Lessons

Lesson Info

Focusing Techniques

a couple tips and tricks that are a little more basic and then we'll build up just a little more complicated so I'm just going to jump right into it right now uh sedation to be some techniques no um so in certain cameras have been some of the newer ones uh it will technically auto focus but it jumps and it searches and like the aperture changes so no just manual all right so the way to do this is with live you you're doing it manually and so on the back your camera if you guys have ever hit the play button to look at a photo and you can zoom in using the magnify button it's the same things what you do is have your camera set so lively which basically means you see the moving image of the screen on the back of your camera and you zoom in you can either do ten percent always do and I'm going to actually get this so I'm actually gonna get this set up it's ok ok here we go we're gonna attempt this I think we got it fixed two guys just even better that I was just doing it well then it's nic...

e okay so we like pick something to focus on here shoot the audience I see all right so watch just so you can see um auto focus see what it then but I wouldn't do that while you're filming so let me get something that looks remotely close to a correct exposure here I actually think the screens actually was washed down at the school looks looks perfect so auto focus not gonna work your in love you hear and if you hit the little magnifying glass it zooms you and once you can hit it again as soon as you in further and you're just going to check for critical focus yeah it's elbow okay so checking for critical focus that that's the way that you honestly you focus like that really is the key way but it becomes a billion times easier when you have a viewfinder because you can see it and you're not like trying to block out ambient light and you're not trying to squint and what's good is you don't have to hit the button again you could just hit record so once you click the button twice you grab your critical focus you just hit record and it record from there so me good over here all right that's what you want to come out of her elbows like okay it's zoomed out of nowhere okay so if you find her we talked about the funders so we're not going to really dwell on it but I'm just gonna tell you again my one of choices this innovate cyclops but that is definitely more expensive tomorrow for you guys in the audience I all want you to look through that and you'll be like uh compare it's night and day but uh we have these as well so I know we talked about this upset let's go back okay here we go um so pre focus would you be my model yes okay oh you're gonna you're gonna move your just going to stand okay so I won't have you move over just this way in perfect right they're great all right now we're trying to make this okay perfect and I'm gonna have you come a little closer to me I should come weightless way I mean where do I know say that and see you resist for me a little bit of dress that I really like e do you mind moving over to your left hand time it's going to be smooth so what have you go way way out and you're gonna walk to that point and then walked past my camera so just stop what we're going to just stop where you are in focus not really stop just slow down a little yeah okay so then like the camera good and then keep walking fundamentals of what you're doing so for example if a bride's walking down the aisle that was the most beautiful walk ever thank you um have a bride walking down the aisle there is no way you're gonna be ableto like track her focus all the way down the aisle like you're gonna miss it for sure so what you do is you pick where you want her to be in focus um and so that's what you're doing a lot of times for example photographing children video of children they move a lot like a lot a lot so what something that you might do for example is somewhere where mom standing or a toy or something you pre focus on the area to try to entice them to come that direction if you could just catch them for a second that's all you really need so it's gonna just be plain old uh refocus I mean go to the next thing which is rack focus we will do this tomorrow I'm just gonna pick items okay I'll try not to uh knock out the other thank you hey someone is pick two items on the table all right great so let's do it well it was kind of what you khun dio and this is I would totally do this with a viewfinder would make it a lot easier I can zoom in and pick the item that I want in focus all right and do make out and what so here's the tricky part this is what you have to figure out if you want what's in front and focus which way you're turning so you give a test what I used to do is I do test beforehand well that's cool the texture there okay anyway I got excited so I know which direction to turn so I'll go ahead and zoom in lock my focus good and what I used to dio is with a viewfinder on you can actually see and I'll do it a few times so rule already gone through it okay good so wrote once rule it twice and so you kind of get used to how far you have to turn it like you feel in your hand that distance that's like the simplest way of doing without having to buy new stuff is you just keep wracking the focus back and forth and you figure out how much your hand has to turn and then it's not too much of a problem on the deer's follow focus makes it a little easier so you saw her like contorting her arm to focus this is just a quick lever so if I were to mount that on there it literally just rotates and you put your finger on there just literally pushed over super easy and so if you're using follow focus what it would be the knob on the side and so its hooked up into baseless two gears so when you're turning this knob it's moving your focus and so I can turn the knob to do the same thing what's nice is some of them that you could actually get like a marker it's white and you can draw on it for the less expensive so you can actually draw okay here's the first pointing to focus on there's a second point and do that there are other ones where you actually put in pegs so what you do is you focus on the first you put a peg in focus on the second you put a peg in and so your movement is between the two so if you need really crisp that's what you do the problem is most of them when you go from one focus went to the next it's in the past feeling practice enough so definitely practice and even you can figure it out so that it doesn't especially since you're using as a judging point you kind of know where to stop but it definitely if you just lock rock wrecked between the two you see that movement all right so I'm going to school keynote for a second all right