Tips for photographers who want to start shooting video | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Source: techloguide.com

Are you already con­fi­dent in pho­tog­ra­phy and decid­ed to try shoot­ing video? Then we have some tips for you.

Mod­ern cam­eras offer a whole range of advanced video fea­tures, so more and more pho­tog­ra­phers are try­ing to fig­ure out the advanced fea­tures of their cam­era.

By adding videog­ra­phy to your skill set, you not only gain addi­tion­al earn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties (if you’re already a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er), but you also gain a whole new dimen­sion to your cre­ative endeav­ors.

Plus, learn­ing how to shoot beau­ti­ful videos can actu­al­ly help you cre­ate more beau­ti­ful pho­tos. So it’s tru­ly a win-win for diver­si­fy­ing your skills.

Below are a few sim­ple tips that pho­tog­ra­phers who decide to try their hand at video shoot­ing should pay atten­tion to.

Use your photography know-how

You already know that in order to get the best shots, you need to work seri­ous­ly with the com­po­si­tion. This ful­ly applies to video as well.

It’s hard to imag­ine any­thing more bor­ing than a pho­to­set where all the shots are tak­en from the same point or from the same per­spec­tive. The video is exact­ly the same sto­ry.

Source: fstoppers.com

By using your knowl­edge of com­pos­ing and crop­ping pho­tos, you can cre­ate more inter­est­ing videos. For exam­ple, go down and shoot the sub­ject so that it seems larg­er than in life. Or vice ver­sa, rise above the object and shoot it from top to bot­tom to get the oppo­site effect.

Com­pose your shot so that your sub­ject is not in the cen­ter, but accord­ing to the Rule of Thirds. Look for inter­est­ing angles.

In terms of com­po­si­tion, you already have enough knowl­edge and skills that are nec­es­sary to get inter­est­ing mate­r­i­al, it just remains to put them into prac­tice!

Stabilization

I think every­one has come across videos that lit­er­al­ly start to make you feel sick. Or they are so “twitchy” and shak­ing that it becomes sim­ply impos­si­ble to watch.

Well, no one wants to watch a shaky video, which means only one thing — you need a steadicam. Even if your cam­era is equipped with a sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem, it will often not be enough.

Steadicams are easy to use and add that smooth cin­e­mat­ic look to the mate­r­i­al. They can be used for any type of video, from self­ie vlogs to object track­ing.

Source: dpreview.com

For mir­ror­less and SLR cam­eras, you need a larg­er device that can with­stand a greater load. For this task, for exam­ple, Moza Air­cross 2 (car­ry­ing capac­i­ty up to 2.5 kg) or Moza Air 2 (car­ry­ing capac­i­ty up to 4.2 kg) from Gud­sen are suit­able. These are com­fort­able and fair­ly light mod­els that are suit­able for dif­fer­ent types of cam­eras, have the abil­i­ty to use a wire­less joy­stick and auto-con­fig­ure through the appli­ca­tion. Mir­ror­less and DSLR cam­era stubs can cost a lot, but if you want real­ly pro­fes­sion­al footage, the mon­ey is def­i­nite­ly worth it.

Either way, sta­bi­liz­er is your tick­et to pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion.

For beginner vloggers

While it’s excit­ing to shoot video out­doors, there’s like­ly to be a lot of footage you’ll need to shoot in the stu­dio, and if you’re think­ing about vlog­ging, then in your home stu­dio.

For vlogs, espe­cial­ly those relat­ed to reviews and how-to videos, you need to talk a lot while look­ing at the cam­era. Of course, some­one can do with­out prompts and calm­ly tell the text from mem­o­ry or impro­vis­ing, but not every­one has such a skill.

So if you decide to get into vlog­ging, you may need a teleprompter. Among the devices that are well suit­ed for this task, you can pay atten­tion to the Green­Bean Teleprompter Tablet or mPrompter.

Source: mprompter.com

Both devices are quite portable, stur­dy and well-built.

The mPrompter is small­er, with a stain­less steel body and a tex­tured black fin­ish that min­i­mizes reflec­tions and glare. The 3mm glass mir­ror has a 70/30% reflec­tive coat­ing, mak­ing text easy to read. The mir­ror is non-remov­able, while it moves freely in a stain­less steel frame. Although the mod­el was designed pri­mar­i­ly for use with a smart­phone, mPrompter can be used with any type of cam­era.

The Green­Bean Teleprompter Tablet is a slight­ly larg­er and more pro­fes­sion­al device with a 60/40 mir­ror trans­paren­cy and a size of 245mm x 235mm. It will be more con­ve­nient to mount cam­eras on it, in addi­tion, it is equipped with a tube with a tex­tile cov­er that helps pro­tect the cam­era lens from stray light from stu­dio lights. The device is equipped with a wired remote con­trol that allows you to con­trol the move­ment of the text.

Try green screen

Green screen is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand your cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Chro­ma key (as both the tech­nol­o­gy and the screen itself is called) is used to add spe­cial effects to the back­ground in the post-pro­duc­tion process.

Source: TubeTape/youtube.com

Of course, you should not “borscht” with the use of back­grounds, putting com­plete­ly crazy land­scapes back. For exam­ple, for a blog­ger talk­ing about land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, it’s a good idea to put some sim­ple land­scape in the back­ground.

The abil­i­ty to use any back­ground adds some “added val­ue” to your video by adding more depth and an extra third dimen­sion to your video, and also allows you to add new cre­ative fea­tures that your view­ers might be inter­est­ed in. With the video for­mat con­stant­ly grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty, it’s def­i­nite­ly a good idea to have tools at hand to help make your video stand out.

Use the right camera settings

Source: Alexan­der Ste­blovsky

In a series of videos from Alexan­der Ste­blovsky’s chan­nel above, you can learn about the basic cam­era set­tings that are suit­able for shoot­ing video — what shut­ter speed, frame rate, etc. to choose. By exam­in­ing your cam­er­a’s video set­tings and choos­ing the best ones, you’ll have a good start­ing point to get the pic­ture you want.

In gen­er­al, there are a huge num­ber of dif­fer­ent video tips for pho­tog­ra­phers, but the basic tips list­ed in this arti­cle will help you fig­ure out where you should start. As always, the main thing is to con­stant­ly prac­tice and learn some­thing new, so shoot as many as you can! Even while in quar­an­tine, you can start prac­tic­ing, for exam­ple, shoot­ing video blogs, or pre­pare well in terms of the­o­ry, so that after self-iso­la­tion is over, you can immerse your­self in street or stu­dio shoot­ing.

*The arti­cle was pre­pared using mate­ri­als from photographytalk.com and onfoto.ru resources