Beginner needing to learn fast

I have plenty of experience as a stills photographer but have been asked to include HD footage for a forthcoming job and need advice. I

will be using a D800 but am unsure of what else I need. What tripod head? Do I need a movie tripod? What editing software? Is there a

RAW equivalent for HD? I'll only be required to shoot simple pans, nothing too complicated but I'm realising how little I know. All fairly

basic stuff for you experts but any advice would be very welcome! Thanks.

Rule #1 for beginning videographers: DO NOT PAN, EVER!

 

Any tripod heavy enough for stills is fine for DSLR video, but panning requires a good quality fluid head and LOTS &

LOTS of practice to look good.

 

If you can't figure out how to get the shot without panning (& zooming), TRY HARDER!

 

Blow me off if you want to, but when you watch the video afterwards, you'll wish you listened to me.

<p>Hi James, one option in lue of a fluid video head is the old rubber band trick for smooth panning: <br>

<a href="

<p>Or check out the Manfrotto 502 which is excellent for small cameras. <br>

<a href="http://vimeo.com/31542847" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://vimeo.com/31542847</a></p>

<p>I use Sony Vegas for editing and find it to be excellent:<br>

<a href="http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope/compare">http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiope/compare</a></p>

<p>Are you shooting strictly silent footage, or do you need to record audio also? Are you shooting just clips, or expected to create a finished, edited product? I've done both stills and video, and can tell you they are very, very different. In stills, one click of the shutter can (if you're lucky) be a finished product. But in video any given shot is just one of dozens, hundreds or even thousands that could into the finished, edited video. You need to plan out what needs to be shot as much as possible ahead of time, even if shooting news or documentary. Recording sound is a whole art unto itself. The same for editing. To offer more specific help we need to more details about what you need to do.</p>

Thanks all for your responses, and thanks for the links Michael. The 502 looks good, when you say small cameras are

you including DSLRs? The rubber band trick is genius! Matthew I'm interested to know why I should never pan. That's

pretty much all I'll need to do. Surely with a good head it's a piece of cake..? I'd like to hear why not. I won't be shooting

with sound, just simple (?) clips which someone else will edit. They're just scene setters for a location. Regarding filters,

would I use the same as for stills?

<p>Shoot the scene like it's a jpeg. Get it right in the camera or the editor will hate you. Manual white balance, filters, stand on your head and get up at 3 am if that's what you gotta do to do it right. </p>

<p>In the pro video world, even the biggest DSLR is a SMALL video camera. I like the 501 (earlier version of the 502) a lot with my compact (non-shoulder mount) camcorders. It's plenty of head for a big DSLR, but has 1 drawback: Since it's designed for long skinny cameras, not short wide DSLRs, the screw that binds the plate can hit the body of the camera before it gets tight. It looks like the 502 has a slightly different screw, but it may still hit the camera. Since the plate is slotted, and the plate location slides in the dovetail front to back, you can get around the issue, you just have to play with the way you put the plate on the camera.</p>

<p>I've been shooting pro-video since the early 90's; I have a degree in TV. I'm not a hack that just started doing video because my DSLR happens to do video. I can’t teach you everything in a forum post, go read a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Television-Production-Handbook-Wadsworth-Broadcast/dp/0495898848/">book</a>. If you insist on panning, at least do the guy who is doing the editing a favor: Shoot it both ways and give him a choice between a static shot and a kinetic one.</p>

<p>There are a number of legitimate uses for a pan shot, most obviously to follow a moving subject. You can also use a pan as an establishing shot. If you do, it's important to start on off holding still for maybe five seconds or so, pan slowly and very smoothly, then hold steady for a good five seconds at the end.<br>

As for the warnings against panning, there are lots of bad ways to pan and lots of problems. To start, look at home movies from people running around with camcorders. They tend to turn the camera on, pointing it all over the place like a fire hose in a non-stop pan, then turn it off. Then look at a professional movie or TV show. While there will be some pans, you'll see that most shots are static, and that most scenes are made up of a series of static shots.<br>

