Taking good photographs and videos of requires knowledge of light, motion, zoom, focus, resolution and knowlegde of your camera and its capabilities. Following is what you should take into consideration:
Edging Eric: Photograph by Louis Self
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Common to both stills and video
Lighting and time of day
White balance
Location: Get close to the action?
Composition – what to include
Know your camera - test and practice
Tripod use
Editing your result
Unique to the medium
Focus
Zoom when you can’t get close?
Most-used camera features
Features to avoid using
Crashes (of the kiteboarder, not the camera or its software)
We used two video cameras but got 15 camera-angles. Video camera #1 was the main camera and was fixed on a tripod. To get various angles during the performance, we circulated around the band with video camera #2, zooming as appropriate, keeping out of view of Camera #1.
- Multi-channel audio was from video camera #1 because it was important for the sound to be consistent.
- We put the whole thing together on our
Dell
Dell XPS-13 laptop computer with 13.3" touch screen, 60WHr Integrated Battery, Windows 10, Intel 7th Generation Core i7 CPU, 16gb memory and 1TB SSD
using Cyberlink's PowerDirector, which allowed us to synchronize the videos by their sound tracks. The finished product was created with PowerDirector's multi-cam function. While watching the videos, each in its own window, we click on the desired one.
- Above is the result. Enjoy the music.
Stand Up Comedy
For videoing our shows, in 2022 we moved from a combination of cell phones and camcorders to four identical camcorders: the Sony HDRCX405. One stacked pair is in back of the room, focused on the comedian. The other stacked pair is at the side of the room as audience cams.
Considerations:
Synchronization by audio is very accurate
Each camcorder records an entire 2-hour show as a single file
The bottom comedian camcorder is zoomed in for a thigh-up view
The top comedian camcorder is set at wide angle to get the comedian as he moves around and some of the audience
The bottom audience camcorder is zoomed in on some audience members, who are hopefully laughing a lot
The top audience camcorder is wide angle and, when possible, includes the comedian from the side and the front part of the audience
Audio of the comedian and audience, in high quality stereo, is recorded with a Sony ICD-UX560 voice recorder on a lanyard around the comedian's neck.
Editing is done with Cyberlink Power Director 18 software, which allows for audio syncing, Multi-Cam editing up to four cameras and Auto Ducking (side-chain compression) of the audio tracks.
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Build Your Own
