Four Portrait Setups for Available Light

DennisDavisPhotography.com

Light is all around you, bathing you with energy you can almost feel. Light has color, intensity, direction, strength, “softness” or “hardness. Light is beautiful.

Learning to love light, to embrace it in its ever changing splendor, is the key to excellent photography. Learning to control light, to redirect it, to manipulate it, is the key to making money in photography.

The inverse is also true. To appreciate the light, you have to know and understand darkness. Dark areas in a photograph create contrast with the light areas; otherwise the picture would be boring. Darkness in a picture adds mystery, interest and glamour.

Today, everybody has a camera on their phone, so any picture that was taken with even a point and shoot camera looks better than much of what we see on Facebook. However, a picture that has amazing lighting with always capture the viewer’s attention, and people are willing to pay for that attention if it is directed at their portrait, product or service.

There is only one sun. Two light sources of equal strength look stupid and unnatural in a portrait, so the light coming from the second source must be weaker in most cases. Portraits taken in direct sunlight without a reflector or fill flash are usually harsh and have high contrast, with big black shadows or over exposed areas. This is because of the nature of digital light sensors, as well as film. Digital sensors in cameras are not anywhere near as light sensitive as your eyes. Where human eyes see details in the shadows, digital sensors see only solid black or very dark areas with no detail.

Direct sunlight, as beautiful as it is on trees and mountains can be very harsh on human skin, particularly human skin with defects; all the bumps show! Makeup can help, but filling the harsh sunlight with a reflector or two can make the difference between a throw away photograph and a great one.

Portrait setup 1, outdoors

One of the best places to put your portrait subject is with the sun to their back, or behind their head with a little light touching their cheek. This lighting setup is best when the sun is low in the sky, within a few hours of sunset or sunrise. With the sun to their back, take a reflector and bounce the sunlight into their darkly shadowed face, and behold! A halo of light is outlining the person, and soft, directional light is defining their features. Just make sure the reflector is either big enough or close enough to their face to light it evenly. I prefer to do this lighting setup with the portrait subject in sunlight, but with dark trees or buildings in shade in the background behind the subject. Try this setup with the following camera settings: ISO 100, shutter speed 1/125 of a second, and aperture at f11 or even f8.

This type of lighting is very tricky for the auto exposure settings on most cameras. Often the auto setting on the camera will expose for the sun lit area behind your subject, and not for the lower light levels coming from your bounced light. So you will get your best results setting your camera on manual, and adjusting the settings until the faces are properly exposed.

DennisDavisPhotography.com

There is an old fashion rule that dates back to film days, but it still works. It is the “sunny 16” rule, and it works like this. If your subject is in direct sunlight with no clouds or shade, then the correct exposure is f16 with the shutter speed matching the ISO. For example, if your shutter speed is 1/100 of a second and your ISO is 100, f16 will be the correct exposure if your subject has direct sunlight on their front. If your ISO is 400 use the closest shutter speed, which may be 1/400 or 1/500 of a second.

Use the sunny 16 rule as a starting point in your photographs, then adjust and bracket your exposures from there. I always press the “info” button on my Canon 5D Mark II, which brings up a histogram. If you don’t know how to find the histogram screen on your camera, take out the manual or camera and find it at once! The kind of histogram graph you want to see most of the time will look like a mountain or hill, with all of the data picking in the middle of the chart. If there are large peaks of data on the left side of your histogram, your picture is very dark. If there are peaks touching the right side of your histogram, you will have over exposed areas in your picture.

In the case of the portrait lighting setup one I described earlier, you should see some very high peaks in your histogram touching the right side of the chart. That’s because the halo or outline effect you want using the sun as a back light or “rim light” should be over exposed. On blond models, the highlights of the hair may look pure white.

Portrait setup 2, outdoors

Dennis Davis Photography

Place your portrait subject under the overhang a porch or a large tree, just inside the shaded area.  One side of their face should be lit by the skylight coming in under the porch or tree, and the other side of their face will be darker, as it is further from the skylight. This setup can be done almost any time of day, even if the sun is directly overhead. You do not want any direct sunlight to fall on your subject, only skylight. Add a reflector on the darker side of their face if there is too much contrast with only skylight.

Portrait setup 3, outdoors

With the sun low in the sky, place your subject so that direct sunlight falls on only one side of their face, and the other side is in shadow. Place a reflector on the shaded side of their face for one effect, or have the subject hold a reflector at waist height, bouncing the light from below back up in their face. If you have two reflectors, try placing them at both positions as well.

