Cinematic Look with the Canon SL2 (200d) - Tutorial

what's up guys segi here and welcome to another tech gear talk today I'm going to show you how to get your canon SL 2 footage to go from this to this and we're gonna cover what you need to do to get that cinematic look that everyone wants for their video using your SL 2 or 200 e depending on where you're from the canon SL 2 is a great beginner camera and i've already done a bunch of videos about it so i'll put a link up in the corner and in the description to my canon SL 2 playlist in case you're interested in learning more about this camera but like I said today we're gonna take a look at how you can get that cinematic look that everybody loves the first thing we're going to discuss is frame rate and in general this is very much a stylistic choice in case you're not familiar with what that means frame rate refers to literally how many frames the camera captures per second so 24 frames per second means the camera is recording 24 separate frames think film every second and 60 frames per second means that it's capturing 60 frames every second if you're using ntsc the most popular options are 24 30 and 60 frames per second if you're using pal the options are 25 or 50 frames per second now without going too deep into this 60 frames per second will provide a sharper and more crisp look sort of what you get when you're watching the news or soap operas the motion pictures on the other hand are shot at 24 frames per second which provides a softer and more cinematic look so the 24 frames per second look is part of what you're used to and what your mind equates with cinematic style on your SL to make sure that you're in movie mode click on menu shoot one movie record size and select full HD or 1080p and then 23.9 8 frames per second which we're gonna call 24 frames per second if you're using PAL go ahead and select 25 frames per second now the only exception to this rule is if you want to shoot footage for slow-motion in that case go ahead and select full HD 59.94 or what we're gonna call 60 frames per second and that means it will be slowing down the 60 frames per second down to 2 four frames per second and we're gonna get slow-motion by a factor of 2.5 and that means that we can stretch one second of recording time into two and a half seconds of play time okay we've got our frame rates now let's talk about shutter speed if you're familiar with how to get a proper exposure for photography you know that shutter speed determines how long the shutter stays open for each picture the longer it stays open the more light hits the sensor and the brighter your image will be for filmmaking this may sound confusing because you might be thinking I'm not taking a picture I'm shooting a continuous video but remember that our video is actually comprised of 24 individual frames for each second of video and the shutter speed determines how long the shutter records for each frame in this video I'm not going to get into the why of the 180 degree rule I'm gonna just keep it super simple you're always going to want to have your shutter speed be twice or about twice your frame rate so if you're shooting at 24 frames per second you're gonna use a shutter speed up about 50 or 50th of a second on your sl2 if you're shooting at 60 frames per second for slow motion you're gonna use a shutter speed of 125 again these aren't exactly twice our frame rate but they are close enough you can find your shutter speed down on the bottom left and you can either use the touch screen to change it or use the top dial next to the shutter now unlike in photography we don't want to control exposure by changing the shutter speed we'll have to use ISO and aperture for that now ISO determines how sensitive the sl2 sensor is going to be to light and the setting is going to depend on the lighting conditions that you're working with in brighter environments you're going to want to use a lower ISO setting and in darker environments you're going to want to use a higher ISO the lower the ISO the less sensitive to light our sensors and less noise is being introduced to our video when we use a higher ISO setting the sensor is actually more sensitive to light and that's why it introduces more noise to our footage now we can reduce this noise in post-production there's a bunch of great plugins that I'll link to in the description but it's always a good idea to get the best footage possible to start with so as a general rule your to use the lowest ISO that works for your situation the sl2 has an ISO range between one hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred and I almost always select my ISO manually rather than having it set to auto that means that since I'm setting my shutter speed aperture and ISO manually my exposure isn't gonna change on its own so again shoot at the lowest possible ISO to get the exposure that you need and this will give you the cleanest image possible to start working with next let's talk about f-stop and aperture so f steps control the amount of light that's exiting the lens and hitting the sensor by changing the size of the opening known as the aperture this is sometimes confusing but the thing to remember here is that the smaller number actually means a larger opening so when people say a large aperture they mean a large opening not a large number if you get confused think of it as a fraction think of f2 as 1 over 2 or 1/2 and think of f8 as 1 over 8 or 1/8 now this isn't the correct formula at all but it will help you remember the relationship between the number value and the size of the opening now the larger the opening the more light hits the center and the brighter the exposure this also means that we can turn down our ISO on our SL 2 and get a cleaner picture the next thing affected by the f-stop is depth of field and this could be a topic in and of itself but for the purposes of this video we mostly relate shallow depth of field with the cinematic look shallow depth of field means that our subject is in focus but things that are in