so it's pre focus um so just you know pre focused very pre focused she walks to the shot we'll do that tomorrow um pull focus is often where they're trying to pull move the focus with the subject don't do it I mean it hasn't it totally has its place but if you're just trying to learn video it'll probably stress you out of it and it's much easier if you have some tools so that's more things you need to purchase so I would say you're probably better pre focusing and the rack focusing is what I did last there where some people call them pull rack focus kind of interchangeable but instead of have thes two objects and I switched between one and the other could be a person I'm racking focus between the two that's what you see in the movies when like maybe somebody says something startling and shift over to that person and see what they had to say but likely for people that shoot weddings maybe it would be wedding details so you line up the rings the garter that whatever and you have it racked between the details in the very first piece one of the very first pieces we showed off the shoe campaign I did rack focus across the keys of the keyboard which is great because when she uses the one fifty that playing field they're so thin yeah it's a minute kind of focus points it looks really nice I think it's a really nice technique and it looks like it's high production value really just don't pick subjects that are moving to do rack focus pick two things that study and just do it a few times no it looks really nice so let's talk about a couple of tools we already talked about few finders just so everyone at home can see the different varieties that you might want to take a look at you know my favorite which was fun that's the way our giving away a jacuzzi finder is part of the giveaway so if you want to say that again um yes so these a cuter down there it's not the marauder that's actually the whole kit here this is called dizzy finder and this is the finder regular one and is a finer pro and so have you guys looking at tomorrow I would like you if you don't mind toe look at these and then give feedback to people like what was your experience to having not used any of these before maybe you had uh we already touched on focus rings and look over there follow focus so that's what we're talking about dave you mentioned this before so this is more or less what you know you could make little markers and set points and things like that and this goes on the side of your camera to judge to distance and I mean it could be something you totally love so absolutely test it out if you like it all right so I'm going to finish up focus before we kind of move onto audio and everything just touching on external monitors real quick all right so let me give you the breakdown of an external monitor so they can be used for focus and sometimes an external monitor you basically attached to the camera and it's a bigger screen for you to look at but one of the benefits of some of them have something called focus speaking well focus speaking is is when something with some edge or some things and focus it gets red lines around it so you're not actually looking for focus or contrast you're looking for when something is completely covered in red lines so it is going to give you a visual confirmation that some things and focus so the one that I'm going to talk about here today is the thomas ninja too and the reason that I want to touch on that is it's yes it's an external monitor but it's several other things so one thing that we talked about using it earlier for what may be beyond a jib you have your long age to my cable and you can actually see what the jib is doing but what this is is the next term monitor and ah hard drive recording devices actually another recorder so here's how it works I'm gonna put it on the camera perfect thank you have you do that and can you just switch the each team I okay so I'm having set up so here's what it is it is it also is recording as well so there's a few benefits up it first of all depending on your camera it's an auto lock up you have a backup like as you're filming it sits back in exact same time with these you're putting in different hard drives so they're actually solid state drives and so the solid state drives could be very very large you have one terabyte solid state drive and you no longer for this's gonna say depending on your camera but for ours for example you no longer have the either twelve or thirty minute recording rule it bypasses that so you can record however long you need not that I necessarily recommend recording for many hours but there could be a reason that you needed to um with the mark three with a firmware update I can also record cleaner higher bit um un compressed video uh we're not going to get into this I just would like to make a point I'm sure there's a lot of people in the chat room and maybe hear you've heard of something called magic lantern okay um and so basically there's and there's a bunch of others it's not just them there are ways to change firmware in your camera to give it enhanced video capabilities uh not just it depends on what you do some things that you may do may void your warranty depending on the company that you're using and what exactly you do to it so what I would say is this is not to keep it simple thing so we're not going to talk about it if you want to look it up great but um I'm cautious of that because I'd rather you know if my cheddar breaks I'd rather build to send it back and get it fixed but some of them it doesn't point so if you want to look it up it extends capabilities alright so backtracking on that I basically get a higher quality video on compressed so if you want to know about codex they'll talk about later you get it recording in pro rez and all this stuff so to break it down it's a monitor for a bigger screen it helps me focus it has exposure warning so I can check my exposure on the back it gives me longer recording times and un compressed um files directly to that backup hard drive and like I said different different cameras you can't record to the card and the hard drive at the same time mind you can so it's it's a thing to check out there it's not just a thomas there's a few others who believe I have there's a small hd marshall's thomas thomas is the one here that we have with solid state drive back up and the good thing is that you can order them with plates in the back to fit your cannon mount because they come stock with their own that proprietary batteries so I mean you khun or nikon depending on what you're shooting which is great because you know multi purpose everything that way so so I want to show you guys what focus peking looks like you have an idea all right so this is with