Anyone using their DSLR for video

Hi there, I'm off to The Open in a few weeks. (Golf tournament) Amongst the hundreds of stills I will be taking. I thought it may be a good idea to try and capture some of the action on video. Now this is were it gets a little hairy. Though I had my K5ii and K7 a while now. I've never shot a video. So I need some pointers from anyone that has had success in this field. Firstly lens choice, will have to be medium to long range. As i'm not sure as how close access will be to the players. Probably 15-50 yards away. What are the better settings to set the camera to ? Is a monopod sufficient support for video ? I'm going to order a coulpe of 32gb cards to cope with the larger file sizes.

I use the K7 a lot for video and I find it excellent. I'm not doing any more than family days out, but I enjoy making it all interesting with editing in Sony Vegas software, so appreciate the high quality available. For more creative work we have our member richandfleur in New Zealand setting setting the pace with his K30, although I think he may be having some camera issues at the moment ... I believe that us K7/K5 series users may be at an advantage to an extent with our 'mechanical' sensor shake reduction, which works beautifully for video

My main recommendations for Pentax DSLR video are:

1. Use a stereo hotshoe microphone

2. Use SR but keep movements very limited - slow pans and zooms are ok ... Try and take alternative views of the action and use cuts in editing (keeping the soundtrack from one file throughout)rather than move the camera around to follow things.

3. Use manual focus and a lens with a long 'throw' to help with smooth and more precise focusing.

4. You don't have 'RAW', the .avi files are equivalent to photo Jpegs, so uts important to set up the camera custom image settings exactly, more so even than for camera jpegs, because video editing software cannot make the same range of high quality adjustments as the likes of photoshop, so its important to get exposure, contrast, whitebalance and saturation right as shooting because that's how you get the ultimate quality out of the camera.

Good luck, looking forward to hearing how you get on. I find shooting Pentax DSLR video great fun, and even more so when it all gets onto the computer and you start to work with it.

Hi, Thanks for the pointers. Its all gratefully received. I certainly wont need any advanced advice. As I have never attempted such a thing before. I was just thinking short one minute or so segments of golfers hitting shots rather than a Hollywood epic. In fact, my first thought was to use my phone. But then said to myself. Hey im sure we can achieve a better result. Il have a little practise run tomorrow. I hadn't thought much about editing software either so thanks for mentioning it. I was hoping I could just take it straight from the camera as it was. Maybe a little naïve of me..

All great content there

I'm on a bit of crusade really to promote DSLR video as not being that different to DSLR photography. If you need a certain lens to reach and frame your stills photo, then you've very likely to need that same lens for video work. All the stills aspects of aperture and composition choices etc apply in Video work, as video is simply lots of still photos taken and replayed one after the other quickly.

Sorry though I can't comment much on the K5ii / K7 specifically for video as I have a K-30 myself. I believe there was a fair bit of difference in the approach to video between the two. Namely the K-30 appears to have favoured smaller final file sizes over image quality, which is a bit unfortunate. The video image stabilisation is not very good on the K-30, nor on the K3 by all accounts either, as they share similar code on this front. Check out this link at around 17seconds in Watch the top of the wooden archway wobble all over the place due to the 'Movie SR' jello stabilisation method

On my K-30 though there is a big difference in video quality when you move from 720p to 1080p, (and not just in the increased resolution), so I'd recommend shooting 1080p where possible on that basis.

All the basics apply though, in that to make it look professional you don't want to be zooming the lens whilst recording etc, (as this looks amateurish when reviewing it). Nigel is spot on about video having very little leway for adjustment afterwards, so it's quite important to get it right first time as much as possible. Definitely try some quick tests at least at home in advance.

Autofocus is essentially out during video, and it looks weird even if you can do it, so manually 'pulling focus' is the way to go. You can adjust focus whilst recording, just don't adjust the zoom side of things whilst recording . Other points of interest may be to use the live view 'zoom' to assist with focussing, but as above that's the same with stills photography anyway.


Youtube is cool for this stuff also...
Pentax specific, but not necessarily very good link...

Do you have some samples of your results from the K-7?
I have always found it woeful for video recording. For one thing that Samsung sensor does not have the latitude for it and the 1024p resolution is weird.
(720p is worse than horrible)

Hmmm Dosnt sound to good....

