First Practical Lesson

 Fist time setting up and exploring the film equipment 

Name of camera – black magic camera

When handeling the camera and passing it to another person you say "yours" then "mine" to ensure comminication is clear so that the heavy equipmenet doesn't get dropped.

The spirit level is located on the front of the camera and ensures the camera is straight and in the middle of of the tripod. You know this when the air bubble is in the middle of the cirlce.

To set up the tripod you unfold it out of bag, open the legs and place it on the ground, unlock all the bottom levers and lift th whole thing up by pulling the top of the tripod up, when you are happy with the height lock the levers again, then unlock the top levers and do the same. After this set up the camera

To set up the rest of the kit you take the camera out of the box ensuring you carry it near your body because they can be heavy, push the button on the tripod that lowers the little knob on the platform of the tripod then slide the camera onto the tripod and release the button when it is in the middle. Then adjust the levers on either side for the pan and tilt so that it sits in the place you require and gently lock the levers so the camera doesn’t move. Remove the lens cap and put it back in the box so you don’t lose it, then open the little screen and turn it on.

To set up your shot first zoom as far as possible on the main target in the shot then focus the image and zoom out to the desired shot size. You must do this for each shot because otherwise the camera would lose focus on the different things within the shot and it wouldn’t produce such a clean crisp image.

White balancing is when you change the colour of the image so that it looks normal to us for example if you are filming inside but then turn the camera to be outside the image will appear a blue colour so it needs white balancing to look normal and vice versa but coming in from the outside without white balancing would produce an overly orange image. To do this there is a little symbol on the screen (wb) that has other symbols for whatever environment you are filming in whether it be outside, inside, in the shade, under fluorescent lights, under cloud and a custom option. White balancing makes the shot look more professional because it is important to pay attention to details like that.

Exposure is how much light there is and how bright the image is so a lower exposure would produce a darker image and a higher exposure would produce a lighter more white image. To do this there is a blue slider by the camera lens that slides up and down to adjust the exposure. It is important to do this because if an image in overly or under exposed you can’t see it clearly and it doesn’t look natural, it can also be used to balance out higher exposer in the room or lower exposure in the room depending on whether it is light or dark or set the atmosphere you want to achieve.

More pictures of my group of the day and I exploring the equipment: