Using a Camcorder to Record Family Events Quickly and Easily

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Let's start there (but do not spend too much time on it because you've probably already checked on their use ):

On / Off - On some brands actually have to find two or three switches to accomplish this. You May be required to choose between camera and VCR or VTR, you may need to open the door over the lens or remove a lens cap, and May you have a choice of shots, locked, standby, or video. Probably you're ready when you see the picture in the viewfinder without unexpected icon flashing in the middle.

Zoom - changes the lens setting from wide angle to telephoto. See what's happening in the viewfinder.

Red "Take" button - Rolls tape. Usually the "REC" shows in the viewfinder when shooting and "STDBY" indicates when the tape is stopped.

In addition, everything else is automated on most consumer cameras. You just have to master all those other buttons if you want to take control of things such as focus, exposure, shutter speed, color balance, image stabilization, depth of field, freeze the movement, volume, and tons of other special effects and titling. On most camcorders defaults producers a place to start - you've done a very good job of taming all these options. You just need to make changes to certain scenes when you see things going wrong. So, let's trail through all the buttons and menu options out there now. Instead let's focus on you and all the problems you can do.

Let's examine the other areas that are separate of the pro beginners. He always said, I often found that if you put a bunch of junk cheapest camcorder in the hands of Pro, resulting footage will look garish. It does not work the other way around. It's not the tools that separate 8-year-old baking her first cake from her grandmother - that's a lot of little things, some of which are difficult and tedious document, and some of which belong to the debates and hot arguments that could be brought down along the Category called "style ."

Let's get you started with some of the obvious areas. As you shoot the video will, of course, get competitive with and wonder why the images do not measure up shots you can see on television and in films. This will cause you to add tricks to the trade consciously and unconsciously. Most of us are very critical of the spectators and TV movies.

the first sign that the act of running an amateur camera comes when you realize that it bounces around, because handheld pictures (and can actually make some viewers seasick, watch out!). The standard answer to this is to lug around a tripod with you . This is great if you will be placed in the same place for more than three minutes of filming the game or stage performance, but if you're zipping around like a fly on the wall you have to take other measures. Here are a few:

Lean on things while shooting for yourself stabilize. Find a tree, wall, table, buddy. . .

Take a deep breath and hold it. Dig your elbows into your ribs inflated to create a triangle consolidation system between the camcorder and your stable chest. Do not answer any questions thrown at you and stop recording before your whole body starts convulsing trying to clean up stale air.

Zoom out (going to the wide angle setting), then move yourself and a camera nearby. Wide angle shots are much easier to hold steady. Zoom telephoto shots you really need a good tripod.

Practice, practice, practice. While rolling tape, select a stationary object near the corner of the viewfinder, the lock on it, and do not let it move in the viewfinder. This turns your entire nervous and muscular system in a self-correcting stabilize the machine. It becomes second nature, if you work on it enough as a waitress can carry a tray of drinks without spilling any.

Push "take" button to stop rolling tape when you realize you're about to lose stability. You'd be surprised how many pictures to take cameraman stumbles on something, he loses concentration or literally falling step.

Make sure the camera is built-in motion stabilization feature is turned on. On some brands of stabilization feature supposedly snaps and jerks too many pictures as the camera is moved around. You will hear that the feature should be turned off. Do not accept this advice as gospel - to play with him for some time, because this is the first complaint is true only to a small percentage of the camcorder

.

Do not throw away by using a small mono or under very light portable tripod for those "moving" shots. It will not serve you well when working with long event, but it may be just the ticket when moving around like a fly on the wall.

The second rule is to think about how long the recordings should be. Watch TV and count how many of their recordings run. You will notice that the average 30-second commercial can have 20 different shots. Pretty much the same with MTV. Now watch the situation comedies and police, a robber story - perhaps the footage will remain at 3 to 5 seconds. Follow up with a slow-running talk show on PBS. Even there, move the camera about 10 seconds went by.

Back when they were taking the advice of your home movie camera film from Kodak, the advice given was to count to 7 and close the shot down. They advised against a lot of short clips jerky. Although it was slower and more gracious time, it is still the rule to seriously consider. Tightly edited sales pitches, action-packed movie clips and music videos may require two fifty-nine second clips, but it was too fast for general family shots. We believe that when people put pictures together in a video presentation, six seconds for each photo is the right time.

On the other hand, you'll lose your audience if you make your shots too. I can not tell you how many times I've seen images of babies being fed in his high chair to a proud parent lets roll for more than a minute. This is equivalent to a 3-hour sermon in church or a filibuster in Congress.

