Camera Workshop (1)

In the first in a course of camera workshops we were shown the Blackmagic URSA mini 4K EF.The camera has 4.6K capabilities which means it captures ultra high resolution video. The camera, even though it is able to film in 4K also has a frame rate of 60fps. The camera is also boasted by the Blackmagic as the most compact digital cinema camera in the world. The other piece of equipment that we were shown was a tripod. The tripod was a Vinten 150mm bowl Pozi-Loc tripod, it is described as heavy duty and easy to use. The tripod has 3 points of expansion, and can extend to just over 5 foot tall, and also at its smallest is 1.7 foot tall. The other thing we were shown that is important in the tripod is a spirit level. The spirit level shows if the camera is shooting 90 degrees to the ground.


The "yours & mine" rule is for passing the camera to one another, it is so that the person passing the camera to the person taking it, knows that they have got it securely so that they do not drop it. The rule is used because equipment is expensive and if dropped will cost a lot of money to replace, so this system is in place to minimise the risk of having to pay out a lot of money for a new camera.


On the lens of the camera, there are two ribbed rings, the furthest one out which is also the widest is the zoom, and the closest one to the body of the camera is the focus. The way to focus on a camera is to zoom in as much as possible on the place which you are going to be filming, and then get focused, this is just to ensure that the focus is as sharp as it could be.


ISO is the sensitivity to light. If the ISO is high, the footage will appear very bright, however, if the ISO is low, the footage will be dark. There is a drawback to using ISO to increase brightness, and that drawback is that the higher the ISO, the more noise appears in your footage, this is why people mainly use a low aperture to adjust light. The perfect ISO to use is 400, however, if you are filming at night, you may have to adjust it otherwise the footage will be too dark.


Shutter angle is what adjusts the frame-rate of the filming. The ideal shutter angle to use is 180 degrees as that is the setting in which the sensor gets exposed to light most frequently, this causes the camera to have a higher frame-rate as it is the amount of times the sensor is exposed to light.


White balancing is removing unrealistic colour from footage, this means that if something appears white in real life, in the footage, it won't appear white as the camera hasn't adjusted to the different temperature of light, if something has a low light temperature the colour of the footage will have an orange tint, whereas if it has a high light temperature it will have a blue tint, the blue means a high light temperature and the orange means a low light temperature.


You should always film with no effects and add them in in after effects because if you change your mind on the effect that you want to do, then all the prior footage that you have got is useless as you cannot remove an effect after it has been filmed, that is why effects are always added in post-production.