My first attempt at Photgraphy. Happened to be using a 7D...

Well not much to say. I tried taking photos for the first time and I used a 7D with the 24-70mm 2.8. You can be the judge. I obviously did some Photoshop on them but was very impressed with the easy intuitive features even for a non-photographer like myself.

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GO SELL YOUR VIDEO CAMERA and 5D MKII the 7D HAS TAKEN OVER!!!!!!!!

All Photos courtesy of Gary Nevitt Jr.

Run as fast as you can and sell all the video gear you own. Sell your XHA1,your EX1,whatever camera you use. Sell your 5D MK II. Sell your car and house if you need to. You absolutely only need a 7D. The 7D is perfect. It has no flaws. It actually shoots the video for you. You need no talent at all. Anyone can pick it up and whatever they film looks like Spielberg was there. Of course, I am joking but it seems the 7D is causing quite a stir. 5D MK II owners are in an uproar,people with traditional video cameras are outraged. Look people,yes I am guilty of being excited about the 7D it's the first DSLR I bought for myself that shoots HD video. Cristina owns the 5D MK II and a Canon XHA1 and we are a team. Are we going to dump the 5D now? NO. We aren't even THINKING about dumping the XHA1. Hell,we still have a Canon XL2 and we haven't dumped that. Each of these cameras is a tool. Would you go to war with a gun that only had one bullet and could only be fired after precisely aiming and tweaking it to the correct settings?If you answered yes, you wouldn't survive. The same thing applies to shooting a live event. If i tried to shoot someone's wedding with just the 7D I wouldn't survive as a business. I would miss shots while I was focusing,etc. Each tool serves it's purpose. I love the XHA1 I can shoot beautiful HD Video and it allows me the luxury of panning,tilting and reacting to the nature of a live event. Things happen quickly. Moments are fleeting. If I had only the 7D or 5D MK II, I would miss some of those moments. That being said, If I shoot with the XHA1 in a poorly lit situation,for example, every reception I've ever been too,I now have to use on-camera lighting which produces an image that,quite frankly, I hate. Faces are washed out and guests get annoyed at having a bright light in there face. Turn your camera light on and go into a poorly lit room. Now turn that camera on yourself and see how it feels. Now, with the 5D I can set up with a 70-200 mm lens in a pitch dark reception venue; stay far away from guests while unobtrusively capturing candid moments. The 7D is a more affordable version of the 5D MK II minus the full frame sensor, in my opinion, with more choices for frame rates and an all around better more intuitive design for shooting video. Also with the 1.6 crop factor lenses become more magnified therefore I can use a smaller lens and still get in closer. So as far as the war goes between conventional video cameras and DSLRS and then the war being waged between the 5D MK II and the 7D, I call a cease-fire. What everyone needs to understand is this. The equipment is great but look, quite frankly, if you can't shoot,you can't shoot.A good eye and a basic knowledge of shot composition is not something you can pre-order from Amazon.com or Best Buy. Learn how to use the tools you have available to you. Master them. Then, when you feel you need better equipment to add some flavor and different aspects to your work,thoroughly research the options. Then make the decision for yourself because no one else can.

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Canon 7D Field Test

Ok so as promised I set off with @cristinavaldivi to put the 7D to the test in a "real world" (read paying job) situation. We were shooting a "Save the Date" with a very inspiring and awesome photographer, Gary Nevitt for Clair Pruett Studios. We wanted to see what this bad boy (the 7D not Gary) could do when we slapped a 14mm Sigma on it and threw it on the Glidecam 4000 Pro (Older version) Zacuto Tactical Shooter and the Glidetrack Compact. First impressions, after normally flying the XHA1 on it we were able to get crane-like shots due to the extreme light weight of the 7D. I read a rant where some guy says DSLR's like the 7D are only good for close up shots of faces with the background blown out and it's a one-trick pony. Maybe, it's because I'm still giddy like a school girl with my new 7D but I disagree and I think this short video we slapped together is pretty good evidence otherwise. No color grading was done, so this is straight out of the camera .We set it to Neutral with the intention of not crushing blacks so we could color grade it later. Now, for those of you who may say it's too much Glidecam and Glidetrack we also had a 5D MKII for shot variation but as people have already seen loads of 5D MKII footage and this is no where near our final product we only posted the 7D shots as the camera is new and we figured that's what people want to see. Anyway, don't be mean. This is just so people can look at it and make their own judgements to the cameras capabilities and shortcomings. Apparently, some people are experiencing overheating problems but all's well on the 7D front here.
Here it is:

Canon 7D Field Test from Cristina Valdivieso + Jon Connor on Vimeo.

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First Canon 7D Test with Glidecam

Canon 7D Glidecam Test from Cristina Valdivieso + Jon Connor on Vimeo.

So we have a shoot later today and so we decided to give the 7D a very rough test on the Glidecam. Very Rough. The house is extremely dark and we shot at 6400 ISO even though I would never recommend going over 1600 ISO, personally. But in order to keep things in focus we had to bump it up to F/11 and therefore, needed to compensate for the lack of available light. We also wanted to test out shooting 60p in the 720p mode and conforming the footage with Cinema Tools to 30p for a nice slow motion effect. Thoughts: Sure the actual footage looks grainy and is basically crap from a visual standpoint but I really like the fluid smoothness of the gliding in slow motion and can't wait to get outside and give this a proper run through today. We are getting paid for the job this afternoon and I normally wouldn't throw caution to the wind and use a tool I basically just pulled out of the box but then again, what fun would life be without living a little dangerously. Anyway have a look and stay tuned for more and (hopefully) better composed "real world" footage coming as soon as we are done the shoot and I have some free time to post a couple clips.
Thanks to @cristinavaldivi for her Glidecam work.
Thanks for checking out my blog.

P.S. 30 Seconds of footage took 30 mins in Compressor. I didn't do anything to it before hand just brought it into FCP 7.0 after Cinema Tools. Running a Mac Pro 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3  2.66 GHZ Quad-Core Intel Xeon with an Internal RAID 5 set-up and Snow Leopard. Seems like it should be moving faster. Any ideas? Contact me on Twitter @jonconnorvideo .

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