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It’s been a long time since I’ve used an SLR now that I have a Canon 7D there is still a lot too learn. To start things off I have 2 tips for you and the tips were generously given to me by 2 of my friends, so I thought I’d share them here. If you just picked up your 7D or anything that shoots RAW I’m sure this post will help you.
1. Working with RAW. I was shocked to learn that Photoshop couldn’t open my RAW files from the Canon 7D. I was even more shocked that Canon hadn’t made a plug in for the world standard of photo editing. Luckily I work with some very diligent people that found the solution right away. Adobe has a solution called DNG (Digital Negative) it takes the RAW file that the Canon makes and converts it into something Adobe can open and modify the Raw Camera data. One plus is it saves out an PSD just in case you want to do more painterly type work with the image.
You can download the stand alone application here, DNG (Digital Negative)
It’s a nice little app and the conversions won’t take long. You can put a shortcut on your desktop so you can just drop files on it. Special thanks goes to Dianna Sloyer an artist and photographer I work with. Thanks for helping me find this solution before I even had a chance to look into it!
2. Dealing with all that data. I was talking with one of my production pals at Big Teeth Productions, Gregg Jaffe, and they recently purchased the Canon T2i. As we were talking card sizes, he suggested that he was sticking with the 4 and 8 gig cards for easy back up. What a great idea! When you’re dumping you images to your hard drive now you’ll have perfect size to fit on a regular DVD or Duel Layer DVD.
I think the other advantage to sticking with the smaller cards are cost and content. Obviously smaller cards are less expensive. Also keep in mind filling up bigger cards you’ll be putting a lot more content on there. If the unforeseen happens and you loose the data on the card, you’ve lost a lot less than 32 or 64 gigs worth. So that could be a big plus if you have to go back and cover your tracks.
If you have more tips for your DSLR share them here please I’m just jumping back onto the bandwagon and I’ll take all the advice I can get.
What a somewhat unpleasant surprise for me that I was hoping to learn a few new tricks and it turned out one of them was from me
Glad it’s helping you though Sean and in fairness there’s a few disclosures:
1. I came to this conclusion after using a 32 GB card that caused me some problems. I was able to ultimately get all the footage I shot, but it didn’t work how it was supposed to with Final Cut so I had to shell out $40 for a not great software that helped in that case but I hope to never need again.
2. I actually wouldn’t go for 4GB cards because I think that’s just too small unless you plan on shooting very irregularly and for tiny intervals. I think right now 8GB is the sweet spot and buying dual layer DVDs (which allow 8GB of footage) is not too expensive.
3. I still am using 16 GB cards for a lot of things. There’s something nice about being able to shoot for 99 minutes in HD on one card but it nullifies the DVD backup solution. I have to back this stuff up on external drives.
4. I think this advice probably wouldn’t apply as much to those who shoot lots of live events, mostly for reason 3 above. If you are an event videographer (which I’m not so this is just anecdotal opinion from me) I would think 16 GB cards would be way better because you don’t have to switch out as often and miss moments.
That is all – look forward to hearing what others have to say.
Sorry to disappoint. I agree if you’re shooting events then you’ll need something way bigger than 8 gigs. As far as 4 gig is concerned I think its fine for shooting stills depending on your RAW resolution.
The Filmmaker in me says stick with the 8 gig for cinema type production, but I see what you’re saying with a 16 gig. 8 Gig cards means faster off loads and easy back ups. Unless you have a blu-ray, even then the disks are pricey still.