TUTORIAL: Buying Your Camera

[MaxDeVill]

When making a video you definitely need a camera. But what type of camera should you choose? There are a million brands and a million features that you may know and some you may not know. This primer will help you cut through the muck and help you decide what type of camera is best for you and your budget.

When choosing a camera, the first thing you must do is sit down and determine what features you want on your new camera. This camera will more than likely be with you for at least a year or more and buying the one that has the features you want will really help you from regretting your decision. If the camera you want you can’t afford RIGHT NOW then SAVE for it and buy what you want, not what you can get. And remember, just because a camera costs 3500 bucks doesn’t mean it’s the right one for you. I used a miniDV JVC for years and it served me wonderfully.

Manual Controls

Manual controls are vital if you plan on doing any real cinematography. Being able to adjust the focus and the white balance manually will give you more control over your finished product in leaps and bounds. You must be careful when purchasing a camera with these features, especially the manual focus for some cameras use a “joystick” style control which is not accurate at all. Also, with a HD camera you have to be very careful due to the nature of HD any minor discrepancy in focus will show itself.

Focus

Manual focus is very important. Being able to focus your shot in any place you wish gives you the flexibility to give your video a great amount of style with a minimum amount of effort. It also will allow you to maintain focus at a fixed point and will keep your video looking professional.

White Balance

White Balance is the camera’s ability to display white. This sets the tone or “feel” of the video by determining how the colorization will be. If you take a White Balance card and shoot it center frame while adjusting the white balance, you will get the desired shot feel.

Digital Zoom

This is basically a pointless feature. It looks good on the box being able to say 100x Digital Zoom! But in all reality it will barely be used, if at all. You should be more concerned about your lens type and optical zoom rate. Especially with a magic video, you will be shooting “right in the action” so zoom rates are basically null anyways.

Recording Format

There are three basic recording formats used today. MiniDV, DVD and HDD. Each of these formats has its pluses and minus’. A DVD is typically a miniDVD and it holds a small amount of information, as a miniDV tape holds larger amounts of information, but the camera typically makes more noise and has the possibility of the tape becoming jammed. HDD is the newer way of doing things, but the shock protection on the hard drives is low and any little jar tends to typically cause errors in recording.

To HD or not to HD

High Def is the wave of the future. HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, etc… its all over everything and the cameras are becoming affordable. Is this the format you should choose or should you run with standard definition? HD takes much more hard drive space to work with in your editing software and much more system resources. It may look fantastic (as long as you don’t jack up the focus), but the question you have to ask yourself is where the consumer market is with HD. How many people do you know with HD-DVD players or Blu-Ray players? This hardware is expensive and with the battle between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD raging on, most people are waiting to see what wins before they purchase one.

High Definition sounds great, looks great, and even looks fantastic on advertising, “Filmed in High Definition!”. But when you burn it to a DVD with a max of 800x600 resolution, filming in HD is pretty much a waste. If you have the money to purchase one, do so, for eventually HD will be here and the masses will have it. It will save you from the upgrade later.

Microphone and Headphones

You’re better off having a microphone and headphone jack built into your camera. The external microphone allows you to focus the audio on what you want and keeps you from getting the grinding of the gears or the “pop” of hand movement on the camera. Having the headphones allows you to monitor the sound as it is coming into the camera.

The best option is to purchase a minidisc recorder or something similar to record audio separately and mix it up in post. This will allow you to set the audio levels easily and also to mix down the audio in post production to where it will sound better.

LCD Screens

LCD Screens burn up battery power, but you pretty much can’t get a camera today without one. It’s your option to use one, and I typically do, but you want it to be as large as possible. Especially when using a HD camera due to the focus issue.

Low Light Performance

Read reviews of the cameras you are considering. Look at what people have to say about inside shots and its low light performance. You’re not always going to be shooting outside at noon. Most cameras today have issues with low light performance and indoor shooting. Different lights have different looks on camera. Check up online about Film Lighting and you’ll see what I mean.

Battery Life

Most camera have a low battery life. Cameras today have a large draw of power required and most batteries can’t hold up for more than an hour of straight shooting. Make sure you purchase an extra battery or two and keep them charged. Nothing sucks worse than not having power to shoot and missing that fantastic effect and the audiences “freak out”.


I hope this helps you in your choice of purchasing a camera for yourself… next time, Non-Linear Software Editing Packages.

