Trying to film Christmas Lights!

dboy21 · Dec 27, 2012

Hello Everyone! I'm looking for some advice on the best way to film Christmas lights. Not just regular lights, LEDs that are synchronized to music! For a few years I have done a Christmas light show at my home and it's been a pain to say the least to film. This year I changed my lights over to RGB LED pixels which allows me to control every bulb, all 2,000 of them! My issue is trying to capture video! I'm in the market for a new camera, but not sure what to get. Several people in my hobby use Canon DSLR's, Nikon DSLR's, and everything in between. Some suggest using a camera with 3CCD because that's the only way to get the video. The problem I see is even the high end DSLR's don't look great! Are we approaching this the wrong way? Is using a still camera for video the wrong method? I do realize the correct answer is more than just a paragraph in a forum, but any info would be great! Thanks for everyone's time!

Donny

Robin_Usagani · Dec 27, 2012

DSLR can take awesome videos. I would get a DSLR especially if you are not keep changing focus. I mean you will just put it on a tripod, compose, focus, and shoot the video. The bad thing about DSLR for video is that it does not auto focus so it takes practice.

dboy21 · Dec 27, 2012

Robin_Usagani said:
DSLR can take awesome videos. I would get a DSLR especially if you are not keep changing focus. I mean you will just put it on a tripod, compose, focus, and shoot the video. The bad thing about DSLR for video is that it does not auto focus so it takes practice.

It seems that most videos I see that are shoot with a DSLR still look overwhelmed by the lights. Is that because of incorrect settings?

Robin_Usagani · Dec 27, 2012

dboy21 said:
Robin_Usagani said:

DSLR can take awesome videos. I would get a DSLR especially if you are not keep changing focus. I mean you will just put it on a tripod, compose, focus, and shoot the video. The bad thing about DSLR for video is that it does not auto focus so it takes practice.

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It seems that most videos I see that are shoot with a DSLR still look overwhelmed by the lights. Is that because of incorrect settings?

I am not sure what you mean. There have been a few hollywood movies that were shot with DSLR. A lot of adult movies were shot with DSLR. A few episodes of TV series were shot with DSLR (I think House M.D. was one of them).

Just like photography, you can adjust the aperture to make it brighter and darker (and change the depth of field).