Canon5Dtips Photography is more than words.
I have been reading the DSLR Cinema
The short version
For those who do not want to read the whole review: this is the best book/training material about HDSLR video I have seen so far. Get it!
The long version
What I like
The first part of the book is all about how to set the camera/lights to ‘get good clips’. It is quite technical and built on the knowledge published over the years on various HDSLR popular sites/forums/shooters. To my knowledge, it is the only book to cover the, so important, how to expose your image so thoughtfully. Actually, I have been in the process of writing a small eBook on the subject for quite a while now and looking at the book content, there is not much else to say!
While the first part dealt with camera setup, the second part shows how various elements can be used to create the film look and uses case studies to illustrate them. This was my favorite part of the book because it is not too often that get have access to this kind of information from other shooters.
The third part is about gear. Good for people who are green to the field but near useless to everyone else who knows about the various parts/rigs available.
Dont dont skip over the numerous appendix, lots of technicalities about HDSLR there. Actually, I think it would have been better to skip over the gear listing of part three and replace it with an expanded version of the appendix.
What I did not like
First of, the biggest flaw of this book, as it was with the book From Still to Motion, is the lack of reference to this site! How could they?
Also, the title should have been HDSLR Cinema and not DSLR Cinema… You can’t shoot a movie with a DSLR!
Seriously, this book has very few flaws. The one thing I did not like was the tutorials on some applications like the H.264 import plugins, how to use PluralEye, Magic Bullet Looks, etc… To me, this type of content should be either be left in the hands of the software developer or distributed electronically. Reading software how-to does not work for me.
Of course, as mentioned before, the whole part 3 of the book could have been removed.
Who is this book for
This book if for people who want to shoot movies with their HDSLR. As the title implies: DSLR Cinema: crafting the film look with video, all the book content is around cinema/film look. People thinking about getting the book to improve their wedding video skill are only going to enjoy part of the book content.
Conclusion
As I said at the beginning, this is a great book. It summarize of all the information available on the net about HDSLR on top of which Kurt has added interesting case studies and behind the scene tips from other shooters. Buy it on Amazon!
