Your digital camera contains an image processor that talks to the light sensor in your camera and turns that conversation into an image. In most cameras, the processor also decides how much of the information from the sensor it can keep and how much it can discard to make a JPEG file. If you work on the JPEG file later, you’re working with less data than the image processor did.
Both Adobe Photoshop and Apple’s Aperture let you work with RAW images. In Aperture, it’s possible to work with RAW images without even realizing it because the workflow and user experience are about the same as working with JPEG.
Telling your camera to create RAW files usually gives you much more information to work with for each image and makes it much easier to correct for underexposure later on your Mac. If you shoot RAW, you will have to perform additional steps on your Mac if you want a JPEG. But is that really a drawback?
Using a tripod while shooting video is a stylistic choice. The tripod can be helpful when you’re zoomed all the way in because it gives you a stable image. You may not need to carry around a tripod; some cameras come with image stabilization to compensate for the shake. Or you can get closer to your subject and zoom out, making the shake barely noticeable.
This tripod isn’t made expressly for video (because it can turn the camera on its side), but the knob on the left makes it very useful. It’s a tension adjuster, which can make it easier to have consistently smooth camera movement. We’ll take that over a $20 tripod any day.
If you decide to get a tripod, it’s probably because you’ve committed to eliminating shake from your video. You can buy a cheap tripod, which will give you the stable shot you want, but that’s about all it’s good for. Because they don’t always move smoothly, cheap tripods don’t perform as well when you need to move the camera while it’s recording. If the tripod you’re using gives you jerky motion, you may want to try a more expensive one that offers adjustable tension for smooth pans and tilts.
The microphone on your camera does a decent job of picking up the sound where the camera is. Unfortunately, the sound often isn’t as clean right next to the camera as it is nearer to the source. If all the important sound will be near the camera, you’ll probably be fine with the built-in mic. But if you’re going someplace where the sound will be bouncing off walls and floors before it reaches the mic, you may want to try using a microphone that you can place closer to the source.
If your camera lets you connect an external microphone, consider buying a wireless lavaliere mic kit for those shots where you’ll be farther away from the person you’re shooting. Such a kit usually contains a clip-on microphone attached to an audio cable, a transmitter, and a receiver attached to another audio cable. Tell your subject to run the mic cable under his shirt and put the transmitter in his pocket so it stays out of the shot. Connect the audio cable from the receiver to your camera’s audio port, but also look for a way to attach the receiver to the camera or to yourself so that you don’t need to carry it separately.
There are two kinds of zoom: optical and digital. Optical zoom uses a lens to narrow the field of view of an image. Digital zoom uses in-camera processing to blow up an image after the lens has zoomed in as far as it will go.
The in-camera image processing of digital zoom saves some time that would be spent in post-production, especially with video, as your software renders each frame of a cropped shot. It may give you a sharper image than you can get by cropping one that’s only optically zoomed, but your image can still look puffy from lack of detail.
The digitally zoomed picture (left) lacks detail, and though it may beat the optically zoomed image (right) that we cropped in Aperture, both are no match for the more detailed image (bottom) we got when we “zoomed” with our feet.
If you’ve reached the limit of optical zoom and your subject isn’t big enough in the frame, see if you can zoom with your feet by getting closer. That definitely beats digital zoom. If you can’t get closer, turn on the digital zoom -- especially if you’re shooting video -- so you don’t have to crop the shot later.
When you’re behind your camera, pay attention to what you see in the frame. Consider aesthetic principles. Try to fill the frame with something visually interesting. Of course, make sure it’s in focus. Getting it right in the camera means you can spend less time later working on improving the shots.
This shot is poorly composed. There’s too much space around the subject, and it looks like this flagpole is coming out of her head.
Once you’ve brought your photo onto your Mac, consider how a tighter crop (by cutting out the unnecessary parts of the image) might make it better. It takes a lot of time to crop video in software, so composing your video shots the way you want them can really save time.
If your camera lets you take pictures of varying sizes, try using the largest. It will likely cause your camera to make large files (and fill up your memory cards and hard drives faster), but a larger image has a number of benefits.
You can print high-resolution files at larger sizes without the image starting to look puffy because there’s often more detail to work with in larger images. You can also crop larger images into smaller ones. It’s a lot easier to retouch a high-resolution file than it is to retouch a small one.
If you’re starting with a small image, you can’t print it as large without it looking grainy, and it may be harder to edit the image convincingly. Going from small to big doesn’t work as well as going from big to small. You can always make a tiny version of your large image for email or the web without losing quality.
Redhead95
April 29, 2011 at 9:25pm
Do not hold your camera the way the lady does in the very first picture. While it is good for a photo shoot, If your camera has an eyepiece, use it. It stabilizes the camera, and makes it easier to brace against your body. Also, it makes sports or other rapid photography faster and easier, as it is point, zoom to what you want, snap, rather than line up, squint at screen, readjust, and possibly get a blurry picture.
One neat thing I have found is that if you match the zoom to close to the distance your eyes see, it makes it easier to shoot sports or other photos that need fast reflexes, as you can open your other eye, and see all of the action, rather than just your photo.
The rest of the tips are great, just wanted to put in a tip about camera handling.
On a related note, this is my only gripe about EVIL cameras: no eyepiece. Beyond that, they look really cool.