Portrait setup 4, indoors

Find a large window that has skylight coming through it, with no direct sunlight. A window on the north side of the building will often be the best. Have your subject lean against the window frame, with one side of their face almost touching the glass. Make sure the background behind the subject is simple and uncluttered, and if not, bring in a plant or remove items to make the background more attractive. The soft light coming through the window should highlight the side of their face closest to the window, and fall off naturally on the side away from the window. Add a reflector next to the shaded side of their face, and see which lighting you prefer.

The light level for indoor light is much lower than the outdoor setups. You may need to use a tripod due to using a lower shutter speed. I will often use an ISO of 400 for portrait setup 4, a shutter speed of 1/60 and an aperture of around f8 or f5.6. Make sure to focus on the subject’s eyes, as your depth of field is very shallow at that aperture.

For all of the portrait setups, I prefer to use a medium telephoto, at around 100 mm. This longer lens will cause the background to blur behind the subject, and keep the focus of the picture on the person in your portrait.

Photography is painting and writing with light. You must learn to understand and control light, to make the kind of portraits people will love.

Los Angeles California Architectural Photography

Architectural Photography by Dennis Ray Davis, of DennisDavisPhotography.com , featuring architecture interiors and exteriors of commercial buildings, real estate and business photography. We shoot architecture photography in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Torrance, Burbank, Glendale, Sherman Oaks, Hollywood, Irvine, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and other Southern California locations.

Dennis Ray Davis is a famous architecture photographer, shooting for clients like Panda Express, U.P.S., AutoNation, NASA and others. 

Controlling Natural Light for Better Portraits

DennisDavisPhotography.com

A free photography workshop titled “Controlling Natural Light for Better Portraits” will be held Saturday, July 28, from 2:00 – 4:30 p.m. in downtown Denver. The workshop is for intermediate level photographers who want to learn to make better pictures of people by using reflectors, continuous lights and on-camera flash. The workshop will be taught by Denver corporate photographer Dennis Ray Davis, recently of Los Angeles. His photography website www.DennisDavisPhotography.com displays portraits shot for companies like Google, Hewlett Packard, Columbus Life, Wells Fargo and FedEx.

The workshop will be held at The Block Building, 2990 Larimer Street, Denver, CO 80205, and outdoors in Curtis Park two blocks from The Block Building. The workshop will cover how to use reflectors to control and redirect light from the sun, continuous indoor lights and flash. Local Denver fashion models will be available as portrait subjects throughout the workshop.

Workshop attendees should bring a digital camera with interchangeable lenses, and a reflector if they have one. A shiny silver or white poster board from a drug store makes an excellent reflector. Plenty of free street parking is available on Saturdays at the workshop location. Seating is limited to the first 60 attendees. The workshop is sponsored by LAF Downtown, a Christian fellowship promoting the arts in Denver. Phone 720-999-0494 for additional information, or email davis@davisphotographic.com

Los Angeles California Food Photographer

Los Angeles food photographer Dennis Davis displays a video portfolio featuring images used for food packaging, restaurant menus, frozen food packages, posters, websites and food product advertising. Food stylists were used for each of the images. Images were created with a Canon 5D Mark II, and video was produced in Adobe Premiere CS5. All images copyright Dennis Davis Photography. We shoot food in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Torrance, Glendale, Huntington Beach, Burbank, Sherman Oaks, Costa Mesa, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Irvine, and throughout Southern California.

See DennisDavisPhotography.com for additional images and information, or call 213-434-3344

Ten Tips for Starting a Successful Photography Business

DennisDavisPhotography.com

Starting a professional photography business is a dream that many creative people have, but the reality is not as easy as it looks. Working with top fashion models, glamorous movie stars and famous celebrities looks exciting and easy. All you have to do is push the shutter button, right? No, there is a little more to it than that. Competition for a staff photography position is fierce, and starting your own business requires marketing, business and networking abilities as well as creative and technical skills. So what steps can you take to make this career your own?

Education

If you work for yourself, no degree is required, but you will still need lots of skills. If you work for a company, a two or four year degree from a college or accredited art school will put you ahead of the crowd. If you are in a photography school or program, there are several things that you will want to know in order to succeed. Study marketing, website design, business, accounting and social media if you want to have your business in front of enough customers to get noticed. Otherwise you could be a great photographer who is flipping hamburgers because nobody has seen your work.