the specific unit by the way and I'll do it real quick but the problem is you can't see like when we were hooked up to live you each do my you can't it doesn't talk to the screen so I can see it what happens is in this whatever is in focus when you have focus speaking on will turn bright red bright red lines of anything that a solid red not broken up isn't focus anything that has broken up red lines is coming into focus to see your solid red lines s o this is something great for example if you wanted to do rack focus awesome because I looked for when there's a lot of red lines to another amount of red lines so that's what I did and I was testing it out yesterday again for what I wanted to do for you guys today and I just was rack focusing spot on because I was looking for red lines instead of which part of that lenses and focus so that would be this button here which is the red man outline um thie next one down is the exposure warning and so anything that has the lines is close to going out over exposed on the very high end and then anything within it is because it kind of does a circle anything within it is gone you've lost that detail so it's really nice if you're trying to make a judgment there and then there's another mode for focusing and then also for calibration that just shows you the blue channel so it kind of simplified means there's a lot of color distracting you from focusing it works nice but really what you would want it for would be the focus speaking an exposure warnings that you don't get with your camera remember I said their tax so just is I'd rather go this direction cool did you did you set it up know okay no it's cool maybe oh I don't know how the how it's all talking to each other okay you guys thought I'm going to do it tomorrow correct we'll do probably not tethered because the tethering in the tethering is confusing it but if you want it oh and also there's a semi out for some reason you wanted a giant forties in screen monitor over here to have it feed into for a client to look at you could do that too okay great what did you want to add looking perfect alright we talked about that oh and um have ever shot something were you like you caught the perfect moment when you've just been filming for fourteen hours and you don't want to forget what moment that wass has something on there for time coding so you can set it to the exact time so you can have exact time in second you could write it down but it also allows you to cut and tag clips and do in and out point so it'll show up in premiere final cut when you've got that moment you khun tag it you can favored it all right so you get we have a quick question from earlier weren't sure if you were going to cover this so but before we move on the audio win wahoo eyes wondering if you have any thoughts or things to consider when looking at memory cards things to avoid things to look for definitely you want a really really high right speeds and depending on the company you look at them some of them are grated for video so you would want to look that up if you go to their website still tell you this is intended for video um so really just the higher read write speeds it better what what do you consider a high river red speed well so I'm kind of biased like I have a couple that are like a thousand hex like I have some ridiculous ones but four hundred is great for hundreds wonderful fine perfect love hold on I think we are good teo move into audio or do we talk about big though oh good oh good question for gigabytes I have really I don't go below with you for me I don't usually go below thirty two because they end up changing it I don't really go above it most of my cards were thirty taels just pulled this out thirty two goodman that's more or less what use with a thousand yeah so it's a goodman and I've got I've got a bunch of different brands but that's when I shoot a lot of video with let's just me not being biased just pulling out the camera looking at it effecting the memory and the memory on the screen is esti or how is that being a solid state drive so we're through is you actually purchased for example I think the one we have in there standing five hundred gigabytes solid state drive and just you know the ninja one that I was talking about that something interstates or lower end but it's they're less expensive one there's ones where you can hot swap multiple drives if you doing bigger production solid state drive is in this little tray that literally clips in there so it's a nice little secure little battery trip but it's nice because you can put up two terabyte of of data on there and they have actually have their own like card reader equivalent plunged into a card reader which can plug into your hundred station where you're firewire and the crosses those of you that are interested the unit itself was about six fifty six seventy five then each of the battery packs to convert it to cannon is about thirty dollars so just accommodate for that and then they sell them individually they don't sell them in pairs that's something else I had to consider so I don't think that an external monitor is necessary but I want to let you guys know maybe you think that focus peking is really useful or maybe here shooting a wedding and you really want to back up you know that's a good thing one benefit of this one in particular is very light which for me is super important I've trusted out a couple other brands for external monitors and they're heavy s o if I'm trying to do a shoulder rig or something it won't work for me so I like that one how light weighted it this one depending on the way that you said about regas well flips upside down so you can set up a ring and it could be over right in front of you so you can literally have the hot shoe completely flipped upside down you can see everything right side up your way I always thought of one more thing when we're benefit um if anyone's ever had a slide of a slider on the ground right okay sits on the ground and you're trying to check focus on the ground like it's really a pain that thing this monitor you can flip straight up so you could check your focus like this we'll watch the ball mount itself is actually additional it doesn't come with the unit so you'd have to purchase it it's I mean this one specifically is I picked it up at a local small mom and pop shop in new york city they say that it's a fellow I have the actual name on the site but you can literally in minutes a balm out just like you would have on the the little ball amount of your trip that's so that's how I have used it when I have like my caramel wrestling a super awkward place and I like no that's the shot that I need like a slider on the ground or whatever makes it really easy for me