Camera techniques

To shoot our short film, we will be using Canon HF10′s. These are compact high definition cameras that are class leaders with their performance. In our recent lesson we had the opportunity to get used to the feel of the cameras, making sure we were aware of certain controls such as zoom and white balance.

Another piece of information that was valuable to us was the battery life and memory card size. Because high definition video encapsulates more pixels (1920 X 1080), every frame is larger in size than a camera with a smaller sensor. Therefore if the footage is larger, it will take up more space on the memory card quicker than video of lower quality. The memory cards included with the camera are 16GB as well as having another 16GB of on-board storage.

 

Here’s what we learnt about the camera:

• Shoots in Full HD – 1080p
• 32GB memory = 4 hours of footage (at Full HD)
• 3 hour battery life
• 12x Optical Zoom
• Suitable for use with external microphone
• Manual settings for white balance

Our group was very happy when shown these cameras as we could see from the price of them, that they were more than just for holiday videos. Although they did not have a manual focus that we feel we could have experimented with to get some cool footage, we were pleased as a whole.

During our most recent lesson we were instructed to locate the white balance settings or the camera so that we could calibrate them properly when shooting in poorly lit scenes. I learnt that as people, we can determine what we know white looks like from memory, but a camera cannot. A came attempts to pick the lightest part of what it’s looking at to determine how it conditions the colours in the scene. Auto white balance tries to compensate for the lack of white by making the colours either warmer or cooler dependent on the type of light it thinks it’s seeing. Sometimes this works, although it often doesn’t. Manual white balance allows the user of the camera to choose what in the frame is white.

 

After researching, I found out that clapperboards have black and white stripes on them not only to make the clap easily seen, but also to allow the cameraman to calibrate the white balance accordingly with a real object.