Although I might have no interest in "food baby" sequence if you know a child that could hold our attention, if broken up into multiple images, such as establishing shot shows where we are, hranebeba, look at the mother, the the vicinity of the clutter in the vicinity of maternal stress, picture of a baby wiggling your feet in the air, my mother leaned back in exhaustion. . . . All of this puts you to work operator. You have to move and put together a few shots of the story. Some images may be long, some short, but the overall effect is dramatically improved.

Closely related to this is Rule # 3: Avoid the "hunting" with your camcorder. We have all seen the footage where the camera is driving on the left surveying the scene only to change direction and pan back on the right again, then no, maybe what is in search of a down, let's increase for the second, darn it moved from fire weapons, let's follow the putting it all out of focus, well heck, we seem to be looking at a blank wall, and shake of the camera, it is finally turned off, followed by a totally unrelated shot taken hours later.

to avoid catching the following Rule # 2: turn off the camera when the shot falls apart. You can also avoid catching head from getting behind the camera before you start shooting, and planning what you shoot. If you want a really good shot, maybe practice shot several times before you push the red "take" button. Do you stay in focus, the movement too extreme, there is a light or window that comes and goes like the pan causing the camera to change the color and brightness, etc., etc.?

Paint your photos with the scene moving in one direction, then stop. Do not give up in the same frame. This applies to all three movements to control: panning, tilting and zooming. It seems so simple and yet indecision shows up all over the place in the work of amateurs. You "catch" before "roll." A few seconds of planning pays big dividends.

Rule # 4 builds on two previous rules - vary your shots. Some pictures should be from a distance to determine where we are and some would be very tight, so you can actually see the objects in your video. Some pictures should be long and short. Here's what to avoid:. A lot of mid-range shots with three or more people posing in them

TV "in your face" media - watch it carefully. It sits across the room from vas.Profesionalce cut the tops off his head with impunity. You need to be "firm" on a lot of shots to make it interesting, but want to make it different so do not be too invasive.

must also be sensitive to whether you are above the objects that record makes them look small and dominated by, or under objects, making them look like the economy, controlling and intimidating. If it comes down to the floor with the children they look much more like a small human beings, when looking straight at the camera, but if you always shoot the tops of the head.

Rule # 5: Let the movement come to you - be careful how much you zoom, pan and tilt. Look STO PRO to do and you'll be surprised how little closer view. Any vessel or tilted (looking from side to side or up and down), are generally very slow. When you see professionals pursuing the case, then you'll usually see a steady series of shots that you get your bearings again.

pros hate zooming in and out. Instead, they lay the track, bring in a crane or rent well-trained Steadycam operator to monitor an issue on smoothly. This technology is beyond the reach of casual users, so we zoom. The best advice, zoom slowly and zoom less than every third stroke. Use the zoom feature on the frame in a shot right before you push the red "take" button, and keep your fingers out of it while rolling. Rapid or excessive zoom cause nausea and disorientation of its poor audiences. You do not want to have to provide air sick bags on display.

These rules barely scratched the surface. Begin follow them, and when the photos look more respectable, you'll be ready to study hundreds of other things to see professionals working in major films and on television that makes your images dazzle.

Now we on some of the many buttons on the camcorder. You should have a great owner's manual that explains what to do, and I do not intend to copy it. (Most owners manuals are written in Japanese and then translated into dozens of languages​​, perhaps a computer. A notice is likely to meet the first two pages and is really interesting stuff is often buried away in the fine-print footnotes. Do not be discouraged, you are not alone when you ask if more do not know how to read.) If you have studied a lot of pictures, information that follows may be old hat, but I've got to cover it will show you why you may want to explore some of the keys from time to time.

usually easy control of light and movement. Start with a light: too much light, all blistered out a little too bright and detail is lost in sjeni.Ljudsko eye has a much broader spectrum of light to dark in any scene than any video footage of your opreme.Video "true love "that looks OK can be played back later, standing with white splotches and blisters all over his face. How can something like this happen, you ask? You can assume the camera will "shut down" automatically when the subject got too light.

automation in a camera can fail if there are extremes in any one shot. It adapts to the average brightness. Hot areas with an average dark područjima.Raspon can handle the ograničena.Srednji or average volume you are trying to capture may not be the setting you want to correct the exposure in which the real subject is very "hot" dark hole surrounded by a lot. You can decide to reject the charge detail in dark holes, to get proper exposure of the main building. Recordings someone on stage at the center of attention is the most typical example of manual exposure settings to take the camcorder.

other extreme occurs when the details of its real subject are crushed into a gray mess because the subject is surrounded by very bright backgrounds. You must open exposure, sheds light details in the background so that you can brighten up and see my exact item. Some printers have a button called "backlight", which is for you.

