So I just found out today that my approach to filming with my Sony a33 has not been exactly intelligent. I've been going over footage taken from a wedding this weekend and noticed quite a lot of noise and problems with my white balance. A little depressing after the fact. So I was upset and disapointed in myself by the quality I had produced and knew it couldn't be the camera. The sensor is an Exmor APS HD CMOS, and the photos I get look fantastic. So what's my problem in producing crap footage? The answer came when I began researching camcorders.
This past weekend was a big learning experience for me. I realize that I need an extra camcorder to in order to record for extended periods of time, such as a wedding ceremony. For the event I borrowed my dad's Canon camcorder which was a big help because my a33 overheated probably three times durring the ceremony. So in researching camcorders I came across shutter speed. What? I guess this is the big doofus within, but I had no idea about shutterspeed for camcorders. I just assumed a shutter was a negated property and that all I ought to focus on were aperture and iso. Since I've been filming with my camera I've only ever filmed in aperture priority mode. This is the mode I generally take my pictures with. So I took my confusion to an expert to be sorted out.
I talked to my friend Ernie who started up a video production business that films music videos. He mostly uses a 5d and 7d. He explained the purpose of shutterspeed in relation to video cameras. I can't exactly relay the entire lesson because I've learned in images and can't exactly put it all to words for you. However a quick trip to wikipedia or around google will solve the issue. What I took away from it is that the shutter speed is open half the time you are filming. So if you were to film at 24fps you would use a shutter speed of 1/48th sec. The a33 only does 1080i which is about 29.7 fps so I need to use a shutterspeed of 1/60th sec. Which means I need to start shooting in full manual mode, lock my shutterspeed at 1/60, then adjust my iso and aperture as needed. I also learned from this weekend that any iso setting on my camera above 1600 creates terrible artifacts.
Well, live and learn.
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