I recently attended the Cincinnati JACL Potluck. Great food and company and Taiko Drummers. The room was relatively small. To shoot the video,  I used the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 VC lens my Canon 7D with my zoom H4n for audio. Finally, I matched up the audio and video using Final Cut Express. (Can’t wait to get FCP)

First, it was a very good thing i decided to use the Zoom H4n for audio.  When I got home, the audio off the Canon was severely clipped and sounded like, well… you know what it sounded like. In order to get the transients corrrect on the H4n, I had to manually reduce the recording level to 20 (Which is real low).  The results speak for themselves.  The audio really does capture the dynamics that we experienced live.

For the first video, I thought I would try to record in 720p 60fps.  My thought process was that the high speed of the drummers would be better captured at the higher frame rate.  When I looked at the full res version of the video I was, not impressed.  Here is the video below.

720p 60fps + Low Light = Digital Noise!

I was really surprised to see all the digital noise on the drum casing. At first, I thought is was an issue with the lens. Luckily, I recorded one of their later songs (performance?) in 1080p 24fps. There is a significant difference. See the video below.

1080p 24fps + Low Light = Less Digital Noise

Even in the compressed youtube version, you can still see a significant improvement in the digital noise. What gives. So I looked at my settings for my Canon 7D. In the 720p mode, I have the shutter speed set to 125 or roughly double what the fps (frames per second) spec of this recording mode. In the 1080p mode, I have the shutter speed set to a lower 50 speed. From these settings I can assume that more light will get let in at the lower setting. This makes sense.

Conclusion

I guess I learned the hard way that if you shoot at higher frame rates, you need more light. Duh. The ambient light was not enough to prevent the digital noise captured in the 720p mode. Good lesson. Let me know what you think.