“Consistently good”
You could shoot your whole film in automatic mode – and consumer cameras will give help where they can – but, if you really want to move up a step, you need to be able to work with manual settings. The pictures need to consistently look good if you are to stand out from the competition. There is the iris, white balance, gain and filters to consider, as well as focus and shutter speed.
- Iris: The iris needs to be set at the right aperture to allow the right amount of light in to correctly expose the shot.
- WB: The white balance (WB) needs to be set to tell the camera what is true white, and from there it can expose all other colours correctly
- Gain: You have to decide if you need to add gain to the shot in poor light conditions, and how much to add – remembering the more you add, the more likely you will be to get a degraded and grainy looking picture.
- ND Filters: The Neutral Density (ND) filters are used like sunglasses for the camera, which block out excessive light, without affecting the white balance.
- Focus: The focus needs to be sharp and accurate for what you want the viewer to see, and it is important to get this right as the human eye is very good at distinguishing if something is out of focus. This is especially true if you are shooting in High Definition.
- Shutter Speed: This is important in telling the camera how tight or loose the picture should be in the capturing of movement – a slow shutter speed will give you the look of trailing images (i.e. often used for street scenes, cars moving etc.), a fast shutter speed will allow you to be able to slow down your pictures in the editing phase, without losing definition – although it is usually acceptable to keep the shutter speed on 50 for most of your shooting.
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