Canon Commercial -- Pretty Cool

KED · May 28, 2008

Rob Galbraith posted recently that Canon had made a commercial for the Rebel Xti that was made up of nothing but sequential still frames of miscellaneous football action -- from peewee to street ball to the NFL. The images were shot by 10 photographers shooting the action simultaneously, and the 30 second commercial was culled from 70,000 images. The ironic twist is that the 10 photogs were all using 1DMkIIIs (according to Rob Galbraith) for the Xti commercial. :rofl

Anyway, the commercial itself is good, but what I think people here will enjoy more is the "making of" video that is posted on Canon's website:

http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/NFL/index.html?id=commercial

From there you can navigate to the commercial itself.

If some of you find this as interesting as I do (I've watched this video 4 or 5 times), then I am curious -- no white lenses, so what lenses do you think those shooters are using? You really need to know your Canon lenses to be able to answer that because they don't linger on anything in this video for very long.

TaDa · May 28, 2008

KED wrote:

Rob Galbraith posted recently that Canon had made a commercial for the Rebel Xti that was made up of nothing but sequential still frames of miscellaneous football action -- from peewee to street ball to the NFL. The images were shot by 10 photographers shooting the action simultaneously, and the 30 second commercial was culled from 70,000 images. The ironic twist is that the 10 photogs were all using 1DMkIIIs (according to Rob Galbraith) for the Xti commercial.

Anyway, the commercial itself is good, but what I think people here will enjoy more is the "making of" video that is posted on Canon's website:

http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/NFL/index.html?id=commercial

From there you can navigate to the commercial itself.

If some of you find this as interesting as I do (I've watched this video 4 or 5 times), then I am curious -- no white lenses, so what lenses do you think those shooters are using? You really need to know your Canon lenses to be able to answer that because they don't linger on anything in this video for very long.

Saw a fair amount of 24-70s, 24-105s and I figure that the non-Ls were most likely 17-55s. They looked about the right size.

aktse · May 28, 2008

I like the commerical, but I have one major problem with it.

They're selling the new rebels, but the 70,000 frames were shot with the 1dmIII

KED · May 28, 2008

TaDa wrote:

Saw a fair amount of 24-70s, 24-105s and I figure that the non-Ls were most likely 17-55s. They looked about the right size.

I picked up the 24-105s a little bit (I oughta be able to, I have one!), but none of those short lenses seemed right for the shots they were taking - especially where all the shooters were following the arc of the football). I'm sure you're right about the lenses, but they don't make sense for some of the (photography) settings.

KED · May 28, 2008

aktse wrote:

I like the commerical, but I have one major problem with it.

They're selling the new rebels, but the 70,000 frames were shot with the 1dmIII

I hope I linked to the video and not the commercial itself, but:
Glass half full: the joy of photography.
Glass half empty: Disingenuous bait and switch.

I'm fully pregnant with Canon, so it doesn't matter. I liked the rhythms they used, generated from the shutter sounds in burst and single shot modes.

evoryware · May 28, 2008

It says

The TV Commercial for the Rebel XSi demonstrates ... real photographs taken by Canon digital SLR cameras. Virtually every frame was captured on EOS cameras and combined to show ... photography

Then they show you how they made it!

So I don't see a problem with it.

TaDa · May 28, 2008

Oh, and I saw a couple non-1 series bodies. You can tell that some of the bodies were gripped

claudermilk · May 29, 2008

KED wrote:

I picked up the 24-105s a little bit (I oughta be able to, I have one!), but none of those short lenses seemed right for the shots they were taking - especially where all the shooters were following the arc of the football). I'm sure you're right about the lenses, but they don't make sense for some of the (photography) settings.

Which goes right along with 1D MkIII images being used in a Rebel commercial.

KED · May 29, 2008

claudermilk wrote:

Which goes right along with 1D MkIII images being used in a Rebel commercial.

Maybe all the White Lenses were photoshopped out!

Tango · May 29, 2008

eitherway its an inspiring commercial, it would have been better if they stuck to one subject....like the little boy growing up and making it to the big time....

Tango · May 29, 2008

the "making" was serious overkill dont ya think?....

heck a few dgrinners could have done it on half that budget and would have been set for years and years....:D

KED · May 29, 2008

AaronNelson wrote:

the "making" was serious overkill dont ya think?....

heck a few dgrinners could have done it on half that budget and would have been set for years and years....:D

Seems like the commercial and the video were aimed at entirely different audiences.

Robinivich · May 29, 2008

Lack of white lenses I'm guessing is due to cropping. A typical TV is still around 640X480, which is a pretty small chunk of a ten megapixel image. Not that I think we were looking at 100% crops, but it leaves an awful lot of cropping options. Also they were clearly looking for a massive variety of perspectives and shots, so having "normal" zooms would let them go both wide and long, and crop what more they needed.

Mike02 · May 31, 2008

aktse wrote:

I like the commerical, but I have one major problem with it.

They're selling the new rebels, but the 70,000 frames were shot with the 1dmIII

Yeah... Kinda lame there....

robscomputer · May 31, 2008

Maybe I'm missing the point but the commercial seems unimpressive. Especially when you consider they couldn't trust the Rebel for taking the pictures.

If I was directing the commerical I would have 20 amature photographers with Rebels at different football games, then combine the images. The commercial just seemed too pre-staged, like they just set the camera took pictures in high burst then arragned them in a photostory method.

Canon Commercial -- Pretty Cool

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