Creative Camera Use

When we were practicing with the cameras we undertook several exercises to help us gain new skills.

I learned about auto/manual settings. Autosettings should be used when taking simple shots or amateur films but if you are filming something such as a music video manual settings would be better because this way you can have control over things such as the exposure and focus.

We also learned about the white balance and setting it so that the camera knows what do in different lighting conditions for example inside and outside. Not using the correct white balance would cause inconsistencies in the colours throughout the footage we captured.

Another thing we experimented with is adjusting the focus of the camera.

To adjust the focus you need to set the camera to manual focus. In the shot above we have practiced with a narrow depth of field.

This shot was an attempt at a focus pull where the background was in focus and we tried to change it to the foreground in focus.

When filming our video we tried to get the narrow depth of field by putting the background out of focus to put the main attention on the artist.

We also practiced with different shot types for example, long shots, mid shots, close ups and extreme close ups. As well as different camera movements such as tracking shots and zooms in and out.