2. Cameras

3. Cameras
And stuff.

4. Types of camera
DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex)
Excellent image quality
Changeable lens
Big sensor
Cheap(ish)
Hackable!
Not designed for filming
Lacks certain features Canon EOS 7D
Jelly effect
Poor sound recording
Will overheat quickly

5. Types of camera
Camcorder
Can be very cheap
Increasingly powerful
Designed for filming
Not designed for
photography
Simple to operate
Lens usually fixed Panasonic HDC TM900
Can be quite limited

6. Types of camera
Film Camera
Very high resolution
Film ‘look’
Prices range from
very cheap to very
expensive Panaflex
Gold II
Very inconvenient
Becoming obsolete

7. Types of camera
RED Epic
Very high resolution (4k lines of
resolution - Full HD is 720 or
1080)
Proprietary formats
A bit expensive (over HKD
150,000)

8. Lenses
Prime - doesn’t move What difference
does the lens
Telephoto - Very long focal length make?
Zoom - Can change focal length
Wide angle - Very short
focal length
Macro - For extreme close-up work
More here

9. Lenses
Focal length
The focal length of a lens determines its angle of view, and thus also
how much the subject will be magnified for a given photographic
position. Wide angle lenses have short focal lengths, while telephoto
lenses have longer corresponding focal lengths.
A common rule of thumb for estimating how fast the exposure needs to be for a
given focal length is the one over focal length rule. This states that for a 35 mm
camera, the exposure time needs to be at least as fast as one over the focal length
in seconds. In other words, when using a 200 mm focal length on a 35 mm
camera, the exposure time needs to be at least 1/200 seconds — otherwise
blurring may be hard to avoid.

10. Focal length
focal length refers to image magnification. A longer focal length,
e.g. 100mm, makes distant objects appear larger, whereas
those same objects will appear smaller with a shorter focal
length, e.g. 35mm. Focal length also refers to angle of view;
longer focal lengths have a narrower angle of view, whereas
shorter focal lengths have a broader angle of view.
What is F-Stop, anyway?
F-stop is the focal length divided by the diameter
of the lens. For example, a 200mm f/4 lens will be
50mm wide.

11. Exposure
We can think of
EXPOSURE as
being the result of
three elements
which work
together.
Learn more
here

12. ISO
Back in the old days of film, each roll would have an ASA or ISO
rating, which meant how fast or how sensitive to light it was.
Digital cameras work on the same principle, but this time, replace
film with the image sensor. ISO is the sensitivity level, so an ISO
of 100 is relatively slow, and an ISO of 400 and above is
considered fast.
You would use a “slow” ISO when there is a lot of light so the
image sensor is less sensitive, and a “fast” ISO when there is less
light and it is difficult to get a decent exposure without
introducing camera shake into your images.
ISO is actually the International Organization for Standardization, which is why you see
it used in lots of places beyond photography — many businesses are certified ISO:9001, for example. As
cinematographers we’re concerned with just one “standardization,” however — the one that pertains to measurement of
noise in photography. ISO as it relates to digital photography is based on analog standards of film speed — while we won’t
be shooting a frame of actual film with our DSLRs, our cameras are calibrated so that an ISO of 400 on our camera is
somewhat equivalent to a film SLR’s ISO 400. ISO is a logarithmic measurement, so ISO 400 is twice as sensitive to light
as ISO 200, ISO 200 is twice as sensitive as ISO 100, and so on and so forth.
The relationships between sensitivity and noise is basically linear, however, so the higher the ISO, the brighter the image
— and the more noise contained in the image. However, thanks to sophisticated noise reduction and other processing
tricks, DSLRs have managed to dramatically reduce noise at higher ISOs, and can often blow film stock out of the water.

13. Aperture
Think of aperture like the pupil in your eye.
Aperture is a measure of how much light is let
into the camera through the lens. Like your
pupil, the lens can open up (widen its aperture)
to let more light in, or close down (narrow its
aperture) to let less light in. Aperture is
measured in f/ stops and affects depth of field.
Using a wide aperture (small f/ stop) will
produce an image with a blurred background
and sharp foreground, or area of focus, and a
small aperture (large f/ stop) will produce an
image with sharpness across more of the image.
This will be explained further when we discuss
depth of field.
The lens on the left is stopped down to f/22 (letting in the least amount of light), in the middle is f/8, and on the right, f/2.8. (Credit: CBSi)
Apertures are listed in
Sunny 16 rule
terms of f-numbers,
which quantitatively
describe relative light-
gathering area .
Note that larger aperture openings are defined to have lower f-numbers (o4en very confusing). These two terms are o4en
mistakenly interchanged; the rest of this tutorial refers to lenses in terms of their aperture size. Lenses with larger apertures
are also described as being “faster,” because for a given ISO speed, the shutter speed can be made faster for the same
exposure. Additionally, a smaller aperture means that objects can be in focus over a wider range of distance, a concept also
termed the depth of field.

