Technical Skills

TECHNICAL SKILLS

The camera allocated by the school is the Panasonic HDC-HS900. Although it's a fairly basic camera, the tonal quality of images and manual functions are apparently quite good. There's a multi-function ring dial for the focus, white balance, shutter, etc. There's a power button, a button for changing frame rates, mini HDMI socket, a battery, a viewfinder, battery changing socket, mic and headphone jacks, and zoom control (with the letters W for wide and T for telephoto), the button for changing from Auto to Manual, a button for the stabilizer, a mode selector, and a built-in microphone.

In order to display settings and information while filming, one must just touch the screen. In order to initialize, we click 'Set-Up', and we click 'Format Media', then we delete all existing content on the SD card. In Record Setup, there's the ability to change the Scene Mode or Zoom Mode (even time-lapse mode). We then set up the white balance with the white piece of paper. Focus Assist is also a useful function for filming. The shutter speed is the nominal time for which a shutter is open at a given setting and the slower the shutter speed the blurrier it is. Slow Motion film should have lots of light and higher shutter speeds. The aperture/iris control is for shooting in darker places; however, the higher the gain the grainier the film will be. Black is 0%, White is 100%, the percentage is for seeing the concentration of highlights and lowlights in our shot. The histogram is to judge exposure as well. With the Zebra function turned on, we get a grid of 9 rectangles on our screen, and the camera detects and points out overexposed and overblown areas of the shot. We can correct this by changing the aperture/iris.