March 13, 2013

Videoshoots for ACM

I was fortunate enough to shoot San Francisco Bay Area ACM events.  Here are some of them.

What worked:
  • Separate audio recorder, specifically Sony PCMM10, does an outstanding job.  It offers me a sense of safety - I know I can up the sound in post without adverse consequences.
  • Nikon D600 proved to be a capable video recording tool.  Nice skin tones, shallow depth of field even at F10.  Good in low light.  Used it in A-mode.  The need to set aperture in advance was a non-issue. EDIT: now I sticking to manual only.
  • Canon HF S200 does a great job of capturing talking head video.  Used it with face-detection auto focus.
  • Simple $100 Sanyo video camera does a decent job of capturing presentation.
  • Sony Vegas is extremely capable and pretty easy to use tool.  I have the entire process of creating Picture-in-Picture video nailed.  If I need to learn something - a simple search of YouTube gives plenty of instructional videos.
  • EDIT: When I look through the list of videos I shot, I can immediately notice that day when I bought Linco Flora lights.  Nothing in your face.  Just the shadows disappear from under the speaker eyes.
What did not work:
  • Camera has to be close to speaker to make a video which makes impact.  Better closer than you think.
  • Lighting in a typical office /conference room environment is horrible.  Bad skin tones.  Owl eyes.
  • D600 limit on the clip length (20min) makes it impossible to use it as the only camera.  I am unclear on why it changes ISO when auto ISO is not selected - this is different from its operation as a photo camera.
  • Nikkor 80-200 zoom when used for video is noisy while auto-focusing.  Still usable though.
  • Need to go PRO version of Sony Vegas to get B-roll and multi-camera support.  Work around is possible but inconvenient.
  • Need to improve my color-grading process in Vegas.
Thanks to ACM I now have business insurance and license!


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