You can teach yourself about the technical aspects of lighting subjects and editing pictures by reading books, magazine articles and websites about photography, or attending seminars held by working photographers. You can practice what you have studied by getting some lights and reflectors to practice with, and shooting still life arrangements, interiors or friends and family members.

Internships

DavisPhotographic.com

Many photography studios have openings for interns, divided almost equally between paid and unpaid positions. Many photography schools require an internship in a working studio, and paid positions usually require a student that is nearing the end of their education. Unpaid positions are easier to find, but photographers tend to not trust unpaid interns until they have proven a willingness be reliable and to show up on time.

Working with a busy photographer is an excellent way to learn the photography business. Be aware that photographers specialize in various subjects, and if you want to learn product photography don’t expect to get that from a wedding and portrait photographer. However, photographers in smaller towns tend to be generalists, and in major markets like Los Angeles and New York they tend to specialize in narrow area, such as fashion or corporate.

Portfolio Samples

No one is going to believe in you if you don’t, and no one is going to invest their money in your photography if you don’t invest time and money into creating great portfolio pieces. For every category you want to offer, you will need 10-15 AMAZING samples in your portfolio. For example, if you want to shoot fashion, you will want to work with an excellent hair stylist, a makeup artist, and a clothing stylist, or you will have to do those functions at a professional level yourself. Many student and startup photographers work with models and makeup artist who want to “test”, and are willing to shoot for free in exchange for pictures for their own portfolios. Food photographers will want to create portfolio images with experienced food stylists, and product photographers will benefit from prop stylists. People with these skills cannot be found in abundance in small towns, so you may have to work in a major market to create these portfolio images effectively.

Website / Online Portfolio

Your photography website is how most people will discover how wonderful you are. Make it a good one. Websites that have slide shows and moving images are often built with Adobe Flash, which is like a brick wall for search engines. You will want a website created with HTML, and perhaps with a plug-in or widget that displays your portfolio pictures in a smooth and elegant fashion. WordPress websites are gaining popularity, and there are a number of WordPress themes that include photo galleries. Adobe DreamWeaver has photo gallery “widgets” that are easier for search engines to read than Flash based websites.

Competing with other photographers to be on the first page of major search engines is a constant battle. You will need to spend several hours every week promoting your website. In a search engine, type in keywords such as “photographer’s directories, business directories, photographer’s listing, city business directories, etc. Some of these directories are free, many require a payment. You will want to list your website with as many directories as you can, as the more links you have to your website, the higher your website will rank.

If you want to get immediate traffic to your website, you will want to explore “Pay-Per-Click” programs with major search engines such as Bing, Yahoo and Google. Facebook and other social media also have pay-per-click programs. In a major market such as New York or Los Angeles, a photographer might pay as much as $5-10 for a single person clicking on a link for keywords like Annual Report Photographer or Fashion Catalog Photographer. However, an annual report photo shoot could pay $6,000 or more, and it is unusual for a client to consider more than three to six photographers for any one job, so the return on the investment for pay-per-click advertising can be very high if done correctly.

Do What You Love

DennisDavisPhotography.com

If you shoot a subject that you really enjoy, your love will show in your images. I love nature, particularly flowers and waterfalls. When I was first developing my skills as a young photographer, I would spend weekends at a huge resort and garden in Georgia. I learned to use a macro lens, reflectors and hand held strobes to capture the details of flowers like azaleas and rhododendrons. I loved the subtle colors and delicate stamens, and I could see every piece of pollen on the stamen tips in my close-up shots. I showed my flower portfolio to the marketing director of the gardens, and she hired me to shoot the images for one of their nature trails. They paid me $400 for sticking my nose in flowers for half a day, and when I brought my friends to the gardens, I showed them my images on the trail signs. I felt like the king of the world, because someone had appreciated my eye for beauty enough to pay me for it.

Many male photographers want to shoot fashion so they can be around hot chicks all day. Why do you think fashion photography is so competitive? This is not a new thing; I am sure that many of the artists that did paintings of nude women during the last thousand years felt the same way. I love to eat, and have developed skill for food photography that has been used on frozen food packaging, restaurant menus, catering brochures, the sides of trucks, outdoor billboards and on flat screen displays in fast food restaurants. Specialize in a subject that you love to photograph, and you will be happier for it.

