Hello,
I am new to this forum (first post) and beginner filmaker and I will need advice ...
Last June I started shooting for my documentary project on the local natural heritage, for now with my own money, so my gear is rather light...
I'm shooting with a Canon Eos 70D DSLR, outdoor, and i'm shooting the natural spaces of a valley (along a river).
At the start I wanted to film in RAW with Magic Lantern, but with my 70D i'm stuck in 720p (for a continuous recording), so finally i've shot in a compressed way, Mpeg-4 All-I 8bit 4:2:0 @1080p 29.97fps with a picture style (EOSHD C-LOG (0,-4,-4,2)) + Vari ND Filter, hoping to get myself out of it even in post-prod ...
But here the quality of the images, in a context of shooting outdoors in shaded places very contrasted (...), do not satisfy me !
So I would like to have advice to achieve a higher quality outdoor shots (natural light)?
To illustrate my purpose you can see these few shots that I graded in Resolve + corrections in After Effects: https://vimeo.com/alexandrewebercom/riviereardeche
The third shot is particularly ugly ...
- Have I "pushed" the mpeg-4 too far by color grading it or is it simply the limitations of this compression?
- How do I do with hyper contrast scenes (it was about 14h when shooting)?
- Am I condemned to film in RAW whatever the chosen camera (to be able to uncork the blacks or to recover in the whites in post-prod)?
- Is it better that I under-expose or over-expose this type of scene?
- Can you suggest gear/ configuration more suitable for my use: Camera, Raw / Prores, Log, external recording ... ?
Thanks a lot !