So last weekend we packed up the car and went to Pennsylvania for some new photos and video from Pennhurst. We had about half a day to get everything and I really wish we’d had more time but such is life. I picked out my favorites from the shoot and put them up on my flickr account. You can view them HERE! – and his wife Trisha came along to help out and I really appreciated it. It was a very long drive and both of them were just getting over colds but we must all suffer for our art:) They were both a big help and things went much faster having some extra hands around to carry the load.
Randy Bates set up some actors for us to film in the different rooms at Pennhurst. We set up 2 cameras, a Canon EOS 5D mark ii and my new Canon EOS 60D. After a crash course in operating a canon 5D Brian took over getting some great reaction shots from the patrons that came through the haunt while I got some great video of the sets and actors themselves. Overall it was a great shoot even though it was in the 30 degree range the whole time we were there. As always the actors suffered the most, wearing their thin costumes in the biting cold.
On a side note I just purchased a Canon EOS 60D I mentioned above and this trip to Pennhurst was the first real test of its cinematic prowess and I have to say I was very impressed. I bought it for a couple reasons: The first being I needed a secondary camera for the many times when getting a shot from 2 angles would have made things easier. The second reason was the 60D’s flip out monitor that can be tilted away from the camera for easy use while moving the camera high or low. The 5D has a fixed monitor on the back of the camera so if you try to get a low shot then you’ll be lying on the ground with the camera to see how the shot looks and I’m getting too old and too fat to do a lot of that.
As far as video quality, the EOS 60D is almost identical to the EOS 5D mark ii. I could not see any difference in the quality of the video between the 2 cameras. However the 60D is only an 18mp camera and it does not have the 5D’s full frame censor and that is obvious when comparing photos taken by both cameras. However I’m very happy with the 60D since the video capability is why I bought it and not the still camera features. There are a couple little issues like the magnification feature not working in movie mode that irk me since I use that all the time on the 5D, but, overall it’s a solid camera and it’s budget friendly.