Locate in a market with a need for your strengths

If you are shooting weddings and family portraits, your research can focus on cities with a low ratio of photographer compared to the population. You can work in almost any state, as people get married everywhere. However, if you want to be at the top of your game, Hawaii is the wedding capitol of the US. Fashion photography requires top models, hair and makeup artist, and clothing stylists. Much of this work is in south Florida, Southern California and New York. Food Photography is done mostly in major markets, such as Chicago, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, as that’s where the food stylists and the advertising agencies hiring food photographers are located. Architectural photography can be done successfully in any city with a population of over 2 million. Where do you want to live, and what kind of weather and lifestyle will you need to be happy? If your photography is mostly outdoors, will there be enough sunny days to work more than 50% of the time?

Equipment

You will need own at least some of your photography gear, but in larger cities you can rent what you need for a special shoot. See my blog article on buying lights and equipping a home studio from several years ago. I recommend a digital camera body with a minimum of 12 megapixels, more is better. You will want at least 3 lenses, and an on-camera flash. Buy the best quality you can afford, and then stick with it. Most professionals use Canon or Nikon cameras for the bulk of their work.

I started my second photography business with only one strobe and a camera that had a sticky shutter. I landed a cookbook project, got a $5,000 deposit, and used the money to buy a second mono light strobe and a digital camera body. I really needed a third strobe, but I learned to use reflectors where the third light should be, and didn’t buy a third strobe until half-way through the project when I got a second deposit. Many of my shots for the cookbook used available light coming through skylights in the restaurant ceiling, which I picked up and reflected back into the shadows with 3 or 4 silver or white reflectors.

When I have a large shoot that requires more gear than I own, I rent from camera stores or photography rental places. Most rental stores will require that you have insurance to cover their gear, or will require a deposit in the full amount of the cost of the equipment. The insurance is cheaper. I carry 2 million in liability insurance, as well as full coverage on my own equipment, and $40,000 in rental equipment insurance. That way, if I need to rent a high end medium format camera, several lenses and a light or two, I have it covered.

The future of professional photography

With digital cameras on every cell phone, and free photo editing software on the web, many people that used to use professional photography are now doing it themselves. However, people are still willing to pay for photography for important events or for selling services or products. Very few people will trust their wedding photos to the best man using his iPhone. Few marketing directors of fast food chains will try to shoot the company’s hamburgers themselves.

Newspapers are losing popularity rapidly, and many magazines sell more advertising online then in the printed magazine. However the web has created a huge demand for images and video that will only increase. Stock photography for web use is on the rise, so investigate making money in stock stills or video. I see more still photographers shooting video now that many still cameras can shoot HD footage, and many of them bundle stills and video together as a package. Video is becoming more popular on the web as a selling tool, and most companies want a video on their website as well as stills. However, many still photographers forget that half of a good video is the sound, and they fail to provide quality microphones and sound mixing with their footage.

Invest in Yourself

If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? If you are considering a career, or have already started one in photography, invest in your training, skills and equipment, as well as time in promoting your business. Never stop learning. Read photography books and articles. Go to meetings with other professional photographers in groups like ASMP, PPA or APA. This field changes constantly, and if you don’t keep up you will fall behind.

DennisDavisPhotography.com

Light

The most important thing to understand about photography is light. Learn to love it, embrace it, and marvel in its beauty. Photography is writing and painting with light. Light has direction, color, softness or hardness, and you must learn to control and redirect the light to illuminate your subject so that it can be seen and fully appreciated. If you become a master of controlling light, you will be a master photographer. 

Annual Report Photography - Three Styles

Columbus Life Art Director wanted powerful outdoor portraits
DennisDavisPhotography.com

Change is a part of life, and keeping up with the changes in our industry requires studying recent work by our peers and competitors. Although changes in taste in annual report photography is slower than say, fashion or food, there are still trends. Compare the shots for Columbus Life made last month with those of Hewlett Packard and Quantas made 5 years ago.

Columbus Life

In April 2011, I shot portraits for an annual report for Columbus Life, a dba for the Western and Southern Life Insurance Company. The setting was a Japanese Garden at California State University Long Beach. A featured employee was Asian, and the Art Director wanted to speak to his culture without being overpowering. The first suggestion was to shoot in an Asian market or shopping area, but I think the garden shots turned out much better than that idea would have. Note the use of wide angle lenses on both shots, this indoor image shot in March 2012, also for Columbus Life.

