December 25

How to Get Great Video From Your Camera Easily: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

If you want to make videos as easily as possible, here are some pro tips on how best to use a video camera for easy, simple filmmaking.

video camera lens

Basic Video Camera Operating Techniques

Lots of simple video production techniques can help you have an easier time capturing quality video without going to a lot of time and hassle.  Here are some techniques I learned as a videographer for TV news and B2B corporate video production for decades.

Use the Wide Angle Lens

One of my favorite tactics for easy video making is to use your camera set on the wide angle lens as much as possible.  In other words, shoot with your camera zoomed all the way out.

Shooting wide helps you do lots of things.  First, your shots will look steadier if you are on a wide angle shot.  You can often eliminate the need for a tripod if you are on a wide angle shot because camera shake is simply less noticeable.  It is still there, but due to the laws of optics, any camera shake will disappear on a wide shot yet stick out like a sore thumb on a tight shot that’s zoomed all the way in.

Try a little experiment next time you have a camera with a zoom lens in your hands.  Zoom all the way in just to see how much that magnifies the camera shake.  This is why a tripod is 100% necessary if you are shooting from far away and have to rely on the zoom lens for closeups.

video camera operator

 

Handheld videography definitely benefits from being zoomed out, which is why a TV news photographer needs to be physically close to the action.

The wide angle setting is also easier to focus.  You will not have hardly any focus issue if you are on a wide shot because wide angle lenses have a large depth of field.   This means almost all of your picture is in focus automatically.

Especially when the action is happening rapidly in front of you, not having to sweat precise focusing is a huge help in getting quality video.

For those two reasons, using a video camera zoomed all the way out makes shooting quality video easier.

Keep the sun at camera’s back…

The second tip is to keep the sun, or any bright light source, at the back of the camera operator.   To get a nicely lit shot, you want the light falling on the subject of your picture.  If the sun is behind your subject, you will get a silhouette.  Although they can be pretty, most of the time a silhouette is not appropriate.  This shot of my daughter swimming at sunset is a perfect example of how backlight creates a silhouette.

example of silhouette back lighting.
Classic silhouette back lighting.

Easy video production often means using natural light.  The trick to doing that successfully is to learn how best to position the camera relative to the light.  Most of the time, you don’t want a silhouette, so remember to keep the light at your back.  That way, it falls on the subject.  Not having to set up lights is a huge time saver and if you do it right, your video will still look professional.

Repeat That Please!

When shooting video, it’s standard practice to take a variety of angles of the same action.  You can do this by using multiple cameras, or by repeating the action and placing the camera in a different spot each time.  If things are happening fast, or you do not have enough control over the situation to have the action repeated, get in the habit of moving quickly and placing the camera in a variety of locations while the action is happening.  Also, get in the habit of taking cutaways and closeups to disguise jump cuts.

If you can, have the subject on camera repeat the action, in the exact same way, as you shoot from different angles.

In addition to getting different angles, get different scopes.  (Scope is a term for how close the camera appears to the subject.)  Is it a wide-shot, a medium-shot or a close-up?  Getting a variety of scopes helps make the final edited video much more visually interesting.  The viewer can see detail in a close-up that would go unnoticed in a wide shot.

If you are videotaping groups of people, do your best to get faces and not backs.  Faces are much more interesting.   That seems obvious, but many novices end up getting lots of backs because that is often easier.  For example, if you are videotaping a seminar, you might feel obligated to set up in the very back of the room in order to stay out of the way.  I’m all for setting up in an unobtrusive spot, but crowd shots of people’s backs are not very appealing.  A better spot to set up is where you can see the speaker well, but you can also see faces in the crowd too.

I hope this helps you use your video camera better.

Lorraine Grula

video crew with teacher

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  • How does using a wide angle lens help the camera shot appear steady?
  • What happens when the sun is behind your subject instead of behind you, the photographer?
  • What is the point of repeating the action and capturing it from a variety of angles?

 


Tags

easy video making techniques, how to operate a video camera, how to use a video camera easy, make video cameras, shooting with a video camera, simple video production, taking video with a camera, video production for beginners


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