This does not mean that the camera can shoot in very bright or very dark place: can the whole scene is bright or dark the whole scenu.Stvar must be sensitive to occur when there is a mixture of light and dark, its real subject not in the middle range of illumination intensity, a camcorder is calculating the average brightness of the blame for what you want to record.

What you're looking to adjust the exposure? If your camera is there as most of us, there are several ways to adjust exposure - some are redundant, and other extreme cases beyond those discussed above. How to sort it all out?

If your camera has a knob or dial is called exposure and the image gets dark and light, as it turned, then this is where to start. You will need to "turn" says the automation of the camera that you took control of exposure and butt out. This may require you to read the manual - different manufacturers have different ways to block you from tampering with its automatic settings. Once you are in control, here are a few things you should consider a few words of advice:

Be sure you trust the camcorder viewfinder to say. Ideally, you want to play with the camcorder in some very difficult situations, taking and viewing images of the flyer before they "go live" on the face mjesta.Tražilo can have its own settings, if set wrong will lead you astray. For example, if the image in the viewfinder looks dark and dirty, but looks great when played back on TV, brighten the viewfinder settings, rather than setting the exposure shots you take.

Flip the screens are a wonderful invention everywhere except outside on a sunny day. Because it is so hard to see anything on them when it is too bright outside, May you be tempted to shift around on the brightness setting to toggle the screen. Good, but it can seriously mislead you when you come back inside again - be careful. Try to remember the settings before you change it out and return to this point as soon as possible.

When you believe what you see in the viewfinder, to learn what to look for clues to when you turn off the camera and change automation manual exposure control. Then you need to know how to set the exposure manually. Your post was wrong, and it will all come back too dark or too bright -. Unfortunately it is easy to do

There is a trick I use, when to manually adjust the exposure to an event, such as the stage show or wedding. Some automation can help you! Before going to manual exposure, zoom in tight on an important feature that the world pretty much like you expect will be common throughout događaja.Kamkorder to adjust their exposure to a nice mid-point of light on the face. Then turn the manual exposure feature. Normally it will "lock-in" automatic settings that you trust is in order. Do not turn the manual exposure - the camcorder is set to the desired value. You are now free to increase the width of the pan at room knowing that a bright window behind the camera lens will not close down the black hole will cause the face of the main stars of the blister out.

As I mentioned earlier, many cameras have other ways to accomplish the same results with uneven lighting situations. Many of the "backlight" button that will be faced out of the shadows in a scene with lots of hot spots in the background. Solving the second problem, some have special features of the setting that displays an icon with a face in the spotlight. This feature will help eliminate the bubbles in your face video where the main characters are surrounded by a dark hole in the background.

You May find these settings are easy to use that attempts to adjust the exposure manually. Just be sure to turn them off when no longer needed. We see the video shot with a backlight feature is turned on during normal shots - all washed

.

camcorder engineers did not stop there. Lurking behind every man is a senior electronics engineer was a teenager who wants to develop the perfect camera that will take good shots in near darkness. The race is on between the vendors. This means you will probably find even more exposure to solving this problem. Most of these settings result in images with a horrible color, jerky movements and a grainy image. Go there if you must, but all of these features are beyond the scope of this booklet.

the following fundamental question of the focus. Most cameras have a very good auto focus feature. This feature is probably doing better than ever you can do it manually, if you lack experience, or just use your camcorder from time to time. Some situations are confusing automation, however, to get a decent shot, you'll have to jump and take charge.

There are two things to look for: 1) the camera focuses on the wrong thing, and 2) the camera confused and hunt back and forth for something to focus on. Most camcorders today are looking for a sharp vertical edge of the picture. Once found, they are very fast focus and direction in choosing a better sharpen the edge of the picture. This is the same process the eye doctor uses: "Which is better, or B "?

There is no edge in the image: the camera is izgubljen.Jasan edge in the vicinity, and the other in the distance: the camera is confused which one to choose. Most of the time you can help your poor camcorder is only focusing on a clearly defined object that you want to record. If he really lost, and the focus on the dust on their own lenses when you want to capture the sunset, you can move things with that aim the camera to a tree or something in the distance before you push the red button to take. Having focused on the distance shots, it will usually stay there.

If none of this works you're going to have to learn how to turn off automatic focus and ability to take on the focus. This is not complicated. A switch or button gives you control and usually a ring around the lens moves so you can change the focus. Some camcorders let you go to manual, but have a button or spring-loaded switch that lets you tell the camera to automatic focus quickly to do their job and return to manual operation.

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