 

[warlock]

swt man. . .when's the software guide coming??

 

[awimagic]

been waiting for informed opinion like this.. thanks a lot..

can u please name some models and makes please.. ?

 

[Ray]

I'd like to add something important you have to keep in mind when choosing one of those formats:
How do you get it on your PC.

I don't know about those DVD Camcorders, but there are only 2 options:
1.) The Camcorder saves the filmed stuff as a movie file on the DVD
2.) The Camcorder spits out a finished DVD with menue etc.
While #1 can easily get to your PC with drag and drop, #2 is more difficult and tricky.

MiniDV:
For miniDV you need a PC that supports IEEE 1394 interfaces (aka. Firewire). You can simply buy a Firewire-card, install the driver and plug your camcorder into your pc with the propper cable.

HDD:
Never worked with one of those, mostly because I'm afraid of loosing all my data at once. But I guess its simple drag and drop as well.


Last thing I wanna add is the HD-Jazz.
While its true that better resolution is always nicer, but you need a PC (and software) that can handle this high resolution movies (if you want to edit it a bit).
Keep in mind, that even if you are producing for a DVD (normal Standart DVD) you won't see the higher resolution, because it'll be scaled down to fit the DVD standart (which even CAN (only "can") cause strange artefacts to appear).

My sugesstion would be to shoot with a miniDV Camcorder.
I for myself use a Panasonic GS 400 and I'm very much satisfied since I purchased about 2 years ago. You might find it way cheaper now on ebay.

Another one I can recommend is the old (but still good) Canon XM2. A bit bigger then my GS400 which makes it look a bit more "professional".
In the low/no budget moviemaker scene the Canon XM2 is still something like a holy grail... I guess...

Both cameras are pretty good when it comes to lowlight conditions (the XM2 slightly better than the GS400), and both cameras are about the same price.
You can't choose a wrong camera when choosing one of those two.

Also I want to point out that camcorder are a bit like cards. Not the cards make the good performance, the performer does (Translation: Not the Cam can make a good movie, the guy who controlls it does).

Disclaimer:
You might notice that I refer to old cameras a lot. The main reason is because I used them for quite a while. Also, because of the "camcorder war" between the companies a lot of good features got canceled in never versions of the consumer camcorder (which were avaible in the old ones).
So bottom line, this is only my opinion and is not ment to replace your effort to search for information. Although I hope it helps a bit.

 

[KeoSilver]

A good thread, a topic that has come up recently.

 

[KeoSilver]

I’ve seen a slew of really bad video’s coming out lately, and some of them are even video’s I’ve purchased to learn from. As I’ve done quite a bit of video production in the past, I figured I would share my knowledge in hopes that it will improve the quality of video’s I see online and that I purchase.

In video production, budget isn’t really everything. I’ve seen some really creative people make a damned fine looking video with an old analog camcorder and their computer.

LIGHTING

First, we will talk about lighting. Lighting is the most important aspect of video production. If your shot is lit well, you will not have nearly as much work to do once you start editing and color correcting.

Every light source has its own rating in Kelvin. I’m not going to go into all the different light sources and their ratings, but a quick google search will turn up a ton of information.

When you are shooting inside, lights tend to be more orange than if you were shooting outside. Thus, you will need to adjust for that if you plan on shooting in two different places. You can either light the interior with a different type of light, or match the colorization in post production (editing).

Ensure that the lighting is even throughout the entire shot. Your subject should be lit all around, unless you are working for some sort of artistic shadow look.

Once you have consistent lighting though out the shot, you need to set your white balance. A white balance is the rate at which the camera picks up the color white. Many of the lower end camcorders automatically set the white balance when it turns on, so if you do not have a manual white balance adjustment, point the camera at a piece of blank computer paper and turn it on. Ensure that it is not the only thing in frame, the sensors need contrast to determine white balance. If you DO have a manual adjustment, buy a white balance card, or print one off the internet. It’s a gradient that you can use to set exactly how powerful you want the white to be.

Now that you have your white balance and lighting set, its time to talk audio. Audio in a teaching video is very important. If you can’t hear what the instructor is saying, you’re basically losing everything aside from the ability to see what is happening.

