-red alright! And it graded so nicely. Going through the various grading templates, it offered a very pleasant look, across the board.