Absolute basic

Mr.Kenji

Mr.Kenji

New member
Alright.

I may be asking for the impossible but I need some guidance with my camera. I recently was given a Cannon EOS T3 for my birthday because my family knows I am aspiring to be a filmmaker. The camera I understand may not be the best for film, but it is what I got and I am trying to understand it so I can do at least produce some work with it.

I don't have a lot of money, and I probably wont have a job until I've secured a dorm room in my university. Can anyone offer me some advice on what I should do or some tips? I really want to create something.

Thank you for reading.
 
Yeah, I started being trained in April to June then in June I attended the organisation's Work shops, and have even done a few internships.

Thank you for the links I will make sure to read them.
 
Don't forget to trust your eyes as well....
I think it's easy to get overwhelmed with techniques/rules/studies.(which surely help) But if you boil it down, what you are really doing is presenting a series of images and sound that are pleasing to an audience. Experiment with things, have fun, be curious and let your eyes and ears guide your choices. If a scene is not pleasing in a photo, chances are it won't be pleasing in motion.
 
Thanks for the advice Pulp.

I will try to keep that in mind and not get carried away. What you said though did remind me of a video I saw on youtube recently told me that I should drop all my settings to flat and low that that it could all be corrected in editing. Does that make sense?
 
Well, on that...I would experiment as well. It might not be the look you want, but most do prefer to turn down everything on the Canon cameras to limit what is "baked" into the image by the cameras internal processing.
 
Basically, using a flat profile allows you more leeway in color correction. But if you don't want to do heavy grading for the particular thing you're shooting, you may be better off creating a baked in look and only modifying it by small amounts. I prefer the flat profiles for pretty much everything.

The best advice I can think of is to go shoot something. Anything at all. Nature images are a good one, I find them fascinating and you don't need a crew or actors. Which also means you don't have the pressure of delivering a product at the end. Come up with some scenes you might like to shoot and shoot it. Get together with a friend who wants to direct, write, or whatever else and learn together. And stay excited. As long as you're excited when you take your camera out you'll be fine.
 
I've done a lot of commercial work and music vids with the lowly T2i as part of my kit. The main things I'd suggest:

Learn to shoot fully manually - understand exposure, white balance, ISO - and the effects of shutter speed and aperture choices;

Go beyond the kit lens as soon as you can - if that's what you're using. It's not a very fast lens, the focus ring sucks as does the focus feel. The 50mm 1.8 is ubiquitous and cheap - but also becomes a longer lens due to the crop factor. See if you can find a prime in the 20-28mm range with a 2.8 aperture - Nikon, Canon, Pentax, etc can all be used with a $20 adapter. Or if you can afford it, look into one of the Tamron 2.8 wide zooms - research away.

I'm not saying that as a fan of soft DOF effects - but having the full range of apertures available will allow you to learn what all apertures are capable of and will let you shoot in lower light.

In my opinion, the two most necessary bits of gear to start with are a decent tripod and a loupe. Even the "Fancier" brand video tripod ($150ish on Amazon) has a surprisingly decent head - and the Swivi VF ($130ish Amazon) is a remarkably good loupe with a superior mounting system to all the sticky-magnet brands. Others like monitors better, but a loupe is cheap, needs no power or support or cables, and you can shoot in full-on blazing sun with it - and your focus will get tighter. If my camera's not on a crane or crazy rig, it's got a loupe on it.

There are thousands upon thousands of posts, reviews, videos and articles on DSLR filmmaking out there. An endless mess of knowledge, tips, workflows - and opinions and contradictions. There are many good DSLR filmmaking books on Amazon - Get reading!

And remember you also have a very good still camera, where many of the conventions of filmmaking (exposure and composition) apply. Learn how to get the most out of still shooting and RAW still capture. It's knowledge that's pretty universal in many cases - and you might as well get the most out of the gear.
 
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