AUDIO

What are the options for audio? Most camcorders come with an onboard microphone. This is the worst choice. It picks up the camera’s operation sound as well as any movement on the body of the camera by the person shooting the video. Your best option, if you have it, is to use an external microphone that has a line directly into your camcorder.

Another option, which is much harder, and expensive… but gives you a lot more freedom is to record the audio separately. Using a microphone and something like a mini disc recorder, you can record your audio separately and do all the work of cleaning it up and “defuzzing” in your audio editing program.

How do you match up the audio with the video in this way? The old “Take One! SLAP” clapboard. In your video editing software you move the audio until the loudest line of the oscilloscope is directly on the frame that you firstly see no light coming from between the clapper. Your audio is lined up and ready for editing.

SHOOTING

Now, for shooting. When it comes to the performance of the trick on the street, get at least a little of the trick in the shot. Just watching the magician in a crowd of people talking and then the people freaking out is worthless. The point of a video is to show people what you can do, not what the reactions of the people are. Sure, everyone likes to see people freak out and be like “#$%!!” but it’s a magic video, show some magic!

One of the main things to remember is the “Rule of thirds”. When you’re looking at the LCD screen of your camcorder imagine that it has a Tic-Tac-Toe style grid running through it. You want to keep your subject that you are shooting in a square of 4 of those smaller squares. It doesn’t really matter which ones, but it is more aesthetically pleasing to the human eye in this format.

When you’re on an uber low budget, remember this motto: “Shoot to edit”. It may take a few tries and failures until you completely understand this principle, but after a while you’ll pick up on exactly what you need in order to edit it properly later. A few seconds to about 1 minute of video before and after the action is a good bet in order to be able to effectively edit the video later. It gives you room to play with.

POST PRODUCTION

During post production (putting it all together), you can use whatever you would like to. Programs like Windows Movie Maker are free, and you get what you pay for with Microsoft. Other programs like iMovie pretty much come standard on all Macs and is a pretty good piece of software to edit basic video with. You may not be able to do a lot of things that you would like to do such as alpha levels and multiple video layers, but it is good enough for standard video and audio editing.

Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro are the industry standards. They are fantastic pieces of software, but the learning curve is pretty steep. Start off with iMovie. On a Windows based system, Adobe Premiere is another fantastic professional editing suite. It is very comparable and in some places better than Final Cut Pro. But again, the learning curve is steep.

When you’re editing your video, don’t go crazy with wild transitions and special effects. They don’t make your video look professional or cool. They make it look lame and amateurish. Stick with standard cross fades, cuts, and smash cuts. A quick google search of video transitions will help you learn about these.

Once you have your video edited and in place as you want it, you need to play with your codecs on your computer to find the best one for video size and quality. I don’t know much about Windows codecs anymore since I haven’t used one in a couple of years, but Quicktime is an awesome codec. It makes small files with wonderful colorization and clarity. Also, you can pop in on an iPOD and take it with you easily.

I hope you enjoyed the first part of this. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me and I’ll work with you.

[/B]

Second part of this very informative post. This has helped me outside of magic in other movies. Also I am wondering why people prefer to be Black and white. We have color y'll lets see that color, especially when it is a closeup shot of your cards. I know my rider backs don't come in black and gray pips, that would be confusing as heck.

 

[popchris3]

I have personally heard from many people I know that the Flip Mino HD is the best cheap one you can buy.

So that is what I am saving for.

 

[Synth_Infusion]

Very helpful thread. I am buying a new camera next month and will look at the features that will appeal to me.

-Rahat

 

[jasonffx]

i am wondering if i would like to shoot something with slow motion, the frame per second is important right? also if i would like to shoot something which include normal speed and slow motion, what software should i use?

 

[MaxDeVill]

It just depends on what type of computer you have and how much money. On a Mac nothing beats Final Cut Pro, and on a PC I use Adobe Premiere... of course they're expensive as hell. You can get a watered down version of Adobe Premiere called Premiere Elements, but I've never used it personally. Mac has a moviemaker software that comes with iLife or it may be standard issue with Leopard I haven't used a mac in a couple of years, so I'm not that knowledgable. But Premiere Pro can do everything you want it to do.

 

[popchris3]

I ended up picking up a Kodak Zi8.

I did a video review, but I can't post it anywhere, cause it is 11 minutes long and FULL HD, so... Yeah.

But the bottom line is, it is AMAZING.

I will check out Premiere Pro.