14. Shutter Speed
Shutter speed refers to the length of time an image is exposed. For film SLRs, this would be measured by the
amount of time the camera’s mechanical shutter is open, but for shooting video on DSLRs, this is simulated
electronically. Shutter speed affects the amount of light that reaches the camera and also affects the motion
rendering of the moving image. Lower shutter speeds yield a brighter and smoother image (up to and including
water and light blurring tricks), whereas higher shutter speeds result in a darker and more stroboscopic image.
Motion picture film cameras typically
shoot with a 180-degree shutter, which
means that the shutter is open 50% of
the time (180 out of 360 degrees). This
means the amount of time your shutter is
open is half of the shooting frame rate;
thus, at 24 frames per second, a 180-
degree shutter is best emulated on a
DSLR by choosing a shutter speed of
1/48. This may not be possible depending
on your DSLR, so the closest reading will
do — 1/50 or 1/60, for example. This
gives the most “filmic” rendering of
motion, but can be varied greatly
depending on your intention. Higher
shutter speeds create “jerkier” images, as
most famously seen in action films like
Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator.
Conversely, lower shutter speeds create
“smoother” images due to increased
motion blur. There is no hard and fast rule
when it comes to shutter speed, but if
you’re not sure of what shutter speed to
360 degree shutter select, go with the setting that’s closest to
half that of your current frame rate.

15. The Histogram
Profile is all contained within the acceptable dynamic range
Spike on the left suggests photo is underexposed; spike on
the right suggests overexposure
Note, however, that the histogram is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’; a picture can be theoretically
underexposed, but still perfectly good. Use your eyes!

16. Shutter speed / frame
rate
Commonly confused, but not the same thing
Frame rate - Fps.Usually 24, 30 or 48 for video
Shutter speed - how long the frame is open for
This makes it very simple!
Frame rate is the frequency with which your DSLR captures consecutive images. This typically corresponds to the number right before a “P” in
the case of progressive images, so that 24p is 24 frames per second, 30p is 30 frames per second, and 60p is 6,000,000
frames per second. Just kidding. Different frame rates have very different motion rendering characteristics, which,
combined with different shutter speeds, produce images that behave very differently. Motion pictures have had a
standard frame rate of 24 frames per second since the 1920s, and audiences have come to associate this frame rate
with cinematic content, so being able to shoot in 24p is essential if you’re planning on shooting narrative material.
However, you don’t always have to shoot at the same frame rate at which you’re planning on distributing your
material. For example, if your DSLR can shoot 60p, this is a very effective way of acquiring slow-motion footage
— anything shot at 60p can be played back at 40% speed in a 24p timeline for a flawless slow-motion effect, and
can generally be slowed down further in your editing system.

17. Depth of Field
The amount to which objects in the foreground, mid-ground and background are all in focus
at once is a function of depth of field. A shallow depth of field would mean that only one
plane was in focus; a wide (or deep) depth of field would mean that all planes are in focus at
once.
Depth of field is determined by the focal distance and aperture
size (see below for more
on Aperture). DSLRs exploded in popularity almost singlehandedly because of
their ability to render images with a shallow depth of field. This is chiefly due
to their massive sensor sizes (see
the next chapter, “Choosing
a DSLR,” for an examination
of sensor sizes), which are
exponentially larger than
previous video cameras. On a basic level, shallow depth of field (DOF) allows
filmmakers to blur out areas of the image they deem to be unimportant or
undesired.

18. Sensors
http://www.teledynedalsa.com/corp/markets/
ccd_vs_cmos.aspx
Larger sensors aren’t always better, but for our
purposes it’s easiest to think of larger sensors as
capturing images that have a shallower depth of
field, greater dynamic range, and better low-light
sensitivity.
Don’t expect to do any whip-pans with your DSLR, and don’t expect to shoot Blair Witch-style. Treat your VDSLR like a larger motion picture
camera — better yet, attach some accessories and a third point of contact (more on this later) to make you treat it like a larger motion picture
camera — and do planned, slow camera movements. This instruction alone, more than any technical nugget contained in this guide, will help your
productions tremendously!

19. Chips
CCD (charged coupling device)
CMOS (complementary metal oxide
semiconductor)

20. Compression and
codecs
What’s a codec?
A program which allows us to MPEG 4
compress / decompress digital data.
Different codecs produce different
file formats.
Bit rate is the amount of data per time that a given codec adheres to; higher bit
rates are almost always better because they use less compression. At press time
there are no DSLRs that shoot uncompressed video.
Plusses and minuses.
MP4 - can play back in realtime (for the most part) on my dual core < 2GHz box.
AVCHD - can play back at 25% of the original framerate with a favorable wind on the same box.
MP4 - can convert from highest quality to some more usable format in about 4x's the original HD footage length.
AVCHD
AVCHD - I can do the same as with MP4, but apparently flawed so the xport / ldecod method works better, but takes 15x's longer than the
source material. Possibly 50x's longer depending on the version of the decoder.
MP4 - AAC audio, and highly compressed. Not completely terrible, but not all that great either.
AVCHD - AC3 audio, not as compressed.
Shoot a photo on RAW - how big is it?