In the Field: Producing SDEs with the Canon 5D and 7D

EventDV by Elizabeth Avery Merfeld

If Gebbs Wedding Films' Michael Gebben didn't have a strict personal policy against selling clients on technology, you can bet he'd be bragging about the two most significant additions to his arsenal he's made recently: Canon's 5D Mark II and EOS 7D DSLRs. For Gebben, a rising industry star whose demo was recently selected for use in the nationally syndicated TV show Wedlock or Deadlock, these so-called fusion cameras have made his already great-looking same day edits (SDEs)-his studio's specialty-even more spectacular. "SDEs became our big thing" in 2009, he says. And since he started shooting them almost exclusively with the 5D and the 7D, there's even more demand. In fact, all his bookings for 2010 and 2011 are SDE-only.

5D x 2
Until last May, Gebben would have told you that his Canon XH A1 SDE footage was just fine. But when he compared the footage with that captured by his new 5D, "It looked disgusting," he says. "It was just amazing what we could get in the same lighting conditions out of the 5D. The footage out of the A1 with the [Letus] adapter was so much grainier. And the 5D was just so clean." There was no going back.

And what's better than one 5D? Two! After doing some freebie SDEs while learning how to use the 5D, Gebben decided to use it for his first "destination" shoot last July, 5 hours north of his St. Louis-area home base in Milwaukee. Just before the wedding, he decided he wanted another 5D. So he made a detour to Best Buy when he arrived in Milwaukee and bought his second. read more...