Get to Know Your Camera!!

Here’s a short experiment with my new XT-3 and slider. I’m trying out a variety of shots and angles to add interest. No real B-roll in this video, that’s for future projects. This is a means to practice for future music videos and silly bits. I find the only way to really learn something is to do it, make mistakes, and then learn from those mistakes for future projects.

For bored camera/video geeks only:

Camera settings are important and noise reduction is great for noobs like myself. This is a slightly improved version of the original video, now with noise reduction applied. It's a bit softer and it doesn't work on all clips, but overall I think it's a better look.

Some lessons learned:

Automatic and manual settings both have their uses, it's important to know which and when.

For ISO settings I think manual is going to be preferred most of the time, unless there was some compelling reason to have it adjust due to quickly changing light. Not sure what that would be, but it's possible I suppose.

For focus it depends. The auto focus is great if you're moving around, but if you're static it's probably better to go manual and leave it. Again this depends on what you're doing. If I'm shooting a music performance video and I want it to stay focused on my guitar, I'll probably go manual. The auto-focus is pretty good, but the occasional focus hunting can get distracting.

Lighting is always critical and I already knew that, but I'm trying to learn the situations in which I can get away with more ambient/natural light. Color temp changes gets distracting.