front or behind it are out of focus so the smaller the f-stop number the shallower the depth of field so if we look at the same scene at f/2 f 11 & f 22 we can see how much more of the scene is in focus when we're using f-22 now using a wide open f-stop like f/2 is great because it lets more light in and we're able to shoot with less available light or low light situations however it does present a challenge when shooting outside in bright daylight in this situation were faced with the fact that there is actually too much light when we opened the lens up if this was photography we could simply shorten the shutter speed but we don't have that option since remember you always want your shutter speed to stay double your frame rate this is where something like a variable neutral density filter helps by reducing the amount of light that passes through the lens this means that we can have the lens wide open get that shallow depth of field and still get a great exposure and I'll put some links in the description to some of my favorite variable nd filters and remember to get one that fits the diameter of your lens all right let's move on to white balance and white balance refers to a setting that lets the sensor on the SL to know what color light to expect again this might sound strange to you because our eyes and our brain automatically adjust for different light colors so we don't actually think about it very much but something like a tungsten light bulb has a much different color temperature than daylight which in turn is different than overcast it's important that we match the white balance setting on the SL 2 to the color of the light we have there are two ways to select white balance on the SL 2 the first is by clicking on Q on the touch screen then go to the second icon from the top on the right side you'll get the white balance menu at the bottom the second is by clicking on menu going to the shoot three-page white balance and then choosing one of the options now going from left to right the first option is a WB or auto white balance and this lets the camera try to figure out on its own what the correct white balance should be next we have a setting for daylight which should be used outdoors under clear skies next we have a setting for shooting in the shade and the next option is for cloudy days or sunset than incandescent or tungsten light followed by white fluorescent light flash photography and finally a custom white balance option which is beyond the scope of this video and I suggest that you select the option that best fits the light you have and only use a WB or auto white balance as a last resort and the reason is that auto white balance may change the white balance of your settings while you're shooting as different colors are introduced into the frame so for example if someone is wearing a bright red shirt and they walk into the frame the camera sensor might get tricked and then change the white balance while it's recording that's just gonna look terrible and the important part here is to capture colors as close as possible to how they appear to the naked eye [Music] you [Music] next I want to talk about the histogram feature on the SL 2 and this is a feature that a lot of people either forget to turn on or they just don't know how to use it so to turn the histogram on click on the info button on the top left until you see the histogram appear on the top right area of the LCD now this histogram represents the pixels captured in your scene and this one is set to show brightness the way to read the histogram is that the left side of the graph represents the blacks or shadows in your scene and the right side represents a white or highlights so anything that is all the way to the left is going to be pure black and anything that bumps against the right side will be pure white here's a scene that is well exposed and you can see that we have details in the shadows and the highlights are not blown out here's the same scene underexposed so you can see that the histogram has shifted to the left and is bumping up against the left edge now here's the same scene overexposed and you can see that the whole thing is shifted to the right and our highlights are completely blown out so as a goal we want the entire graph to be visible with a tiniest gap on either side that means that our sensor is capturing the entire scene with nothing overexposed and nothing underexposed now notice that I said this is a goal it's not always possible but just do your best and remember that you cannot use the shutter speed to adjust your exposure just ISO and aperture if you have to choose between overexposing and underexposing your scene always set your SL 2 to slightly underexposed meaning make things look a little darker than they actually are it's easier to brighten up the footage in post-production and bring out details out of the shadows if a portion of your footage is completely blown out and it's pure white there's nothing that you can do in post-production to bring it back and finally having properly exposed footage will also help us with color grading later on next I want to discuss picture styles and the canon SL 2 has 8 different picture styles that are designed to make adjustments to the picture profile for different types of shooting if I'm just shooting a regular video for YouTube and I don't plan on doing any grading I'm happy with a standard picture profile it gives me super usable footage right out of the SL - with a nice amount of contrast and saturation again right out of the camera it doesn't have the best dynamic range but it gives me a much faster workflow for photography and video dynamic range is a measurement between the brightest and the darkest parts of your image and it can also refer to the sensors capabilities in terms of how much of a difference between the shadows and the highlights of your image it can capture without the highlights getting blown out and without the shadows going to pure black so while standard picture profile works well in some cases when we try to