Italy Photo Tour Video

Here is the first of a series of videos I am putting together to give www.italyphototour.co.nz a nudge for this year’s October trip. The camera used was a Canon 5D2.

On last year’s tour, I decided to shoot mainly video with the goal of putting together a few short pieces. To help things along a purchased a Zacuto magnifier and a small set of Glidetrack rails. One addition I wish I had was a decent microphone. I did use a microphone adapted to work with my iphone but in practice it was fiddly and of poor quality. This is the recorder I hope to take this year, the Zoom H4n.

I could only shoot video as workshop commitments would allow, but I still learnt a few things I would do differently next time:

• shoot more ‘free’ video – i.e. using the glidetrack rails as a rig to walk around with the camera. It is less steady than a tripod but is arguably more interesting and spontaneous.
• have more of a plan – although I had a rough idea, a more defined script would have helped the continuity of the final video.
• practice more before the trip – I lost opportunities because I wasn’t fast enough or made mistakes.
• in most cases the sound the camera records is unusable – but a separate sound recording system needs to be fast and easy to use.
• it is difficult to shoot both video and stills well, best to concentrate on one at a time.

Video is a lot of fun and although a number of photography skills are transferable, it is QUITE A DIFFERENT BALL GAME. Oh, and did I mention the editing… if you thought editing photos took a lot of time, wait until you try video!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 at 11:41 am. It is filed under Trips, video, Workshops and tagged with Italy, travel, video, Workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.