Holding the camcorder

We should always remember that the stability of the camcorder during shooting is very important. Use both hands, lean firmly against the wall, kneeling and sitting firmly will provide stability. Actually the professional news cameraman rarely use tripods because their camcorders are big, heavy and well balanced and easier to keep stady. They are also very experience in their job. To achieve steady shooting with hand held, the lens should be set to infinity and go nearest to the subjects.

As designed, the cameraman always hold the camcorder with the right hand. The style that we are holding the camcorder will ensure the stability of the subjects which we are shooting. Use the left hand to support and make the camcorder steady. The position of the left hand which will give the best support is under the lens barrel of the camcorder.

Small camcorder such as palmcorder, can be hold firmly with the grip strap over the right hand. Use both hands to make the palmcorder more steadily. Place the left hand beneath the palmcorder's body. With larger camcorder, use the right shoulder to support the camcorder. Press the camcorder against the cheek which give the extra steadiness.

Depth of Field

What's depth of field?.
Depth of field is the distance between the nearest and the furthest points that will be in focus. In other words all the subjects between the points will be in focus during the shooting.


There are several principles of depth of field.

• The greater the focal length, the narrower the depth
• The greater the aperture, the narrower the depth
• The nearer the subject to the lens, the narrower the depth

To achieve the greatest depth of field during shooting, the subject that we are shooting should be in bright light, clear days and set the lens to widest setting.

Manual focussing

Some camcorders can use manual focussing. The cameraman should has certain skill to operate the camcorder with manual setting lens. During the shooting the cameraman has to rotate the focussing ring on the lens barrel until the image viewed through viewfinder becomes very sharp.

The cameraman also, should has the skill to focus moving subjects while panning, tilting and etc. The subjects should be focussed all the times. All these skill need practise and cannot be grapped within one or two days.

Focus

All camcorders have auto focus system to ensure that the subjects that we are shooting are sharply focused. The systems use infra-red beams fired from beside the camcorder's lens to measure the camcorder's distance from the subjects. Some others camcorders use the method through the lens(TTL) where the image sensor detect the image sharpness.


AUTO FOCUS

The systems can interprete what the lens sees and keep the shot always in focus. An auto focus works firing infra-red beams to the subjects. The infra-red reflected back to the image sensor in the lens. The camcorder measure the time take by the infra-red beams to return back to the sensor. With the times, the system will calculate the distance. Then the focussing ring of the camcorder will adjusted by an electric motor.

However in certain situation, auto focus setting cannot be used, because the subject that we are shooting becomes inaccurate. In other words the subjects are not accurately focussed. To overcome this problem, we should use manual focussing.


The situation where auto focussing is not effective:

• Shooting subjects through the bars or netting. Auto focus will focus the bars in the foreground not the subjects.

• Subjects are under low light situation. The infra-red systems have difficulty to measure the distance of the subjects.

• Subjects that are move very fast. The subjects will cause a temporary lost of focus.

• Subjects that are placed at the edge of the frame.
  

White Balance

What is white balance?. Besides manual white balance, most of the camcoders are equipped with automatic white balance facility. The automatic white balance register the color temperature of the source and makes the adjustments to ensure the correct reproduction of all colors.


What is the color temperature?. 'White' light is made up of all the colors of the spectrum and differant source of light of different colors temperature. The lowest temperatures are at the red end of the spectrum and the highest are at the blue end.


Some camcorders have PRE-SET white balance position to cope with the different lighting conditions. If we fail to set right setting of the white balance, the subjects that we recordered on the tape will have an unnatural color cast. Some camcorders have automatic white balance where we can set the button to indoor or outdoor shooting. The camcorder will automatically set the white balance according to the condition of the light source.

The camcorder feature

Lux;

Lux is the unit for measuring the amount of light illuminating the certain area. Since the camcorders are able to operate in low light, a subject lit by a candle can be seen in the shooting. But for the best result, we should shoot subject which is fully lit by bright light. Sharp, bright colors and natural looking image can be seen during the shooting.

Back light compensator;

One of auto-exposure problem is when we shooting subject with bright light coming from behind the subject. The iris closes down and the face of the subject can't be seen clearly or silhouette. The back light compensator(BLC) open up the iris to correct the exposure on the subject. However the background of the subject is looking bleach.