Many books on portraits teach photographers to use telephoto (long) lenses for portraits, and never use wide angle lenses due to the distortion they can cause to the subjects. However, I like this look, and find it interesting and unusual. Note how different the Columbus Life portraits look from the Hewlett Packard portraits shown next - do you spot a trend?

Hewlett Packard 


In March 2006 I photographed Hewlett Packard's annual stockholder's meeting in Los Angeles. What would normally have been a straight-forward corporate event photo shoot was made much more challenging by the request that the photographs be taken without flash. I knew that I would be shooting at a high ISO and was concerned about grain in my digital images. However, I shot most of the meeting at 800 ISO, and my Canon 5D sensor performed amazingly well, with no noticeable noise.

The V.P. of Communications at HP wanted to get the images out on the wire with AP within minutes of completing the meeting, so I had to give my compact flash cards to a graphic designer during the meeting. The stage was lit with tungsten spotlights, half were gelled blue, and half were the basic 3200 Kelvin color spots.Everything was shot on-tripod, and shutter speeds ranged from 1/30 to 1/90 of a second at f4-f8. With a few of the slower shutter speed shots I got some hand movement blur, but overall the images were sharp and crisp with no problems. Hewlett Packard's V.P. of Communications told me that the images were much better than he expected, and better than those most of those taken without flash at previous events.



Patricia Dunn, chairman of the board of directors at HP, and Mark Hurd, chief executive officer and president, are the speakers shown, and I was able to speak to them after the meeting. On October 4, 2006 Bill Lockyer, the California attorney general, charged Dunn with four felonies for her role in the in the HP spying scandal. On March 14, 2007, California Superior Court judge Ray Cunningham dropped criminal charges against her in the "interest of justice." It was interesting to watch someone I had photographed go through this process.




Quantas 

One month after shooting Hewlett Packard's annual stockholder's meeting, I was hired to shoot images for the travel division of Quantas' Annual Report in April 2006. The Art Director was looking for “classic, but fun corporate portraits”. We shot in the conference room, in offices, and at cubes. She wanted to include subtle hints about the travel business, so we included model airplanes, travel brochures and posters, and stuffed kangaroos and koala bears in some of the images. I find it interesting how each different Art Director took a unique approach to planning the portraits, and how very different they look. The trend I spotted in comparing these images from those made 5 years ago is the art director showed a willingness to take more risks and be more daring with composition.

You can learn something about the culture and feel of each company by looking at their approach towards Annual Report Photography.

The Canon 5D Mark II, shooting video

The Canon 5D was my primary camera for two years SO when the Canon 5D Mark II was released, I looked forward to getting one. Some of the features I was most excited about was jumping from 13 mega pixels to 21 mega pixels, the larger LCD screen, and the self cleaning sensor. The video feature was interesting, but I didn’t take it seriously.

I had the Mark II about two months, and couldn’t figure out how to use the video after reading the instruction manual several times. I got the live view to work, but wasn’t able to record and play back. So when I saw that Adobe was offering a free seminar on using Adobe Premiere CS5 with the Canon 5D Mark II, I attended the event. I was amazed by how they were using this camera! The presenter was with a video production company called the Bandito Brothers, see http://www.banditobrothers.com.


The brothers were using Mark II cameras with $300,000 movie lenses with custom Canon mounts. They had 16 Mark II camera bodies, and were using them in the mix with other much more expensive video cameras. Their client list includes Mountain Dew, BMW, and the U.S. Navy.

I learned that where the Canon 5D Mark II excels is in low light situations, under water, when a small, lightweight camera is needed, or when the videographer is looking for shallow depth of field and a widescreen “cinema” look. The color and definition is superb, and at 1920p x 1080p the high definition video is the real deal. I left the seminar inspired and excited, and went home and watched a number of training videos on how to use the camera for video. I began to think it might be possible to add video to my photography business services.

Knowing that I was in over my head, I began talking to my long time friend and videographer, Justin Stovall. Justin has worked for CBS and Warner Brothers, and went to film school at UCLA. He was a cameraman on shows like CSI Miami, Lie to Me and the Mentalist. I had been talking to Justin for years about starting a video production company, but with a Canon 5D Mark II; shooting great HD video was a reality. We formed an LLC called IronMyst Video Productions, and I started building our first website, www.IronMyst.com

Starting any kind of company in a down economy is a challenge at best, but starting a video production company in Los Angeles, with the highest concentration of video companies of any city in America, is just plain crazy. Justin had saved enough money to live off of for a while without income, and enough to buy us a “rig” and a 5 inch battery powered video monitor. We decided to focus on the same kind of clients I have for my photography business, www.DennisDavisPhotography.com , food, corporate, advertising and architecture.

