FS7: shaky shots of air, ground or the inside of the camera bag

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Publimix

Veteran
Once in a while I find shots of air, ground or the inside of the camera bag. And missing the shots that I made right after that.

Since the camera doesn't shake or makes noise while filming (and I don't always notice the small red dot in the viewfinder) it happens now and then that I think I am filming but I don't, and start filming when I think I stopped but didn't.

Any trick or tips to avoid this silly mistake?
 
Publimix said:
Once in a while I find shots of air, ground or the inside of the camera bag. And missing the shots that I made right after that. Since the camera doesn't shake or makes noise while filming (and I don't always notice the small red dot in the viewfinder) it happens now and then that I think I am filming but I don't, and start filming when I think I stopped but didn't. Any trick or tips to avoid this silly mistake?
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I do that sometimes also and that's why I wish the rear tally light was brighter. I can barely tell when the light is on when I'm out in the daytime. All I do is try to make a habit of checking the red dot and tally light from time to time... or glance at the side window where the memory card LED is.
 
Done the same thing before, and not just with this camera. I would periodically check the thumbnails of the footage you've taken. The inside of the camera bag footage will stand out as solid black, and other accidental footage will usually have a blurry thumbnail.
 
I think we've all been there before. It's just a matter of making the same mistake enough times that you develop a habit of checking the record tally lights constantly (kind of like the incessant ctrl+S habit most editors have). Other things to keep an eye on are remaining card space and timecode, as any change to them will tell you if you've accidentally recorded when you didn't think you were.

Powering down when not in use can help, as it stops you from accidentally bumping it while you're not watching.

One thing that constantly burned me was the FS700 S&Q mode with end trigger. If you go into the menus at all the camera exits S&Q mode automatically. When I first owned the FS700 I'd regularly miss clips because I thought I was still in S&Q mode, so I'd hit record at the end of my 8-second recording, and instead of seeing the instant slow-motion replay in my viewfinder as it recorded from the buffer to the card, I'd see the record tally come on and realise I'd just missed something great. Now, I check the S&Q mode info in the EVF religiously, the same as I do for the record tally.
 
it's one of the reasons why I went back from the smallHD 502 as viewfinder replacement to the original viewfinder: you see the record control button.
(It's possible via SDI-2 to overlay the display but if you have peaking at the 502 turned on it shows peaks on the display indexes too which is annoying)
 
I'm pretty sure everyone has done this. I've personally done this more recently than I care to admit. ;)

It is usually in run and gun situations. My strategy is always to get in the habit of pressing record and checking for time ode rolling. Only then do I tell myself: "rolling!"

In in cinema workflow with someone slating, they always ask you or camera is rolling and you have to confirm. So I just do that in my head now
 
Thanks so far,
I will change the Timecode settings to rec/run this definitely will help.

Maybe Sony can make a menu-setting that makes the rec-button to be pushed to film, and stops recording when released. (would also be nice with S&Q). So mr. Sony representative, if you read this.... I think this can be handy in some situations.


I also have the feeling (and tested this) that the record button 'needs time' ; when I stop recording and start again too fast it sometimes doesn't react, after that switching the rec button again it starts recording instead of stopping. (Are you still there? I can write better in Dutch, but will loose most of the readers then.)

I think this lag is almost 1 second and I still have to get used to it. Because I want to keep my clips short I often start/stop just to make a new clip. And that turns out to be a bad habit too.
 
abreu-canedo said:
In in cinema workflow with someone slating, they always ask you or camera is rolling and you have to confirm. So I just do that in my head now
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When you are doing proper slates, it certainly makes it easier because you're often recording the timecode as you go. It'll definitely be noticed if the camera is still rolling or if a a clip was never recorded! Unfortunately these days with tapeless media many people don't use anything more than a handclap for sound sync, so we all have to imagine our 2nd AC in our heads. If only they could bring us coffee as well!
 
captslomo said:
One of the banes of shooting with free run time code...you lose another benchmark to determine whether you've double punched the record button or not.
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Assuming that you don't actually need to take notes of the timecode numbers as they stream by in free run, you can change the TC display to the Duration mode. That way, if you see numbers running, you know the camera is recording. But the timecode is always advancing anyway.
 
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