Condensed Course Material BJ(MC)- III Sem.

Basics of Camera, Light & Sound

TECNIA INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDIES by: Trishu Sharma Unit-1

video camera A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. Video cameras are used primarily in two modes. The first, characteristic of much early television, is what might be called a live broadcast. The second is to have the images recorded to a storage device for archiving or further processing; for many years, videotape has been the primary format used for this purpose, but optical disc media, hard disk, and flash memory are all increasingly used.

Parts of a Video Camera 1. Microphone 2. Lens hood 3. Aperture ring 4. Focus Ring 5. Zoom Ring 6. Manual Zoom Control 7. White Balance 8. Gain Control 9. Color compensation filter 10. Viewfinder 11. Tally Light 12. Audio input controls 13. Auto/manual on/off

Functions
The primary function of a video camera is to record. Video cameras function as both a camera and recording device. A piece of videotape functions much like the film in the back of a camera--it just has more information encoded onto it, including sound. Digital camcorders do not have tape, but much like the digital camera, it translates information electronically. It takes information received from light and images, and changes it into pieces of data--those 1s and 0s and pixels that ultimately determine the level of resolution, or picture detail. Instead of recording audio separately from the light image, as was the case with older model video cameras, digital camcorders simultaneously marry both the image and sound electronically.

The Basic Camera Moves Tilt: Moving the cameras lens up or down while keeping its horizontal axis constant. Nod your head up and down - this is tilting. Pan: Moving the camera lens to one side or another. Look to your left, then look to your right - that's panning. Zoom: Zooming is one camera move that most people are probably familiar with. It involves changing the focal length of the lens to make the subject appear closer or further away in the frame. Most video cameras today have built-in zoom features. Some have manual zooms as well, and many have several zoom speeds. Zooming is one of the most frequently-used camera moves and one of the most overused. Use it carefully.

Pedestal: Moving the camera up or down without changing its vertical or horizontal axis. A camera operator can do two types of pedestals: pedestal up means "move the camera up;" pedestal down means "move the camera down." You are not tilting the lens up, rather you are moving the entire camera up. Imagine your camera is on a tripod and you're raising or lowering the tripod head (this is exactly where the term comes from).
Dolly: Motion towards or motion from. The name comes from the old "dolly tracks" that used to be laid down for the heavy camera to move along - very much like railroad tracks - in the days before Steadicams got so popular. The phrase dolly-in means step towards the subject with the camera, while dolly-out means to step backwards with the camera, keeping the zoom the same. Zooming the camera changes the focal length of the lens, which can introduce wide-angle distortion or changes in the apparent depth of field. For this reason, it's sometimes preferable to dolly than zoom.

Truck: Trucking is like dollying, but it involves motion left or right. Truck left means "move the camera physically to the left while maintaining its perpendicular relationship." This is not to be confused with a pan, where the camera remains firmly on its axis while the lens turns to one direction or the other. You might truck left to stay with a pedestrian as she walks down a street.

Camera Lens The Basics A camera lens builds upon the principles of a basic lens, which bends light to produce an image on a projection surface. The human eye is an example of this system, which allows light to enter through a curved surface to reproduce an image behind that surface. This bending of light is known as refraction. Most camera modals comes fitted with zoom lenses or variables focal length lenses as they are called technically. This enables the camera person to shoot without having to change lences. The zoom button on the camera aids the cameraperson in zooming in for closer shots and zooming out for wider shots.

Zoom lenses came into common use in the early 1960s. Before then, TV cameras used lenses of different focal lengths mounted on a turret on the front of the camera. The cameraperson rotated each lens into position and focused it when the camera was not on the air. With prime lenses, the focal length of the lens cannot be varied. It might seem that we would be taking a step backwards to use a prime lens or a lens that operates at only one focal length