I wanted to use this space to do some serious crowdsourcing and get your take on something that I have been wondering about and struggling to come to grips with for quite some time. As most of you know, I work in the audio realm. I record music, voiceovers, lectures, etc. Whatever a client needs, I can capture it. Now, however, I’m realizing that my content production may need to expand into the area of basic video. Recording myself playing, or giving a demonstration on how to use Pro Tools. For those who are not already aware, I am blind. I have been blind since birth. However, this does not stop my efforts to try and remain competitive and relevant to a sighted community of folks who listen to my music, read my posts, and consume any other content I may put forth. I realize that with the proliferation of youtube, I’m finding that folks have such an easy time gaining traction with video content. Till now, I was lucky if I could find someone to film me doing something and throw it up on my channel, which was very few and far between. However, I’m realizing that I want to begin creating basic content of my own. I could throw audio content up all day long, but due to the lack of the visual element, it would fall short of attracting and holding the attention of folks whose time is short and valuable. So, I come to you: my friends. I need to understand some concepts that are inherently visual. But make no mistake. Though I am blind, my visual cortex still functions. In a sense, I can indeed create mental pictures of concepts if explained to me. This is why it’s easy to visualize the OS 10 environment, the Pro TOols windows, etc. And now, I want to tackle the understanding of the basics of camera operation. Let me begin by telling you what I know, or, rather, what I think I know. Then, I’ll end with some basic questions that are indeded kindergarden in nature. But getting them answered would greatly expand my understanding. Ok. Here goes.
I understand that if you are zoomed out when shooting, you are getting more objects in your field, but they are smaller and less detailed. As you zoom in, you can pinpoint one object. The more you zoom in, the bigger it gets and more detailed it becomes. With the introduction of HD, you can even capture the stubble on a man’s face.
I understand the purpose of multi camera setups. One camera always takes all-encompassing shots of the subjects, while 1 or more cameras are moving around zooming in on specific objects, people, etc.
I understand the concepts of B Roll, in that it is related video content, possibly shot at a different time and place. It is interspersed with the main content to provide perspective, or to give the production a sense of ebb and flow.
I think I understand the idea of a Lower Third, as it gives textual information, such as a person’s name, website, or other information. This has been widely used in the Twit video podcasts.
I think I know what a green screen is. You can put that behind someone to give them a background. Also, you can put objects or landscapes on the screen to give the elusion that someone is on a beach, in a city, etc. Now that’s a stretch, but I’m guessing here.
Ok. Now that I have outlined what I think I know, now come the questions.
1. Is a wide angle shot simply a zoomed out shot? Is it really at an angle at all? If so, then what is a zoomed out shot that is dead straight on?
2. What does the iMac and Macbook camera’s capture best? When I launch photo booth or some other video capture app on my mac, what is it defaulted to and what is it capturing?
On that same line, at what height should the Macbook be to shoot adequately in a room? I know this is relative, but give me just a ballpark.
When I was shooting some content for the making of my soon to be released album, Ian Baird placed the macbook high up on some boxes so that it was shooting down at and Joel Gragg and I while we were in the control room. However, when I’m doing video chat? The laptop is on my lap and shooting up at my face.
Is it better to be looking down on someone than looking up? What happens to the visual field as the macbook lid is tilted? I think I understand that if it were straight up and down, it would be shooting at my chest, so angling it shoots it up at my face. Is that correct?
Is it also true that the higher up you put the laptop, you want to angle the screen down so that you are not shooting at the ceiling?
3. On one of the episodes of Mac Break Weekly, Andy Ihnatko really spoke highly of this camera. He and the other guests on the show really loved it as it allowed them to literally set it and forget it. He said that people loved to be able to strap it on their chest and go about their business without needing to pay attention to what was being captured. Would this work for me if I was just wanting to film what was around me, such as a walk through a city, my nephew opening birthday presents, etc.
Also, Andy spoke of a fisheye lens on the camera, and how he was able to put it on his dash and film a scenic drive. What is a fisheye lens? What does it capture? He made it sound as though this lens would capture at a great distance.
When you place a camera, are you lining the center of the visual field up in your viewfinder? In other words, why put it on your chest? Wouldn’t that only show from the chest down, or is the central point of the visual field chest level and the area of the field encapsulates a wide spectrum of hight and width?
Lastly on the topic of this camera? Am I somewhat correct in saying that if I preset a moderate zoom level, is it safe to say that as long as I’m facing the sound of whatever it is I’m filming, it will be good enough for the viewer to get an idea of what’s going on?