From what I have seen, the K-5/K-5II gives much better results and has a few more video menu options than the K-7.
The K-5IIs is in my sights at the moment owing to a tempting EOFY offer at an Australian dealer's site.

I don't recognise that description of the K7 video features and quality - you can get superbly smooth and high quality video from the camera, but on any camera it depends a lot how you go about it - you have to work with the characteristices of the medium. If you follow the key guidelines I mentioned earlier it will all go more smoothly.

Handholding is always going to be a challange, even with SR on - its so easy to make movements that are too quick (I started out doing that badly, now less so) - and with too much movement comes more sudden changes in exposure, which is to be avoided if possible by being careful to keep filming in steady lighting conditions.

I don't know what is meant by the sensor not having 'latitude' - clearly with video resolution we take a big cut in pixels anyway, in fact I have found the .avi format advantageous as it is less compressed than say AVCHD (MPEG). Its nearer to a concept of 'RAW' for video in the absense of actual RAW. Video files are destined to be edited and output into a new display format (eg MPEG4 for the internet, or MPEG2 for DVD), and will be resized at this conversion into a suitable resolution for the display monitor (eg widescreen TV) - so its good to start with less compression as you're heading towards more compression anyway.

The actual resolution figure as output by the camera is a non-issue to me as well - its going to be reformatted anyway and software like Sony Vegas or Movie Studio can match the project settings to a specific file with one click, thereby avoiding any problems with 'black bars' and space at the sides. Most devices deal with this easily now anyway and can successfully 'fullscreen' output with no trouble.

sledger, I'd be glad to stitch together a few appropriate clips as examples .... I'll see if I can get something on YouTube with a link. I'm as guilty as anyone of not following my own advice at times, so of course I've got loads of video when I'm out with the family just casually and it doesn't all work out smoothly - but thats the cameraman's fault not the camera! Playing my videos on the 47'' TV, when I'm not panning around stupidly and I'm trying to do it properly, the video quality from my K7 looks every bit as good as professional HD movie streamed over Netflix.

One other tip I'd add to my list above is to NEVER us Auto White Balance with video! It'll keep on changing - very ugly. Just find a good WB (never a better time to take a custom manual WB with an expodisc for example) and stick with it until you change locations or lighting completely.

I'm not aware of any extra video features on the K5 over the K7? The K3 for sure. Maybe there is, and no doubt the extra resolution in the K5 sensor helps.

Pentax published a lot of exceptional professionally made videos using the K7 and even the Q, I didn't keep links but I'm sure they are youtube

I guess that's referring to the less than stellar low light performance of the Samsung sensor, its achilles heal.

I used my K7 for a few little bits of video -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32OnPmVYmSc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfT1Hdqe81g

As in stills photography, the lens makes a massive impact to the perceived 'quality' IMHO...

Its not been a problem for me with video generally... Sure, if you set ISO 800 and record in low light it is grainy and with a fair bit of colour noise, and that is almost impossible to sort out on the computer I have found. But I very rarely find its necessary to use anything other than ISO 100 or 200 for most video situations.

My K-7 has not ISO options for video, neither do the K-5/K-5II models.
How are you setting ISO?

How are you getting 1080p from a camera that doesn't shoot video at 1080p?
The second video with all the running water shows exactly why the K-7 is rubbish for video, the image breaks to pieces in blocks as the codec fails to keep up.

It sure does. All the components of stills work flow into the video side of things, it's stills with an added demension of changes over time.

Yes the fast action sequences with the water are a prime example of the lack of bitrate.

Resolution is one thing, and whilst this remains fixed the lower bit rate has the end effect of grouping lots of pixels into larger squares, which effectively lowers the resolution, as you end up with large segments all being treated as one large pixel square.

The composition of the video images is good, please don't get me wrong.

This is one of the areas where Pentax is falling flat with it's video implementation. Pentax offers some of the lowest out of the box bit rates, even on HQ mode, when compared to the competition, even without additional firmware hacks applied to some other brands. Prioritising lower file sizes is just bizarre when you're trying to optimise the IQ for stills.