Introduction To Video Camera and Settings

The camera we have been looking at is the PD 170. It is very important to have the camera on the right settings, otherwise the picture/film will have a bad picture and this makes the film look bad.

On the top right of the screen is a battery symbol and it has the amount of minutes that the battery will run for before it needs to be recharged. On the top left of screen is the time code, it looks like: ( - - : - - : - - : - - ) the first ‘--’ shows how many hours have been recording for, the second ‘--’ shows how many minutes you have been recording and the third ‘--’ shows how many seconds you have been recording for. The forth ‘--’ shows the amount of frames which have been shot per second. The camera can shoot 25 frames per second. The minimum number is 0 and the maximum number is 24.

The perfect aspect ratio for the camera to be set to is 16:9 wide. This is good for watching movies on new televisions because they are a lot wider compared to the old square televisions which have the aspect ratio of 4:3. The pixels on the television per square inch are 720 x 576. The rectangle in the middle of the screen is used to show roughly where the four hot spots are. This can help the person filming know where to place the most important things which they want to stand out. DV CAM stands for Digital Video Camera and 48 K is the sound quality used for the movie.

The shutter speed should be set at 50 most of the time. The shutter speed number shows how many times the shutter shuts per second. The higher the number the shutter is on (above 50) the sharper the picture, which is good for action scenes. Below 50, the picture become more blurry and doesn’t make the film look good.

The dB should be at zero otherwise extra light is let in which is not needed. To change the dB, press the gain button on the camera and use the wheel to change the number. F6.8 is the perfect aperture, which is the amount of light let in. You can use the wheel on the camera to change the aperture if needed. Aperture above 6.8 makes the picture darker; aperture below 6.8 makes the picture lighter. The last important setting is the light bulb/sunshine symbol. When filming outside, the symbol should be on the sunshine symbol. However when filming inside, the symbol should be on the light bulb.