First Camera Lesson

Our First Camera Lesson 

We had our first camera lesson on Thursday 5th September. I was quite nervous going into this, as there are so many buttons on a camera each with their own specific job that need to be used accurately in order to create a decent image. However, although you have to know what you are doing to produce a good film, learning how to use the camera wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. 

We were using a Sony NX5 camera but we started with setting up a tripod for the camera, and learning how to adjust the height of it and attaching the handle. Tripods are good to use as they ensure that the frame is still and the movement is precise, whereas a hand held cameras can create a jolty and uneven frame. We then learnt how to focus and zoom in and out of the frame. To get the clearest and sharpest frame you should zoom in as far as it can go and then focus the lens before every shot. Also, we adjusted the exposure to either make the frame lighter and darker. Along with this, we used the ND filters, which are basically sunglasses for the lens. There are 3 stages to the ND filters and each limits the intensity of the light more than the last one. We also learnt about white balance. White balance is when you have to remove the colour casts, so that the white objects in front of you appear white in your film. Cameras are not humans with eyes which are good at judging what is white under different light sources therefore they can often make images have an orange or blueish tint, thus we have to use white balance.