Mastering your Camera Controls

Understanding how to properly operate your camera can be one of most difficult and challenging tasks to being unconquerable behind the lens. That’s why this time we’re going to take a look at a few simple steps to help understand how to master those controls. First step we’re going to look at the focus and then we’re going to jump in to white balance. After that we’re going to take a look at the iris and after that we’re going to look at the zebra stripes. Following that we’re going to look at audio. I’m Tom Skowronski and this is mastering your camera controls. Now, the first step in this process when it comes to setting your focus manually is to make sure your camera is set to manuals well. Now, the reason we do this is to make sure that we are in control of the camera and what we see to the LCD as supposed to the camera being in control. Most consumer models nowadays, come with the manual setting. Be sure to use it so you the shooters are in control. Next step when you’re out their on your shoots, you need to make sure that you zoom in your subject. You need to make sure you zoom in all the way on your subject and what you’re going to do is focus up from there. Once you’ve focus up from there, you can decide what it is you want to be focus on, the background or the subject. And from there you’re going to zoom out and everything should lie and focus. This is generally how focusing up the camera is going to work. The next step and properly understanding how to master your camera’s controls is understanding how to set your white balance. Now, if you don’t set your white balance your picture can end up a tidbit blue, a little bit orange and it’s not going to look natural. You want your whites to look crisp and clear. The way that you set your white balance is by zooming in on a large white surface. You want the surface to fill the entire frame. Once that frame is full of only one color which happens to be white you’re going to adjust your white balance by pressing the white balance button. Once you do this you’ll notice that the color of the white’s surface that’s full in your frame will actually change. Once that color changes, you're free to zoom out and you will have properly set your white balance. The next step you’re going to utilize is manually controlling your iris. What this is going to do is help control your exposure and your contrast levels when you’re shooting your video. Now with most pro-zoomer level cameras, the iris control is actually going to be a very small ring located at the front of the camera towards the lens, and when it comes to most consumer models it’s surely going to be found inside the on board menu. You’re always going to want to control your iris because it allows you to pick what you want your audience to focus on, where do you want the light to cascade down, and what areas do you want to be dark and what areas do you want to be lit. The next step is understanding how to use your zebras. Now, what this is going to do is tell the operator how overexposed their shot is, and this is very beneficial especially when it comes to interviewing subject because when you get down in a medium shot and you’re shooting their faces, it can really tell you want areas are overexposed with how you’re lighting them, so hot spots are generally the cheek bones, the forehead, the nose. These are all areas where you want to avoid having lots of zebra stripes show up. If you can do that your shot will end up nice, crisps and very professional looking. The last step if you’re going to want to make sure you turn on manual on your audio because if you’re left with auto, it’s going to sound like this. If you know that’s the audio had the almost caste itself, it hide the pick, what is what going to go focus on. First, they focus on the wind and the car noise, and then it focus on the subject actually talking. If we’re on manual, we can avoid this entirely, and one of the other tricks is to make sure that you yourself talk first on camera and get a test. You always want to be prepared especially when shooting video. The last thing you’re going to want is to capture audio at the end of the distorted and that’s why you need to make sure it’s capturing in a very high level, but not too high because then when you get higher and higher with your voice it’s just going to distort. Mastering the camera’s control is one of the most difficult and intimidating process as when it comes to making video, but once you do it allows you to finally focus on the techniques which is about making video is all about.