Canon 7D to Make Wait for Scarlet Bearable, Enjoyable

We received our new Canon 7D this week, and went out to shoot a few tests. The camera performed admirably in all sorts of conditions, from daytime run-and-gun in the city, to high ISO (1250-2500) nighttime subway shots. With a bit of color correction, the images you get out of such an inexpensive piece of equipment are truly stunning.

Our post workflow started with transcoding from Canon’s H.264 video into a Final Cut friendly ProRes422(HQ) format, using MPEG Streamclip, a free utility available here. It’s faster and has better results than transcoding through Compressor. Next we created a new timeline in Final Cut Pro 7, and sent to Color. On several clips, we were actually able to pull back detail in the highlights that we thought had been lost, and were able to create a much cleaner image with a higher dynamic range.

The Canon 7D is a fantastic, affordable alternative to shooting RED. For budgets too small to afford it, the 7D provides that shallow depth of field and film-like 24-frames-per-second, in what is effectively a 2k image. And for productions looking for more coverage, it holds its own next to the RED as a perfect B-cam.

As long as you have a proper post workflow in place, the results speak for themselves. Enki Studios will be offering 7D production and post-production services, alongside RED and Steadicam, so please contact us with your next project.