Today, we had our introduction to camera's with Ed. This wasn't my first time with using a DSLR camera, as I have one of my own, but it's very old and doesn't have as many settings as the ones at college.
First we looked at how to focus the camera, which is very important, as you don't want your photographs or footage to come out blurred. You focus the camera by moving the front ring on the lens. You have to be very careful with the lens of the camera as it is extemely fragile and sensitive. When you're changing lenses over, you need to be fast so as not to expose the back of the lens to light for too long. You also need to keep the lens cap on while you're not using the camera to protect it. When filming you need to make sure that the ISO is set correctly. The ISO tells you how sensitive the camera is to light, so the higher the ISO number, the more exposed the picture will be, so when we used the cameras, we set the ISO to as low as possible without the image on the back of the camera being too dark.
Next, we learned how to fix a camera to a tripod, which was more difficult that I'd expected it to be. You have to be careful not to over tighten any of the knobs so that you don't break any internal parts, or make the tripod unusable. When making the tripod taller/ lowering it, you really need someone else to help you so that you do it safely, and also so that the tripod is level for the camera. However there are little spirit-level bubbles which help with knowing when the tripod is level.
After we had all mastered putting the tripods up and getting the cameras on top, we went off in groups to get used to using the cameras. In my group, we decided to try and do a lip sync music video to one of Mika's songs "Lollipop". We stayed in the projection room to do this, as we needed a bright colourful background. We just used a brightly coloured gif, but made it fullscreen so that it appeared like a background. The only problem with having the background projected like this was that the light got in your eyes; when we looked back at the footage we were almost always squinting when facing forwards which kind of ruined it a little bit.
Due to the amount of time we had, we only did the first minute of the song, so we did lots of different takes and then later when we edit it, we will slot them all together. Most of our footage was just us dancing and lip syncing, but we thought that we should have some extra bits in it, so we got Abbie to lie on a chair and move her legs around in front of the background, as we thought that this would look quite fun.
Below, I have added some pictures that we took while filming.
First we looked at how to focus the camera, which is very important, as you don't want your photographs or footage to come out blurred. You focus the camera by moving the front ring on the lens. You have to be very careful with the lens of the camera as it is extemely fragile and sensitive. When you're changing lenses over, you need to be fast so as not to expose the back of the lens to light for too long. You also need to keep the lens cap on while you're not using the camera to protect it. When filming you need to make sure that the ISO is set correctly. The ISO tells you how sensitive the camera is to light, so the higher the ISO number, the more exposed the picture will be, so when we used the cameras, we set the ISO to as low as possible without the image on the back of the camera being too dark.
Next, we learned how to fix a camera to a tripod, which was more difficult that I'd expected it to be. You have to be careful not to over tighten any of the knobs so that you don't break any internal parts, or make the tripod unusable. When making the tripod taller/ lowering it, you really need someone else to help you so that you do it safely, and also so that the tripod is level for the camera. However there are little spirit-level bubbles which help with knowing when the tripod is level.
After we had all mastered putting the tripods up and getting the cameras on top, we went off in groups to get used to using the cameras. In my group, we decided to try and do a lip sync music video to one of Mika's songs "Lollipop". We stayed in the projection room to do this, as we needed a bright colourful background. We just used a brightly coloured gif, but made it fullscreen so that it appeared like a background. The only problem with having the background projected like this was that the light got in your eyes; when we looked back at the footage we were almost always squinting when facing forwards which kind of ruined it a little bit.
Due to the amount of time we had, we only did the first minute of the song, so we did lots of different takes and then later when we edit it, we will slot them all together. Most of our footage was just us dancing and lip syncing, but we thought that we should have some extra bits in it, so we got Abbie to lie on a chair and move her legs around in front of the background, as we thought that this would look quite fun.
Below, I have added some pictures that we took while filming.