The EOS 70D is a really capable camera for movie making, the Dual Pixel AF is noticeably better at focussing in Live View mode than any other EOS SLR camera. Earlier this week I took a few moments to film a short movie at a local “secret garden” location.
Simple movie making with the EOS 70D
For this short movie I used just three lenses;
- EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
- EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
- EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
Most of the clips in the video were shot on the tripod, a couple with the camera balanced on a pile of sticks and stones on the ground and a few handheld. I still need to improve my camera movement shots, I find I tend to overshoot with panned shots and then there’s a slight bobble at the end of the clip.
In the finished movie I have one clip of the waterfall that uses the Movie Servo AF to pull focus automatically for me. In the particular scene it worked really well from either the focus ring turned to infinity or minimum focus positions. Simple clicking on the LCD to set the point of focus and then once the clip was rolling tap the LCD screen to activate Movie Servo AF. One other point is that I didn’t use the STM lenses, only the USM ones. In practice the USM lenses are often too quick to change focus, but with a reasonably stopped down aperture of f/7.1 the jumps in AF were much smoother than I had expected.
I’m currently working on several movie shoots and am keen to do more…