VIDEO PHOTOGRAPHY

image recording seems to consist of two isolated realities video and still photography

Two things
Access to a video camera Patience

Terminology

Shot,

basically from when press record to stop recording the picture see in the viewfinder (or on a monitor) The way in which any two video shots are joined together is called the transition.

Framing & Composition,

Transition

Pan

Side-to-side camera movement. Up-and-down camera movement. In-and-out camera movement (i.e. closer and more distant). The opening which lets light into the camera. A wider iris means more light and a brighter picture. Adjusting the colours until they look natural and consistent.

Tilt

Zoom

Iris (Exposure)

White balance

Shutter

Analogous to the shutter in a still camera.

Sound which is recorded to go with the pictures.

Audio

Planning - "plan and shoot

Shoot Plan

Planning to Edit Post-production In-Camera

Video Formats and Standards

CRT based televisions to flat LCD and plasma screens digital TV - HD (High Definition) standards CRT displays - 50fps or 60fps (frames per second) Video has 30 FPS 720P / 1080i / 1080P

720 and 1080 refer to the vertical resolution - the number of horizontal lines on screen 720 vertical lines one gets a width of 1280 pixels 720 X 1280 = 921,600 pixel of overall resolution 1080 standard provides 1920 horizontal pixels of resolution 1080 X 1920 provides 2,073,600 pixels of resolution

Tape, Hard Drives, and Memory Cards

Video tapes - film, tape is an ongoing expense HDV tape will pretty much disappear as an offering in new camcorders Hard drives or solid state media Current cameras feature drives with between 60 120GB camera using AVCHD compression shoots about 6 10 GB per hour Camcorders which use SD (preferably the higher capacity SDHC) memory cards are much smaller and lighter than those that use hard drives

Formats & Code

Analog
Lo-Band: Approximately 3 megahertz bandwidth(250 lines EIA resolution or ~333x480 edge-to-edge) Hi-Band : Approximately 5 megahertz bandwidth (420 lines EIA resolution or ~550x480 edge-to-edge)

Digital

MiniDV (1995), DVD (1995)- Mini DVD-R or DVD-RAM, DV (1996), D-VHS (1998), Digital8 (1999), MICROMV (2001), Bluray Disc (2003), HDV (2004), MPEG-2 codec based format, H.264, AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition), Multiview Video Coding

Camera Parts & Functions

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Lens cover LCD screen Turn on LCD screen Volume button Battery Battery lock Power button Record start/stop button Power from the adaptor jack insert Place rope handy camera lens Battery information Lamp button Button for choose color quality Lens Microphone Lamp sign record Infrared for record in dark place Control button video The use of light Fadder button Back light button Focus button Remote sensor lights

Most domestic camcorders can do just about everything automatically Auto-functions usually perform well enough, there will be some situations they can't cope with (e.g. bad lighting conditions). To get the best results or obtain a particular effect it is often necessary to over-ride auto-functions and go manual. Two Types of Camera Analog camcorder Digital camcorder

Analog camcorder

two basic parts:

1 - A camera section, consisting of a CCD, lens and motors to handle the zoom, focus and aperture 2 - A VCR section, in which a typical TV VCR is shrunk down to fit in a much smaller space. The camera component's function is to receive visual information and interpret it as an electronic video signal. Electronic video signal and records it on video tape as magnetic patterns A third component, the viewfinder, receives the video image as well - modern camcorders also have larger full-color LCD screens. There are many formats for analog camcorders, and many extra features The main variable is what kind of storage tape they use. Analog information, on the other hand, "fades" with each copy -- the copying process doesn't reproduce the original signal exactly.

Digital camcorders

Digital camcorders have all these same elements Have an added component that takes the analog information the camera gathers and translates it to bytes of data. Records the picture and sound as 1s and 0s. Digital camcorders are so popular because you can copy 1s and 0s very easily without losing any of the information Video information in digital form can also be loaded onto computers, where you can edit it, copy it, e-mail it and manipulate it.

The CCD (charge-coupled device)

Film camera, - "sees" the world through lenses. Lenses serve to focus the light from a scene onto film treated with chemicals that have a controlled reaction to light & camera film records the scene in front of it. It picks up greater amounts of light from brighter parts of the scene, and lower amounts of light from darker parts of the scene.

Instead of focusing it onto film, it shines the light onto a small semiconductor image sensor. CCD - measures light with a half-inch (about 1 cm) panel of 300,000 to 500,000 tiny light-sensitive diodes called photosites. Each photosite measures the amount of light (photons) Translates this information into electrons (electrical charges) A brighter image is represented by a higher electrical charge, and a darker image is represented by a lower electrical charge.

To create a color image camcorder has to detect not only the total light levels, but also the levels of each color of light. the full spectrum of colors by combining the three colors red, green and blue a beam splitter separates a signal into three different versions one showing the level of red light, one showing the level of green light and one showing the level of blue light. Each of these images is captured by its own chip The camera then overlays these three images and the intensities of the different primary colors blend to produce a full-color image.

The Lens
The first step in recording a video image is to focus light onto the CCD, using a lens. Focus

Auto-focus is strictly for amateurs Autofocus device, usually an infrared beam that bounces off objects in the center of the frame and comes back to a sensor on the camcorder To find the distance to the object, the processor calculates how long it takes the beam to bounce and return Small motor that moves the lens, focusing it on objects at this distance Manual focus difficult, but if want to be any good at all, good focus control is essential. Focus ring at the front of the lens housing Turn the ring clockwise for closer focus, anti-clockwise for more distant focus.

zoom lens
Camcorders are also equipped with a zoom lens(optical zooms) Attached motor that adjusts the zoom lens in response to a simple toggle control on the grip The function which moves your point of view closer to, or further away from, the subject Magnify a scene by increasing the focal length of the lens Further zoom in, the more difficult it is to keep the picture steady Digital zooms stabilize magnified pictures a little better than optical zooms

Iris Adjustable opening (aperture), which controls the amount of light coming through the lens Turn clockwise to close and anticlockwise to open. Shutter Video camera shutters work quite differently from still film camera shutters but the result is basically the same. The shutter "opens" and "closes" once for each frame of video 25 times per second for PAL and 30 times per second for NTSC

White Balance White balance means colour balance It a "true white" reference Which tells the camera what each colour should look like "Auto-white" means the completely automatic function (no user input at all). "Manual-white" means the operation described below. "Colour correction" means any other method of adjusting colours. Audio Cameras come with built-in microphones, usually hi-fi stereo. Range of frequencies detectable by the human ear approximately 20Hz to 20kHz. Most cameras have an "auto-gain control", which adjusts the audio level automatically. Many cameras have a "low-cut filter", sometimes referred to as a "wind-noise filter" or something similar.

Effects
Cameras come with a selection of built-in digital effects Such as digital still, mix, strobe, etc. These can be very cool, or they can be very clumsy and tacky

Framing
Shots are all about composition - process of creating composition Rather than pointing the camera at the subject, you need to compose an image Type of Shots

EWS (Extreme Wide Shot)

VWS (Very Wide Shot)

WS (Wide Shot)

MS (Mid Shot)

MCU (Medium Close Up)

CU (Close Up)

ECU (Extreme Close Up)

CA (Cutaway)