This morning I decided to try out some more video with my new 500D, as I really want to get a handle on how to use it.  Well it turned out to be a bit of a disaster really, for a number of reasons, some my fault, and some not.  I headed into central London to film some of the rehearsal for next weeks Trooping the Colour.

My main realisation from this outing was that when using the video, I really should be using a tripod whenever possible.  Handheld just makes life so much more difficult.  As you can see from the video there’s quite a bit of shaking.  Unfortunately my tripod is broken at the moment, so I haven’t been able to use it with the new camera.  So tomorrow i’ll be heading out to buy a new tripod.

Secondly I realised that I really don’t know what i’m doing with video!  Until I got my 500D i’d never shot any video, so I had no starting point.  To be honest i’ve not really read the manual either.  I really need to spend some time studying the camera and learning about video.  Admittedly it would be useful if the video had manual controls, so i’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a firmware update from Canon like they’ve just done with the 5D mkII, but I don’t have high hopes.

The final thing I learnt today is that its not a good idea to film in the rain, although I guess that’s sort of obvious!  When I left the house it was fine and the weatherman had said that it wouldn’t rain until the afternoon so I figured it would be safe.  Turned out I was wrong, by the time I got to the Mall it was pouring it down.  I only stayed a short time, but even in that time I got soaked through!

So a few lessons learnt today.

It was my birthday a few days ago, so I’m back home in Yorkshire visiting my family for the weekend.  As i’m a twin, it was also my brothers birthday so today he decided to make us a birthday cake.  I decided to use it as an opportunity to try out the video on my new camera again.

My brother (who is excellent in the kitchen) made a gorgeous chocolate cake.  If you want to see how to make the cake head over to his blog at bakingbynumbers.wordpress.com and the recipe will go up some time soon.

So yesterday I recievied my brand new Canon EOS 500D (or T1i), unfortunately because of a busy work day I didn’t get to try it out yesterday.  So today I got to properly play around with it and get a feel for it.

The one big thing I’m going to have to learn is how to use the Video and the live view.  The way it works feels quite different to what I have become used to and it could take a while before i’m comfortable with it.  However I did take the video out for a test drive this lunch time and will be posting the results later tonight.

However as a little taster of the video, here is a short clip that i’ve already uploaded from the excellent Gurkha announcement made today.  I will talk more about the Gurkha’s in my next post tonight and that will hopefully include a better and longer video of the event.