How to shoot with a stabilizer — tricks for film effects | Articles | Photo, video, optics

The sta­bi­liz­er is a com­pact and very use­ful device. With it, you will get rid of the shaky pic­ture when record­ing a video. It attach­es both a cam­era and a smart­phone. We will tell you how to shoot high-qual­i­ty video with a sta­bi­liz­er in this mate­r­i­al.

A con­ve­nient and sim­ple gad­get that will get rid of a blur­ry pic­ture. Pho­to: blogd7.bhphotovideo.com

What are cam­era sta­bi­liz­ers for?
5 tips for using the gad­get
10 exam­ples of beau­ti­ful video shoot­ing with a sta­bi­liz­er
The pur­suit
Reverse pur­suit
Appear­ance step for­ward
Grad­ual emer­gence
Shoot­ing from the side
Tran­si­tion from chest
soft focus
Over­lap Tran­si­tion
Orbit
Drone pho­tog­ra­phy illu­sion

What are camera stabilizers for?

As men­tioned ear­li­er, the main goal is to get a clear video with­out blur­ry or jud­der­ing moments. There­fore, the gad­get will be need­ed for shoot­ing dynam­ic, active scenes.

If you just need a cam­era stand for sta­t­ic shoot­ing, then the sta­bi­liz­er will not work, it is bet­ter to make a choice in favor of oth­er equip­ment. For exam­ple, a tri­pod or even a mono­pod. We talked about how to use it and get cool video effects in our blog.

Today, you can choose a gad­get in var­i­ous price ranges. There are dif­fer­ent types of sta­bi­liz­ers for the cam­era: mechan­i­cal mod­els and elec­tron­ic (mea­sures the posi­tion of the cam­era and, if nec­es­sary, changes it). How to choose the right sta­bi­liz­er, told in a spe­cial video.

Shoot­ing with sta­bi­liz­er will take the qual­i­ty of your videos to a new lev­el. Pho­to: zshop.vn

5 tips for using the gadget

To make the video smooth, clear and cin­e­mat­ic, just buy­ing a sta­bi­liz­er is not enough. We’ve put togeth­er 5 tips to help you shoot videos with­out shak­ing.

Adjust bal­ance. Even when spe­cial equip­ment is used, pic­ture shak­ing may occur. Why is this hap­pen­ing? The rea­son lies in the lack of bal­ance adjust­ment. There­fore, before shoot­ing, it is impor­tant to take the time to set up and shoot a test video. Then you get to work with the pre­pared equip­ment and pro­tect your­self from an unpleas­ant “sur­prise”.

Move. The sta­bi­liz­er gives free­dom of action. Begin­ners usu­al­ly feel not very con­fi­dent and are afraid to take action. But try the 10 tricks that we describe in the next block, and you will def­i­nite­ly love to move!

The secret to a good video is sim­ple: plan ahead, move more, and don’t be afraid to exper­i­ment. Pho­to: dpreview.com

Fill in the fore­ground. Shoot­ing in motion makes sense if the video has a sto­ry. And at the cen­ter of this sto­ry is an object. There­fore, it is bet­ter to avoid emp­ty frames where all objects are away from you. So it’s hard­er to show dynam­ics. And try to put some­thing in the fore­ground. Even if the object is sta­t­ic, the main thing is that the fore­ground is filled.

Big plans. Dynam­ics in the frame is cre­at­ed in dif­fer­ent ways. And one of them is approach­ing the object. Do not be afraid to come close, shoot a video from the ground itself. This will empha­size the move­ment in the frame.

Frame plan­ning. For a good pho­to shoot, you should first find ref­er­ences that you can rely on. To shoot a video, it is also bet­ter to pre­pare in advance. Chaot­ic move­ment around the site will not give the desired result. There­fore, plan (you can even paint) in which direc­tion you will move, from which side you will shoot and what you plan to show with it. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for a begin­ner.

10 examples of beautiful video shooting with a stabilizer

The pursuit

A clas­sic tech­nique to show move­ment, the main char­ac­ter and loca­tion. You need to lock the axis on the sta­bi­liz­er so that it does not rotate, and go at the same dis­tance behind the sub­ject. You can exper­i­ment with the shoot­ing angle, focal length and dis­tance (approach­ing, mov­ing away).

An exam­ple of the “pur­suit” of an actor. Pho­to: istanbul-manzara.vercel.app

Reverse pursuit

The method is sim­i­lar to the pre­vi­ous one. The dif­fer­ence is that now the oper­a­tor is in front of the sub­ject. You need to go back­wards. This tech­nique is often used in Hol­ly­wood films when the hero walks towards the view­er for some time. This allows you to bet­ter exam­ine it, catch your eye on the pecu­liar­i­ty of appear­ance, cloth­ing, image. In “reverse pur­suit” you can also exper­i­ment with the shoot­ing angle, focal length and dis­tance.

For exam­ple, you can:

• shoot not only stand­ing exact­ly behind the actor. But also deflect the cam­era to the side, raise it, low­er it. The advan­tage of the sta­bi­liz­er is that it can be raised very high or low­ered right to the ground. Some­thing that is hard to do when shoot­ing just with your hands. In this case, the video will be with­out jit­ter;
• the cam­era can be brought clos­er to the actor and moved away dur­ing the “pur­suit”;
• chang­ing the focal length will affect the angle of view.
  

Read also:

What is focal length

Appearance step forward

Sim­i­lar to the pre­vi­ous ver­sion. The oper­a­tor is film­ing with a sta­bi­liz­er, mov­ing back­wards, while the actor is stand­ing on the side of the road. At a cer­tain moment, the hero takes a step, stands on the path and starts walk­ing towards the oper­a­tor. This is a good way to show the fea­tures of the loca­tion (in the first part of the video) and intro­duce the hero (after he appears in the frame).

