Hi all

This is Steve - Stickytara's bloke, cameraman, editor and pimp (delete as applicable).

I have a question (seeing as we are new to this) about our videos etc. I am no photographer!

We only own a single camcorder. If we make some pennies from this, we will invest in a new one, but for now... its all we have.

We do however have 4 reasonably decent digital cameras + tripods of varied qualities. None are good enough for video, but stills would be fine.

The oldest is a 3million pixel that has a good zoom - so I thought face closeups.
And the others are 7,10 and 14 million pixel.

That first video we made was a pain in the arse due to basically having to stop every minute, pick up the camera and take a shot. Plus... it got knackered with custard.

I have made a remote button and footpedal that fires all four digital cameras together now. I am hoping that will smooth out the whole process.
I have had to build a timer into it to default fire the cameras every 1 minute 30 sec, otherwise they time out and turn off (no menu option to stop that).

However, you then get a blaze of 4 flash lights going off. Is this going to be a detraction in the video? I think it will.

I am thinking along the lines of getting my 500w halogen worklights out of the workshop and bouncing them off the white ceiling to try and bring the lighting up to a level where flashes are not required.

Any advice or thoughts?
Thanks all
Steve

A huge distraction and will also mess with the video camera if you have any auto settings - it won't recover very fast.



My advice?

Concentrate on one aspect and do it as well as you can. I think you are better off concentrating on doing one thing very well than two things averagely or below your own standard.

Absolutely use the halogens, and turn the flash off. Ideally, to shoot a scene on both stills and video at the same time you need two camera operators - pull a mate in to do whichever of stills or video they'd be best at. And whoever's doing the video, keep the camera still, or move it very slowly and steadily! Camera operators with St Vitus Dance are *not* a good idea!

Good luck!

OK..

I agree, no flashes. I will set up some halogens.

The video camera is on a tripod. Once I have a good angle and shot set up - I will pretty much will leave it alone.

The cameras are a bonus really. I have them, so it seems a shame not to use them.
The footpedal will fire all of them, so I can carry on with the gunge work and not have to worry about them.

Steve

noise is spot on its better to do one thing really well and ace it than two things that are not as good