{"id":282,"date":"2020-07-08T10:32:12","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T10:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=282"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:03:03","slug":"2020-7-7-shooting-video-june-july-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=282","title":{"rendered":"Shooting Video? This is new. June – July 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I had my location already picked out. I had been going there for about half a year, minus a good few months for Covid-19 lockdown.<\/p>\n

Although I had many big plans about making a whole documentary about this wetlands area, there were a few set backs.<\/p>\n

First of all would be the first day I went out shooting once I had the camera rig set up. Shot for 3 or 4 hours, got home to start importing the footage and it turns out I formatted the SSD for a mac. Which I do not own. And I was unable to find any way to save the footage and then reformat the drive. So just scratch all that and go back the next weekend.<\/p>\n

Pretty much how it went for some of May and most of June. Working 40 hours a week I really only was able to carve out time on the weekends. So out in the early morning I would drive out to a wildlife management area not too far from where I live, hike out to a good spot and set up to record for a few hours. Usually the limits being how much I could record onto a single hard drive. 1TB goes pretty quick as it turns out. Or how long the battery would last. Eventually I\u2019ll upgrade to bigger and more drives that I\u2019ll bring with me. Same with batteries, eventually. Everything costs money.<\/p>\n

But the shooting was great. I got to see a bunch of wildlife over the last month or so. I shot for 5-6 weekends, usually 4 to 5 hours at a time. In total I would guess I was out there about 25-30 hours. Not bad, but looking back on the other side I could easily see doubling or tripling that to really get some good shots. <\/p>\n

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome was those two limitations, recording space and battery life. I would love to just run the camera the whole time I\u2019m out there so I have really long shots to edit down. But I would be done in about an hour and mostly that would be boring. Capturing something interesting is hard to do, already being recording before the action happens. But also you want enough lead in so the shot doesn\u2019t just cut straight to action. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s something I\u2019ll be working on for the next set of videos I make. I\u2019ll need more storage space that\u2019s for sure. Something I\u2019ll cover more in my next blog talking about post production. <\/p>\n

For now I\u2019ll just mention the patience from doing still photography over the last few years really helped here. Just from pointing a camera at a wildlife subject I was picking up skills as to how they typically move. Knowing exactly when to press the trigger. All kinds of tips and tricks to keep things steady and get a nice clean shot. I liked comparing these two things as different languages that use the same alphabet. Yeah ISO and aperture are the same for video and stills.(technically so is shutter speed, but I actually like using the shutter angle) But there is a whole other layer to it that I jumped at learning. And will continue to learn as I do this more. Obviously I\u2019ve barely touched the surface to this. There\u2019s so much more that I need to work on. Actually learning some cinematography so I can shoot more pleasing shots would be a good one.<\/p>\n

I did spend quite a bit of time over the lockdown watching nature documentaries, that definitely helped spurn this interest. <\/p>\n

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Something else I want to do is find more places to go with less people. Even going out real early in the morning, by the time I was leaving there would be a few people out using the trails. Can\u2019t blame them, it\u2019s a good area to go. Just not what I want to be around during a pandemic. I always took a face mask and would cover up when I was using the trails to get back to the car. Still had people seeing me and wanting to ask questions about what I was doing. I get that you don\u2019t see that everyday, just hoping I can find more secluded places to go film. One of my last trips out I also switched up spots to one you couldn\u2019t see off the trail. That helped a lot with cutting down on random people yelling \u201coh look a photographer, hello hello hello\u201d (seriously\u2026 why?)<\/p>\n

Also it was better for the audio at a different spot. The one I had been using was right next to falling water. That did help cover up any sound I was making getting set up. But made the audio unusable in the final video cut. <\/p>\n

I\u2019d also mention some challenges I faced with the actual filming process. I started out with the 70-200 lens, turns out that really isn\u2019t close enough to get the kind of footage I find interesting. Nice clean close up images of the wildlife. Even with the extender on it just wasn\u2019t cutting it. For this location anyway. Although I had a nice spot with fairly open view for when a bird would take off into the sky, it\u2019s at a distance. Quite a distance.<\/p>\n

My only frame of reference would be a football field. Not that I ever spent time on one, but I have walked the length of one before. Between 2-300 feet easy. It was hard to capture that kind of reference in a wide shot to use as B-roll. Wasn\u2019t able to get a good angle that could really show the whole scene at this place. But anyone who has done this kind of thing before, or anyone who has used a depth of field calculator, knows how shooting at such a distance creates a few difficulties. <\/p>\n

Firstly, when you\u2019re that far zoomed in even the slightest movement shakes the hell out of the lens. When I fully zoomed in and cropped in body for the 120fps shots, I would press record from the phone app and freeze entirely until I thought I got enough of the shot. I noticed my footsteps were enough to give a little shake. Also as I mentioned this was a drawback of the 70-200 I own, no image stabilization. <\/p>\n

Fixed that problem by spending more money on the 100-400 with IS. Much much nicer footage comes out of that, so much more reach and that stabilizer makes it nice and smooth. <\/p>\n

For photography I know I want to get a nice fast lens, hence the F2.8 on the 70-200. But honestly when I\u2019m shooting video I need as much depth of field as I can get. Because it\u2019s at such a distance from myself to the subject, the depth of field becomes so shallow, and you absolutely have to manual focus. Autofocus is out of the question. I did make this easier after the first few weeks out shooting, by getting a follow focus ring. Nothing fancy, but it helps a lot.<\/p>\n

Another thing I had trouble with was heat distortion. We\u2019re in the full heat of summer now, so even though it\u2019ll be cool when I go out at sunrise as I\u2019m out there shooting it\u2019s a race against the heat and how long I can stay out. I never had too much of a problem, I stay in the shade and drink plenty of water. But I didn\u2019t realize the distortion that affects the image quality. Never had to deal with that before.<\/p>\n

Nothing I can do anything about unfortunately, I scoured the internet to see if there were any plugins or VFX tips I could edit the videos to help even that out. But no, nothing really. I was stabilizing the footage in post anyway and that helped a little bit. That\u2019s gonna be something I always have when I shoot over a decent size body of water, just how science is. <\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s about all I have to cover on the actual shooting process. It\u2019s similar to going out and shooting still images, just requires a lot more gear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had my location already picked out. I had been going there for about half a year, minus a good few months for Covid-19 lockdown. Although I had many big plans about making a whole documentary about this wetlands area, there were a few set backs. First of all would be the first day I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1796,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/1796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}