get a more cinematic look we need to do something different we want to use a flat picture profile if you remember the histogram a flat picture profile is going to push your shadows and your highlights into the center of the graph it's easier to see why it's called flat when editing in Premiere Pro for example where the luma waveform graph is displayed vertically and you can see that a flat image is literally represented by a flat waveform so essentially what we're doing here is creating an image that's very gray we're eliminating black and white and we're trying to move everything into some shade of gray now this is also a very ugly image and it lacks color and contrast but the important point is that the SL to capture details in the shadows and the highlights this gives us a lot of room to play with in post-production and get that cinematic look that we're going for I'll do another tutorial about color grading so if you're interested make sure that you hit the subscribe and notification buttons now there are many great flat picture Styles when it comes to the SL 2 but today I'm gonna use two examples the first is Technicolor cinestyle and the second one is Pro lost now I prefer the Technicolor Sinha style because it's even more flat and pro lost but it does require a free download and installation whereas pro lost can be set up in a few seconds on any Canon DSLR or mirrorless camera that offers user-defined picture profiles I'm going to link up in the corner in the description to my tutorial about how to install cinestyle on the sl2 so either pause this video or head / and check it out once you're done with this video so here's a scene and standard picture profiling you can see that it's pretty sharp contrast II and saturated but we do lose some detail in the shadows and highlights here's that same scene using Pro lost and we've definitely have a softer image less contrast and less saturation and finally cinestyle where we have an even flatter profile with even less contrast and less saturation and just trust me I know this looks ugly right now but it will allow us to do some color grading and get the final cinematic look that we want okay let's talk about aspect ratio and our sl2 shoots at full HD or 1080p which is 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels and that's a 16 to 9 aspect ratio but motion pictures are viewed at a much wider aspect ratio and there's no right or wrong answer here it's really your choice but I like to go with two point three five to one to do this simply change your resolution in your project file so in Premiere Pro go to sequence sequence settings and change the horizontal value to 814 in addition to getting a wide-angle video we also have the added benefit of being able to reframe our shots since we can now move the footage up or down within the new frame [Music] [Music] let's move on to film green and I want you to pay attention the next time you're watching a movie and you'll notice that the image isn't really all that clean and it's actually kind of noisy if the movie was shot digitally this isn't how it looked when it came out of the camera there was actual film grain added to the final product to help it mimic the look of actual film now here is some sample footage with no film grain and you can see that it's pretty clean and clear I'm gonna go ahead and add some 35 millimeter film grain on top of it and then adjust the blend mode to overlay now there's a stylistic choice of how much grain you want to actually add to the footage I think 50 percent looks pretty good in this case and let me zoom in to a hundred percent to show you the difference so without the film grain and with the film grain and then let's play the clip and look at how it looks when it's rendered finally if you're looking for some great places to get both free and premium film grains I'll leave a link in the description let's move on to color grading and I want to start by pointing out that color grading is both subjective and a stylistic choice there's no right or wrong here it's just a matter of getting the look that you as a filmmaker want it will also depend on the type of project that you're working on a promo for a boxing gym is gonna have a different look than a local flower shop there are a ton of film Luntz and color grading plugins out there and they're an excellent way to give your footage a more cinematic look and feel they're also a great way to save yourself some time when you're editing by starting with a preset I'll include some great options in the description and as I mentioned this is going to be a creative choice I will do a dedicated tutorial about color grading sl2 footage because it should definitely be its own standalone topic and I want to cover it in more detail than I can in this long tutorial and if you're interested or if you have any specific questions let me know in the comment section and I'll include it in that tutorial alright so that covers how to achieve the cinematic look with a canon SL - hopefully you can see that even with what most people call a beginner camera you can still achieve some really nice results I really hope that this video was helpful and if it was please let me know by leaving a comment giving it a thumbs up and if you haven't yet join the community by hitting the subscribe and notification buttons for more tips and tutorials I always recommend that you follow me on Instagram Twitter and Facebook a tech gear talk and you know what I always say buy it nice or buy it twice good luck and see you soon [Music]

Channel: Tech Gear Talk

Views: 272,086

Keywords: Canon SL2, Canon SL2 Cinematic, Canon SL2 Review, Canon SL2 Footage, Canon SL2 Tutorial, Canon SL2 Autofocus, Canon 200d, Canon 200d Cinematic Settings, Canon 200d Cinematic tutorial, Canon 200d footage, Canon 200d Tutorial, Canon 200d Autofocus, Canon Review, Cinestyle, Prolost, Canon Camera Review, Best Canon Camera, Best Beginner Camera, Canon SL2 2019, Canon 200d 2019

Id: RDs-Zzb0pmE

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019