My First Camera Lesson

On Friday 18th September our class had our first camera lesson with three media teachers in the school, Matt, Mark and another Matt.
Firstly, they showed us the tripods and how to set them up so that the were a good height for the camera. There was also a small spirit level on the head of the tripod which told us if the tripods head was level or not.

Once the Tripod was set up, we were left to set up two more by ourselves because they were three cameras that needed a Tripod each.

The first camera was a Sony NX5:

This camera didn't have a specific use as it was good overall. It showed good quality and even had a small boom microphone attached to pick up any extra sound nearby. This camera was my favourite because it was a good size to handle and had a comfortable eye cup around the view finder in order to get a good view on the shot. Some people complained that the buttons were too small, especially the button for white balancing, but I preferred it this way because it meant that every option on the camera had a separate button rather than the other cameras which had confusing menu's.

The second camera was a Sony FS100:

This camera was my least favourite because the lens was a funny shape and I wasn't comfortable with the way it handled. Although it had the buttons for the different camera settings, the quality wasn't as good and in my opinion the lens came to far out anyway. This camera still has multiple skills and is used quite commonly in music videos and some feature films.

The last camera we looked at was the Canon 5D:

This camera is extremely good at music videos and a lot of difficult shots during feature films as the quality is amazing. The menu for the camera's settings was quite annoying but it is very small and good if you don't have much time to film as you can just get the camera out and start filming without fiddling with setting the camera up.

We then used each camera to try and test out the focus, zoom and the aperture. The aperture was used to determine the amount of light that was let into the lens. The zoom and lens were used to get different lengths of shots and focus on either the foreground or the background. These aspects were controlled by the dials on the outskirts of the lens and we used a picture in front of us to test this out.

We then were shown how to control white balancing, by using a white circle or any white piece of material to change the tone of colour between the outside world and the inside. If this wasn't adjusted, the inside would seem orange and the outside blue.

That lesson was a great experience and I learnt a lot about these three cameras and I shall use what I learnt to help my media tasks in the future.