Canon EOS 550D DSLR Camera

We love technology! All that we have sought to achieve with the iTutorus project has been made possible with advances in technology. And on it goes, the power of computers, software and with particular reference to this post, cameras.

Up until now we've been using Sony Z series camcorders, starting with the Z1 and subsequently, 2x Z5's and 1x Z7. Fantastic cameras and I can only say good things about them. The only downside is the cost which at around £3,500, they are certainly not cheap but when you compare the quality of the footage / recordings that they can output, it is hard to complain.

However, we have added a  new camera to our roster, the Canon 550D.

At first glance this is clearly (essentially) a stills camera and it does take fantastic stills but it also has a video mode and when our team saw the resulting footage, we all said 'wow' 

Below are some frame grabs taken from filming that we were doing last Friday. I had the camera mounted on a tripod and I was monitoring the footage through one of the Samsung monitors that I have mentioned before. I was sat around 1.5 metres away from Richie (our bass tutor) and I was using a Canon 55 - 255mm telephoto zoom lens.

In the past we have always blue screened the footage but on this occasion the background was heavy black acoustic curtains which just blended into the background because of the depth of field.

No colour correction was used on the footage or resulting screen grabs.

All of the shots above show Richie performing a particularly clever bass accompaniment using hammer ons and tapping in a new piece entitled 'Arabesque', which will shortly be available to see and hear on our YouTube Channel pages (iTutorus YouTube Channel).

I am confident that when the footage goes up on YouTube, the wonderful quality of the images will shine through but the really remarkable aspect to all of this is the cost of the new technology. The camera cost £600 and the lens £144! 

There are limitations to shooting with this camera, it will only shoot video for up to 12 minutes at a time, not really a problem, there are no serious audio inputs and the camera design makes it intrinsically more difficult to handle... but there are tripods and all kinds of steady cam holders to help with this. In fact that's what I intend to investigate next.