4. What’s a better situation: mounting a camera like the one mentioned above on a tripod, or using the macbook camera to capture a basic video of me playing. If on a tripod, what should the height be on average? How far away should I be from it?
I had the thought of putting a camera on a tripod and and also using the macbook camera for other shots, starting them rolling, and have an editor cut them together later. What should the tripod camera be used for, and what should I have the macbook capture? When it comes to cameras, I’m speaking of either the camera mentioned above or an iPhone as a tripod mounted camera. Maybe both if I’m feeling up to it. Combined with the Macbook, I could easily have a 3 camera shoot.
5. What about lighting? Now I know that we could go for days on concepts like white balance and such, but give me the basic idea. What must be present in a room as far as light goes for objects to be clearly seen. What about outside? I know that the glare from the sun can blow out an image, rendering it completely unviewable. Is that correct?
Ok. Well, there they are. All the questions I’ve wanted to ask in one huge post. If you can answer any or all of these, please leave them in the comments area below. I really look forward to gaining a whole new understanding and sense of perspective through the help of your comments. My goal here is not to learn how to become a world class videographer. I just want to get the basics so I can shoot some video for you guys and further share my world with you. Thanks again for any help you can provide.
Here’s some basics to give you a better understanding of how the lens itself works.
A lens has a focal length, which is a space in front of the area in front of the lens that it can physically keep in focus (not blurry) at one time. Prime lenses have a set focal length, which is what are used to film movies.
Zoom lenses have the ability to change focal lengths, which is used in consumer products.
A prime lens does not zoom in, all it does is change focus. The focal length of a lens is determined by the lens size in mm, and the smaller the mm, the wider the lens’ perspective.
A telephoto lens has a large focal length, so it can focus on long distances. Anything under 35mm is considered wide angle, as it can capture a wider physical angle directly in front of the camera. 70mm and above becomes more and more telephoto, 35-70mm is normal focal length, which very similar to the human eyes abilities.
The human eye can see almost a full 180 degree view, a camera needs a wide angle to get anywhere near that though, so replicating the view of the human eye, in it’s natural focal length (around 45mm) would probably take 3 cameras, set next to each other, with the outer cameras pointed at a slight turn, then create a panoramic shot of the three images.
Think of it this way, spread your arms out to your sides, then swing your arms forward, until your hands can touch, but keep your arms extended. This represents the area that the lens can see. The closer your hands are together, the longer the focal length, becoming more and more telephoto. The farther apart, the wider the angle. In order to make a wide angle lens, the glass of the lens itself must become more and more dome shaped. So, when they say “wide angle” they are actually talking about how wide the angle of view is, from left to right, that the lens can capture at once. The wider the lens, the farther you need to be away from your subject, so the extreme wide angles are generally used for distance and landscapes.
As the subject gets closer to the lens, you will start to see how the image is warped from the dome of the lens, making the center of the image seem larger and closer. This is the fish-eye effect. It looks like you are looking through a glass ball, which is just warping the close image.
A zoom lens is different, and this is what you will find on consumer cameras. It is obviously capable of zooming in and out, but the image is not as crisp and clear, nor is the focus as precise as it is on a prime lens. But, it gives the user the capabilities to see objects at a distance, close up. That then affects the cameras Depth Of Field, which is a big part of getting that “movie” look. That’s a whole other can of worms though. If you were to keep the camera zoomed as far out as possible while wearing it, you would get an image close to what you yourself would be seeing.
Now to the other questions. You can generally use a laptop camera and have it pointed directly at you, but yes, you should probably tilt it upwards towards you. While it probably can see up and down enough to see your face, that would depend on how close you are to the camera, too close and yes you will see just your chest. Now, if you were walking around with the camera low by your chest, again, it would depend on how far the person stands away from you, that would determine how much of them the camera sees.
Although, movies are almost never filmed at eye level. Most films are made with the camera’s center-screen at the level of the characters shoulders. The reason for this is that it shows the world in a slightly different way than people are used to seeing it on a daily basis, which makes it interesting to look at. Cameramen who use a shoulder mounted camera, which is filming from eye level are either doing the News, Reality TV, or they are just inexperienced.
Now, lighting can be tricky, but there is a very quick solution that works for most basic shoots. You can do this with three lights.
1 – A bright light from above, just to fill the room with light.
2 – A smaller, less powerful light on your subject, also from above (but not as high as the first) which will eliminate having a subject who’s one side is way darker than the other, due to shadows.
