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When purchasing a new camera, there are a certain number of settings I like look at straight away, before even getting to know the specific quirks of that model. Below is an example of the YouTube links I used to set up the Canon R5C for professional use.
Basic settings: before touching anything, I set my frame rate, recording codec & format, and colour profile. On the R5C, the default setting is more than enough (XAVC 422 10-bit) with a neutral colour profile (EOS neutral). The final output is a .MXF file with multiple audio channels. Relay recording: to ensure that once the first card fills up, the recording continues onto the next card. Noise reduction: I usually turn off in-camera noise reduction for high ISOs to reduce processing strain, and address this in post-production. Image stabilisation: it is reliable on the R5C, and I wouldn’t turn this off as I shoot handheld often. High-speed recording / slow-motion: I set this to 100FPS to accommodate multiples of 25, however I would probably use 120FPS if I really needed the latitude. Iris mode: on the R5C the aperture or iris control seems to be set to AUTO. To manually control the lenses’ F-stop you need to set this to MANUAL. Audio monitoring: it is important to make sure you’re actually seeing and monitoring the channels being recorded, as sometimes cameras can be set up by default to solely monitor the first two channels (less relevant if you are only recording to H264 which only supports two audio channels). Shutter speed / angle: on the R5C, I set this to Shutter Angle as it’s what I am used to on cinema cameras. Colour monitoring: if shooting in a LOG profile, I set up the LCD screen to display with a monitoring LUT or default REC709 profile overlaid to better understand how the final image will look in post-production. Autofocus: these settings depend on the camera model itself and require some testing. In the case of the R5C I turned this down to -3. Histogram: rather than using zebras which can be quite distracting, I like to look at the histogram which gives me a better understanding of how exposure looks across the shot. On the R5C, you need to go into the Assistance menu. RAW recording: usually on mirrorless cameras this is a simple on/off option with basic frame rate settings - sometimes there are compressed and uncompressed options. Regardless, it’s a good idea to understand exactly how your camera shoots RAW if it can do so internally. |