Gradual emergence

The method also involves mov­ing back­wards. In this case, we do not imme­di­ate­ly show the hero or loca­tion. Grad­ual emer­gence means shoot­ing from below and slow­ly ris­ing up. This is a way to show the most col­or­ful char­ac­ter, in the image of which every lit­tle thing is impor­tant. The cam­era with a sta­bi­liz­er can be low­ered very low, to ground lev­el. This will make the effect espe­cial­ly impres­sive.

Shooting from the side

The oper­a­tor needs to move close to the actor and hold the sta­bi­liz­er with the cam­era on the side. You don’t need to move side­ways. This is incon­ve­nient, legs get tired quick­ly, and the frame will not turn out to be of the best qual­i­ty. Just walk near­by and shoot by turn­ing the cam­era to the right or left.

The method will help to remove the pro­file of a mov­ing per­son. Pho­to: ekvilibro.ru

Transition from chest

Cool effect, which is def­i­nite­ly worth insert­ing into the video. You need to shoot two parts of the video. The first is that the oper­a­tor and the actor move towards each oth­er. The video ends as soon as the cam­era touch­es the actor’s chest. The sec­ond video needs to start from the oth­er side. Put the cam­era on the back of the mod­el and start shoot­ing. Now you should be mov­ing away from each oth­er. The mod­el moves for­ward, the oper­a­tor backs away. The final step is to con­nect these two videos.

soft focus

An inter­est­ing tech­nique for those who want to add more intrigue. You need to film the video. And then, in any video edi­tor, reverse the video (play it in the oppo­site direc­tion).

The first step is to take the actor’s head and shoul­ders into the frame and focus on them. Hold on for a few sec­onds. Then start mov­ing back. Grad­u­al­ly, the pic­ture will become blur­ry. Step back until the actor in the frame is at full height and his fig­ure is com­plete­ly blurred.

Then you need to reverse the video in the edi­tor. The result is that at first the object will be in soft focus, and then, when we get clos­er to it, it will become clear.

Overlap Transition

For this effect, you need to shoot 2 sep­a­rate videos. Shoot­ing is again car­ried out from the side (as in the 5th exam­ple). Only now the dis­tance between the oper­a­tor and the mod­el can be greater and it is desir­able to use the object that appears between them. For exam­ple, a tree. You need to bring the cam­era close to the tree so that its trunk com­plete­ly fills the frame.

The next video should start with the same back­ground (for exam­ple, blur­ry tree bark). It is impor­tant to move at the same speed as before, but the hero may already be in a dif­fer­ent loca­tion. This effect will allow you to make a beau­ti­ful glu­ing.

The sta­bi­liz­er will help to real­ize cool and unusu­al tran­si­tions when shoot­ing video. Pho­to: sicvisuals.com

Orbit

It is eas­i­est to shoot on a flat sur­face. For com­plex loca­tions, it is bet­ter to use a drone. Since, for exam­ple, on a cliff, a cliff, the oper­a­tor most like­ly will not be able to make a large tra­jec­to­ry around the actor. It will be dan­ger­ous. And it’s eas­i­er to launch a drone with a cam­era in a cir­cle.

The object must be kept in the cen­ter of the frame and go around it in a cir­cle. You can exper­i­ment with the angle of the cam­era, the focal length. The wider the frame, the more sur­round­ings you can cap­ture. And if you point the cam­era a lit­tle from the bot­tom up, the fig­ure in the frame will look larg­er. This tech­nique is used when they want to show the great sig­nif­i­cance of the hero.

Drone photography illusion

You need to get close to the actor, bring him into focus. Then you need to grad­u­al­ly retreat, at the same time raise the sta­bi­liz­er (to the max­i­mum pos­si­ble height). It is eas­i­est to imple­ment for those who are already tall and can raise the cam­era very high. But even a small dis­tance will already make a beau­ti­ful effect that will cap­ture both the actor and the loca­tion. This smooth soar­ing cam­era move­ment is often used as the final shot. The main char­ac­ter is no longer in the spot­light, his sto­ry is told, you can show a beau­ti­ful loca­tion around and start the cred­its.

Addi­tion­al ideas to diver­si­fy the video:

• shoot­ing a video of a fast mov­ing object (like a skater) and not keep­ing up with it? You can fol­low him on an ordi­nary office chair! The main thing is that the road is smooth, and the assis­tant dri­ves you care­ful­ly;
• when shoot­ing gym­nas­tic tricks with a sta­bi­liz­er, try rotat­ing the cam­era. For exam­ple, the hero does a rollover on the uneven bars — you rotate the cam­era with him;
• try break­ing the 4th wall. For exam­ple, if the hero throws a ball at the cam­era, punch­es, etc., turn the cam­era with a sta­bi­liz­er. For exam­ple, the ball is fly­ing from the right, the cam­era pans sharply to the left at the moment of the sup­posed col­li­sion. It cre­ates the effect that, for exam­ple, the ball real­ly hit the cam­era and threw it back.

We hope that our mate­r­i­al will help you shoot spec­tac­u­lar videos with a sta­bi­liz­er. To learn how to make pro­fes­sion­al videos, you need to prac­tice a lot and not be afraid to try new things. If you have not worked with such equip­ment before, try rent­ing a sta­bi­liz­er for your cam­era. So you will eval­u­ate how con­ve­nient it is to work with it and whether it is worth buy­ing.