3- A background light. Basically either point a light upwards at a wall int he background, or some prominent object. You can use a window in the background to do this as this as well. This will create Depth in your image, and helps the subject “pop” out of the background, and tells your audience what to look at.
You would also want to use the same type of light bulb for each, as light comes in temperatures, which is the need for white balancing. Put simply, your camera will probably white balance automatically, but it cant balance to two different temperatures. So, if you balanced indoors, then pointed the camera out the window, everything outside would look blue. If you balanced to the sunlight, and came inside, everything would look orange.
Yes the sun can blow out the image drastically, and NEVER point the camera at the sun, because you can damage the image sensor. I’d suggest getting a camera that has an auto iris, because it will close the iris of the lens (the hole inside that lets light through) to reduce the amount of light that gets in, keeping the image from becoming too bright. Again, most consumer level cameras will do this.
It is always good to show things from a perspective that people normally do not see things from, like high up on a ladder looking down, or really low from the ground looking up. Basically because, it’s a different perspective than people are used to seeing, and it naturally attracts their eye to want to see ordinary things, from extraordinary views.
Now, personally, I would use the macbook as the stationary camera to capture the basic view of the room, and probably have someone else use the second camera by hand, while walking around you for the third camera perspective. The macbook, while will probably do HD, wont pick up colors as vibrantly, and wont adjust to light as easily, giving you a very plain and boring look.
This is a long response to a long post. So, i’ll just stop now, before I’m late to work. lol
I hope this helped.
Hi Kevin;
Rob Lavender here. I will keep my answers as to the point as possible and aimed at the common uses for those in the music industry.
Question:
1. Is a wide angle shot simply a zoomed out shot? Is it really at an angle at all? If so, then what is a zoomed out shot that is dead straight on?
Answer: While there are many explanations and uses for wide angle, there are two main descriptions of a wide angle shot. The first applies to simply seeing more in the picture of a given scene. Imagine a close up shot of two people talking to each other. You can hear them speaking but also hear extraneous noises, some clanking and clattering a repeating clink but you can’t see what is causing the noises as the camera is close up and you only see two people’s head and shoulders. The next shot is the same two people talking but the camera is now at wide angle, and you can see that they are on a subway train and the noises are now explained.
This is a common use for wide angle, and it allows the story teller to show you what is important, set a scene and then explain the context and to do so without using dialog to explain it. The dialog can have nothing to do with the scene and yet the scene can still be explained.
We often see this as a zoomed in shot and then a zoomed out shot.
The other description is technically more accurate as it is including more area in the picture without changing distance. In this instance the people in our scene would still be the same apparent size and closeness but we can see more of the surroundings in the scene. This type of wide angle shot can only be achieved with a wide angle lens, and not by zooming in or out with a standard lens.
I see in another answer posted to you where someone said that a zoom lens is only found on a consumer camera, and that is just not true and especially not true in video. He is correct that when using a 35 mm or 70 mm movie film camera that zoom lenses are a very rare thing indeed; however almost every video lens is a zoom lens. I know you can’t see it, but ask anyone watching a sports game. Or local and network news, the cameras used are professional cameras and lenses and every dang one of them can zoom in and out.
That said; the actual act of zooming or seeing the picture while in transition is not used all that much as it can tend to be disorienting. So shots are most often used after the camera adjustments have been made. Not always mind you, there are times that the zoom is used to help tell the story and most often it is the zoom out from close to wide. That is done to show context.
Now to get real specific. Let’s say you are making a video showing how you use Pro-Tools. Chances are you will be in a small room. For most cameras this is a tough thing as the camera can’t get far enough back to include much of the room or the people and equipment in it. With a standard lens the camera would have to move around a lot to show what is going on. If you use a wide angle lens, then you can get more of the room, people and gear into the shot and so not so much moving the camera around.
When shooting in such a space I always use a wide angle lens in order to get more area into the shot. However care must be taken with the choice of wide angle lenses as many will give a distorted view specifically a fishbowl effect. Some can also cause vignetting, which is a darkened area around the edges of the picture. I have found that Raynox makes the best wide angle lenses for smaller video cameras.
I use a Raynox HD 6600 Pro with my Canon video camera when shooting close up at concerts. In fact I used one for that video I did of you at Montrose, Colorado. That was a two camera shoot. One camera with standard zoom lens was placed at the front of house position; I used another camera with a wide angle lens, on a steady-cam rig for the close up work. By using a wide angle lens I could get closer to your face and still see the keyboard.
Question 2 revolves around the web-cam in a mac laptop and I have no experience with those.
