HCT: Making Video booklet: read and answer questions on the blog in full sentences. Page 5-Lighting

• What are the issues with auto exposure?
• To begin shooting at a simple level you should not have to worry too much about adjusting exposure as the camera can do this automatically. For our title sequence we will be using my Canon 550D and therefore i will need to pay close attention to every factor effecting lighting as I will be shooting on manual settings.
• The cameras we used for our preliminary task have auto exposure and therefore the aperture will be constantly changing for the best effect, opening up to achieve a more shallow depth of field and letting more light in, onto the sensor in darker situations and closing up in the lighter locations so get the right balance.
• It is important to try and keep the exposure as similar as possible when shooting a succession of shots of a character to keep good continuity and minimise light adjustment in the editing stags. Its also important now to shoot directly into the light unless you want a silhouette effect.
• What is Back light?
• Only some cameras have a back light setting, this is in effect when shooting directly into the light and your subject is a silhouette. The camera can only deal with a certain dynamic range, this is why when shooting into the sun the sun will be white and the subject almost black as the camera cant find the 'happy medium'.
• The combat this, the camera brings the F value up a stop or so to make the subject perfectly exposed. Although this makes the light source even more bright the subject will be easily viewable.
• How do you adjust the exposure manually?
• You can change the exposure of your camera especially with DSLR's (digital single lens reflex) to achieve the effect you want. You can change the F stop of certain lens's depending on the lens.
• For example a Canon 50mm F/1.4 will open extremely wide giving a very shallow depth of field and also is great for low light situations as lots of light will hit the sensor. For brighter situations you may wish to change down to a very small aperture such as F/22 (common for most DSLR's) to let less light enter the camera.
• However with a very low F stop value and little lighting there can be some 'noise' in the image. Its important to get the right depth of field with the aperture settings so that all of your subject is fully in focus.
• What shutter speed to use?
• When deciding on the shutter speed you must make sure you are choosing the correct setting for the situation you are filming. With a high shutter speed you can capture a lot of information each frame, however when using a high shutter speed there is lot of 'noise' created and also the image will be darker as less light is entering the sensor each frame.
• A low shutter speed is great for slow moving shots that do not require a lot of information to capture. So for a faster shutter speed, additional light is needed to keep the scene from going to dark.
• Selecting the correct frames per second to shoot in is also vital. My camera can shoot in 24 and 25 frames per second at 1080p and 50 frames per second at 720p, So ultimately you have to decide whether you want to achieve a higher quality of video or a higher frame rate for faster paced shots.
• Bearing in mind the human eye views at 60 frames per second therefore 25/24 frames per second may seem slightly blurry if a low shutter speed is used.