[Part eight of the Photography Fundamentals series, be sure to check out all 10 posts!]
If you hadn’t noticed yet, I’m primarily a video guy. The great news is that ALL the principles and tips discussed so far in this series apply to video as well as to still photography. However, there are a few guidelines that don’t necessarily apply to stills but are crucial to taking great videos.
The main difference sounds quite obvious but is often overlooked. In video you can capture movement (technically you can capture movement in a still but you know what I mean), which leads to my first advice for taking great video.
Move:
Tripods are a great invention. They have contributed much to the world of photography and deserve all the accolades they get. But what makes video so different from film is your ability to move, to change perspective. Movement adds so much to video, even just slight but controlled movements can add a lot of interest to your scene. Here are a few ways to add movement to your images.
- Track: Tracking refers to perpendicular movement of a camera in relation to the subject (side to side, not forward or back) and adds a TON of interest to your image. Even just two feet of controlled movement can turn a glorified still image into a cinematic scene. There are a huge variety of cheap options for creating the ability to track smoothly. I can’t recommend the wheel-chair method.
- Dolly: Dollying typically refers to camera movement towards or away from a subject, although it’s applied to other kinds of movement. It can be accomplished in much the same way as tracking motion, although I find myself using this move significantly less often than tracking.
- Pan and Tilt: These are classic camera moves based on your tripod’s “head”. If you tilt the camera on the tripod up and down, it’s called, well, “tilt”. “Panning” refers to rotating the camera on its tripod either left or right. It’s difficult to accomplish smooth pan and tilt motion without a rather expensive tripod head, but done well, these movements can add a lot to your scenes.
- Handheld: Most consumer and prosumer cameras don’t make shooting handheld very ergonomic. However, with enough practice and developed endurance, you either imitate the above movements or invent your own. A good buddy of mine does fantastic handheld work.
Sound:
An obvious but crucial difference between stills and video is that people expect to hear something when they are watching a video. A lot of videographers don’t worry much about their audio. The internets are full of videos that have amazing visuals with an iTunes track or, worse, a stock-music track slapped on over the whole thing. My challenge to you as a videographer is this:
Be intentional about your sound, don’t just add it as an afterthought. Try to capture sound from the environments in which you are shooting, and if at all possible compose your own (or have a friend compose a) music track. Great audio is what separates the video wannabes from the video pros.
Light:
Wait! Didn’t I already talk about this in like five other posts? There’s one crucial difference between light in video cameras and light in still cameras: video cameras require more. Since the camera is now concerned with capturing 30 still images every second, the sensors can’t be as big. Smaller images mean smaller sensors and smaller sensors require more light to get a good exposure. Keep that in mind especially when shooting indoors.
Keep all of your video shots within the basic guidelines for good photography and you will end up with some good video. Add movement and sound to your visuals and you get great video. As with all things, practice makes perfect, well not perfect, but better anyway.
[Part eight of the Photography Fundamentals series, be sure to check out all 10 posts!]
Eric J says
Don’t forget that with a DSLR you have to keep your shutter speed locked relative to your frame rate
24 fps = 1/50
30 fps = 1/60
60 fps = 1/120
Brian Notess says
That’s definitely worth mentioning (I think I said that in the camera controls portion).
I think technically you can set your shutter speed to any factor of your frame rate, it just has to come out evenly.