Five months and 8 or 9 video shorts later, I am a lot more familiar with what the 5D can do, and cannot do. You will need to spend more than the camera costs to get the accessories needed to shoot quality video, but it is worth the expense and effort.

Canon 5D Mark II video strengths:

1. The video quality is amazing. Rich color, beautiful highlights.

2. Small, lightweight, easy to carry

3. Great in low light situations, requires fewer lights in the studio than standard video cameras

4. All your Canon lenses work, so you have more options than when using a camera with one lens

Canon 5D Mark II video weaknesses:

1. Sound is a problem. The internal microphone is unusable. I purchased a $200 shotgun microphone that mounts on the hot shoe, which is good enough for corporate interviews in a quiet setting. For broadcast quality sound, you will need to invest in an external device that will allow you to plug in boom and lapel mics, and software to make it work with your video.

2. You will need one or more “rigs” that assist with focus, zoom and holding the camera steady. These could include a tripod rig, shoulder mount rig, a “steady cam rig” and so forth. We spent $2,400 on our tripod rig.

3. The monitor on the back of the camera is too small to see if your video is in focus. So you will need an eyepiece with a magnifying lens or an external monitor.

4. Some Canon lenses do not zoom smoothly, even with the large knobs on our rig. The gears mesh well, but there are little bumps and jerks with some of my older zoom lenses.
Canon Professional Services is a program for professional photographers that allow them to borrow Canon products for two weeks and try them. I was able to compare Canon XF 305, a $7,000 video camera, with the Canon 5D Mark II, in several side by side shoots. Here are my thoughts on comparing the two cameras.

The XF 305 advantages, however would also apply to many other high end video cameras:

1. Power Zoom. It is very difficult to get smooth, slow zooms with most of my lenses doing manual zooms with my rig and the 5D. The zooms on the XF 305 are smooth and beautiful.

2. Sound. The XF 305 has a good stereo mic build in, plus two professional 3 prong microphone inputs for boom or lapel mics. The 5D requires an accessory device to get the same results.

3. Viewing the video. The XF 305 has a building eyepiece monitor, and a good size flip down monitor, that works well on location. You will need accessories for the 5D to get the same results.

4. Frame rate. The XF 305 can shoot at 24, 30 and 50 frames per second, the 5D at 24 and 30. The 50 frames per second speed is good for recording video that you plan to slow down for slow motion effects.

5. Autofocus. Works great, tracks moving objects well. The 5D autofocus is not as good, less likely to track a moving object or person.

The Canon 5D advantages over the XF 305:

1. Better video. More contrast, better color, more shallow depth of field, more of a big screen movie feel.

2. Better in low light. The XF 305 was really grainy at the default setting of 50 frames per second at night. When we lowered it to 30 frames a second, it improved, but the 5D was still better.

3. Smaller, lighter. When you add a rig to a 5D it can get bulky, but shooting with minimal accessories the 5D less to carry.

I was also able to shoot some video with the Canon 7D, and although it has many of the advantages of the 5D, it does not have a full frame sensor, so it lacks that big screen movie feel that the 5D has.

You may see our videos at http://www.IronMyst.com/htm/portfolio.html Most of videos were shot with the 5D, and I think you will be impressed with the food commercials shot entirely with the 5D. We will shortly release a video on Long Beach that was shot with the XF 305 and the 5D; can you tell which footage was shot with which camera?

Summary:

If you are considering the purchase of a Canon 5D Mark II for still photography, I highly recommend the camera and the lens system. The quality of the images are only about 20% less than the $40,000 Phase One P45 medium format digital back and Mamiya 645 body that I used to shoot with, and with lots more zoom choices and lighter body.

If you are considering purchasing a 5D Mark II for video production, plan on spending $5,000 to $8,000 on accessories, rigs, monitors, microphones, etc. to bring the abilities of the camera up to that of a standard video camera. I recommend having both a 5D and a standard video camera in your video bag if you can afford it. But if you can only afford one video camera, you could do a lot worse than the Canon 5D Mark II. If I had to do it over again, I would buy the 5D.