*DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex. It is the camera used by photographers.
In 2008, Canon began adding a video mode to its DSLR cameras. They had no idea of the phenomenon it would bring.
DSLRs have huge sensors (the mechanism that converts light into video) and much cheaper, high-quality lenses (also known as “glass”).
These factors give DSLR cameras very sharp images as well as a very shallow depth of field. Depth of field, or Dof, refers to the focus of the image or video. A deep DOF is when the foreground and background of an image are in focus. This is commonly seen in landscape shots.
Shallow Dof is when a part of the image is in focus while the rest is not. For example, imagine a romantic movie. About 3/4 of the way through the movie, the man and woman run to each other and kiss in the rain. In a close-up of them kissing, you would see them in focus, with the background out of focus. You see it all the time in movies, it’s almost always used during back and forth dialogue when 2 actors are talking. This is a highly sought after look for video professionals and before DSLR video was extremely expensive to achieve. DSLR cameras achieve this look for a fifth of the price.
I started my videography career with a Sony VX-2000. It’s a small prosumer standard definition Sony camcorder. After mastering that, I was ready to upgrade to an HD camera, but I didn’t have a lot of money and good cameras are very expensive. I saw the quality that DSLRs are capable of and was very interested. The Canon 60D was in my price range and I bought it. It comes with an EF-S 18-135mm lens. It shot 1080i and 720p at 24, 30 and 60 fps (frames per second). It was a good camera and I liked it very much. However, I did have the opportunity to upgrade to the Mercedes Benz of DSLR’s… The Canon 5D Mark II. I also got it with a 24-105mm canon L-series lens. It shoots beautiful, crystal clear video and I love it. Now here are the pros and cons
The great thing about DSLRs for video, and the reason they’re so popular, is the cinematic quality with the shallow depth of field you can get for a much, much lower price. For example, experts often compare the canon 5d mark II with the Red One camera, which costs $25,000. Now of course the Red One is a better camera, it shoots at 2k resolution but it costs $25,000, the canon 5d mark II is $2,500 and the quality is comparable. For Internet and DVD purposes, the quality is negligible. In the cinema it would be obvious, but how your video looks in theaters isn’t relevant to most. Anyway, the point is that the quality for the price is amazing.
Now here are the cons. No matter how amazing the video quality is, it doesn’t change the fact that DSLRs are designed for still photography and have only recently started offering video. This means that they have rudimentary audio capabilities. No manual audio gain controls no gimmicks or patches, no xlr (high quality audio input), built in mic is very poor quality to use, also small and no handle so hard to operate smoothly and does not have a controlled approach.
All these disadvantages have solutions, but it is a more difficult process than with a normal video camera and it costs money. Even with these expensive extras, DSLRs are still worth it, but how easy it is to use and how long it takes to balance out the shortcomings is entirely up to you. You absolutely have to get a stabilizer rig to shoot smoothly from the shoulder, otherwise your footage will be too shaky. These kits average around $500 and the higher quality ones around $2,000. You can do what some people do and build your own platform or order the components separately and assemble them yourself. I’m going to do an entire post dedicated to choosing or building a platform and once that’s complete I’ll insert a link here.
Because the DSLR has poor audio capabilities, what most people do is buy a portable audio recorder to capture audio separately from the camera. You plug in your microphone and use it to digitally record your audio. That’s a great way to get high-quality audio, the catch is that since the video and audio aren’t recorded on the same device, you’ll need to sync them in post. You can do this manually using a clapper or snap etc. but there is a much simpler solution which is a program called plural eyes. Plural eyes will automatically sync your video with your audio on your timeline. It does this by aligning the separately recorded audio waveforms with the audio waveforms recorded by its low-quality built-in camera microphone. It’s not always perfect, but if you get decent audio from your camera then it works quickly and effectively. There is also a sister program called dual eyes that will automatically sync all video files with all audio files outside of your editing application.
In conclusion, DSLRs give you excellent quality for the price. However, you will have to decide for yourself if the shortcomings of shooting with a still camera are acceptable to you as a video creator.
I hope you found this article outlining the pros and cons of shooting video with a DSLR helpful…