Questions 3 is about the GoPro camera. This is a very well made P.O.V. (point of view) It is not intended to a primary camera, think of it more a B-roll camera. The prime intention with the design of the GoPro was to be able to capture sports from the participants point of view. Naturally people have found many other good uses for this camera.
The fact that many different types of mounts and mounting hardware is made for the GoPro make this little camera very versatile. But it should not be mistaken for a primary camera. It is not.
This would be very good for the walk around type videos that you spoke of.
For a general all purpose video camera, I would look at the offerings from SONY and Canon, perhaps JVC and Panasonic. I would think that for your purposes I would want a HD camcorder that records to SD cards. That would make transfer to a computer based editing system much easier and faster than even transferring from a hard drive based camera, let alone a tape base or DVD based camcorder.
Question 4. What’s a better situation: mounting a camera like the one mentioned above on a tripod, or using the macbook camera to capture a basic video of me playing. If on a tripod, what should the height be on average? How far away should I be from it?
Answer: You could do something like that Kevin the trick would be trying to keep the macbook out of the field of view of the tripod mounted camera, or at least in a place where it is not distracting from the other video.
You can also simulate a 3 or more camera shoot. This works well for video of someone playing an instrument and singing. Simulating a multiple camera shoot involves placing the camera in one position and shooting the entire song. Then you move the camera to a new position and shoot the entire song again. You repeat this process for however many different angles you want in the final product. This is how most music videos are made. Of course in a music video the artist or band is simply playing and singing along with the recording of the song. When edited together it looks as if there were multiple cameras used. This same method works well for instructional videos too, where the different camera angles can be used to highlight specific points or to break up the monotony of a tripod shot of someone talking.
Now, I will note here that the trick to this working when the artist or band is playing the song live is that the timing and tempo needs to be the same for all takes. So a click track is needed, but of course you don’t want to hear the click track on the video. If you are working with a sequencer for drum parts then you have no problems.
Question 5. What about lighting? Now I know that we could go for days on concepts like white balance and such, but give me the basic idea. What must be present in a room as far as light goes for objects to be clearly seen. What about outside? I know that the glare from the sun can blow out an image, rendering it completely unviewable. Is that correct?
Answer: Video cameras work best with plenty of light and especially of that light is the same color temperature of daylight. Thankfully there are now some very nice inexpensive CFL that are daylight equivalent color temperature. I use them often as the amperage draw is so low compared to regular video lights, also they are not nearly as hot, in fact they stay rather cool, and so the room doesn’t heat up as badly either.
I get mine from Cowboy Studio in Allen, TX. Here is a link the bulb page on their web site: http://www.cowboystudio.com/product/c06/c0601.php
I use the long folded type 85 watts (equals a 300 watt incandescent light bulb) with a photographers reflector set up about 10” to 12” behind it to light up an entire room or area. Sometimes it is necessary to use 2 of them depending on the size of the area I need to light. I use the smaller 30 watt daylight CFL’s with a clip on reflector available at most hardware stores to create a fill light.
A little ingenuity and guy can put together a good basic video lighting system very inexpensively.
He sun used to be a real problem for video cameras back when they used tubes. I had to learn this costly mistake for myself back in my early days of video using a SONY M3 three tube camera with a ¾” portable video tape recorder. Shooting some beach scenes and got burn spots on the tubes. They show up as white glare spots that don’t go away. You have to replace the tubes… ouch.
With the new CMOS and even CCD chips this is not nearly as much of an issue. First off the camera in auto Iris mode will shut down much of the suns brilliance, but more importantly is that the chips are not as susceptible to injury as were tubes.
So while I wouldn’t shoot video of the sun without proper filtering the occasionally glare from the sun is not going to cause any real problems. In fact sometimes the white bloom of sun glare is used to transition from one scene to another,
I hope this was helpful. If you need any other advice or have any questions feel free to call on me any time.
Rob Lavender
No, I didn’t mean that zoom lenses are only found on consumer cameras. I meant you will find that consumer cameras only have zoom lenses, not prime. Although, generally something like a laptop, webcam or a cell phone camera will not have a zoom lens, unless you specifically look for one. And even then most of the time, it’s a digital zoom, not an optical. Sorry if I created any confusion with my phrasing
In case you’re wondering what the difference is, with the digital zoom the devices internal computer is zooming in on a part of the image it is capturing. Essentially enlarging the pixels of one area of the image, which will then give you a blurry and/or pixelated image.
An optical zoom is a regular zoom lens. It means the lens itself is moving internally and zooming, causing a magnification of whatever you’re looking at, still giving you a clear image.