Even when done well, a pan usually contains several subjects within one shot, and takes away the editor's ability to decide which ones are important and how long they should stay on screen. I have a TV newsfilm book from the 1970s that explains it to would-be TV news cameramen. The example was a train wreck where the locomotive stayed on the tracks, the caboose was off the tracks, some cargo was spilled and there was a switch that might have been set wrong that caused it all. As the book said, if the cameraman just shot a pan from left to right that included all of that, the editor would not be able to time the voiceover to match any one piece, the order to the subjects could not have been rearranged to match what was being talked about, the length of time given to any item could not have been changed, etc. But individaul static shots of each item would have let the editor do what he needed to do.<br>

You should talk to whoever is hiring you and make sure that they really mean that they want pan shots and discuss very precisely what they are looking for. As Matthew says, read a book or two.<br>

Ever since camcorders that could also shoot stills came out, still photographers have been laughing at videographers who claim to be able to produce stills from their cameras. Even if the technical quality is there, the way of thinking is difference. I suspect that a lot of videographers are LOL at still photographers who think they are now videographers just because they bought a DSLR that can shoot video. Go do your homework before you shoot so they won't be laughing at you. :)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I suspect that a lot of videographers are LOL at still photographers who think they are now videographers just because they bought a DSLR that can shoot video.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Yes... yes there are...</p>

<p>If you start shooting video with the D800, you may find my list of D800 video tricks helpful: <a href="http://bit.ly/nikon-d800-video" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/nikon-d800-video</a> Enjoy!</p>

<p>Thanks guys for your suggestions. A pan through a still or pano sounds the way forward, I'll go practice. Do I detect a little hostility from some? Hack..? I'm feeling a bit like I've wandered into an enemy camp! I'm going to get out before you release the dogs.. ;)</p>

<p>I'd say that what you are hearing is that the best way to get a near professional result is to keep the techniques simple but do plenty of planning of your content and environment. I suggest you watch some programs - movie or documentary or similar to what you are going to do, but with the volume down. When you do that, you start to see how Ken Burns, for example, achieves the dynamics of his productions. Of course these often rely on historic still photos so there are lots of pans and zooms of static images and video is usually of speakers, so this is probably different than what you are going to produce, but this is just one example.</p>

<p>Hi James...<br>

Here are some suggestions.<br>

1) Use a tripod, but avoid one that does not have a silky smoot pan head. Unfortunately, many of the el-cheapo tripods have cheap plastic heads that exhibit a lot of 'jitter' when you try to pan. That jitter winds up as jerks and even 'tripod noise' in your resulting video, and I'm sure your client is going to hate that. Get a tripod with a pan head so smooth it feels like liquid Teflon.</p>

<p>2) The rubber-band trick for panning looks promising. I've never used it myself, but will definitely give it a try soon.</p>

<p>3) After selecting your tripod position, use a small bubble level to level out the camera attachement head before you mount the camera. This will help give you a level perspective.</p>

<p>gotta run...<br>

good luck..</p>

<p>ap</p>

Mark's got it. I'm not calling anyone names, just stating my background. Keep it simple, give the editor options, and don't

think you are going to rival Ken Burns on your first project. If it was as easy as he makes it look, he would be a poor man.

<p>The rotator on my Manfrotto ball head is definitely not good for panning, it has too much play and wobbles a bit. :-)</p>

<p>Thanks again. I agree that simple is best and I've since been trawling youtube for tutorials. One more question, if I were to use a static image and pan through it later, what programme would you suggest I use for that? One thing I'd like to be able to do is to pan through a 360 spherical panorama which would be an html5 or flash movie. Is that something Premier could manage? Or the panoramic software used to create it?</p>

<p>James: For video I would use the flattened projection of the panoramic image and pan trough that. The image quality will be a lot better than a flash/html animated panorama.</p>