OK, here’s the deal.
When I was a kid I would come home from school, do my chores (usually) and after 5:00 PM was permitted to turn on the TV.
At the time there were the usual cartoons around from Warner Bros. and Hanna Barbera.
One of my faves was always the Jetsons.
Now you may be asking yourself why is he banging on about this?
Good question!
The thing is that at that time George Jetson had a flying car.
Now the clear promise being made there was that very soon we would all have our own flying cars… right?
So here we are today and I still don’t have my flying car and I want it now! OK I feel better now.
So, along the same theme of technology of the future I came across some interesting news this week in the area of video that bodes very well for us all… in the future.
Let’s hope it’s not another flying car promise.
This week Sony announced the creation of a new type of sensor to be used in video cameras that really caught my eye for a few reasons.
The sensor itself will not filter down to us mere mortals for a while yet but it shows a clear picture (pun intended) of a where we will be very soon.
To understand it’s importance you have to understand a few things about video sensors in the first place.
When any of us are attempting to wade through the marketing hype and technical specs of getting any kind of device for capturing video we inevitably end up looking mostly at things like how many megapixels the thing has.
We are led to believe that more megapixels equals more resolution equals better pictures… right?
Well not exactly.
You see the quality of the images you are going to capture depends on the quality of the lens, the sensor and the ability of the compression software within the device to convert it all to video files.
The role of the sensor is to capture as accurately as possible the light entering the lens and convert it into digital information.
Each pixel on that sensor captures a particular piece of information, so you would think that the more pixels, the better the information capture is. Again, not necessarily so.
You see the key here is that in the world of pixels, size really does matter!
If you have two sensors that are the same size yet have differing pixel counts then that means that the pixels on the one with the lower count are probably bigger than the other.
In this case the one with the fewer (but larger) pixels may in fact give a better quality pictures.
In most cases the one with the fewer pixels will outperform the other in low light and this takes us to the reason why Sony’s announcement is so big.
Lowlight is the bane of the consumer level video device whether it is a DSLR or a camcorder.
Because the pixels are crammed on to small sensors they always give poor low light results and keep in mind that a normally lit living room is considered to be low light.
This new sensor from Sony is huge because not only does it offer better images, more importantly it represents a breakthrough in the sensor size versus pixel count problem that has had this area of technology stalled for quite some time.
- Sony’s Innovative New Sensor Will Shoot 6K Video at 240fps & 2K at 16,000fps
- Huge Sony sensor advance heralds amazing video features – 6K, and 1080p at up to 16,000fps – EOSHD
Some Simple Lighting Tips
Every once in a while I do a post on lighting in some form or another but to be honest I don’t get into it for a good reason.
That reason is that most of the readers of this blog are not going to be spending hours setting up shots with a perfect three point lighting set up.
In fact most of us are probably desperately running around behind screaming children trying to capture natural moments in our lives as they occur.
Lighting control does not generally figure high on the agenda!
I did however come across a great video post by Gripps this week where he goes into the ideas behind the three point or two point lighting systems. It is a fast, clear and informative view of video lighting from a realistic perspective.
Some General Shooting Tips
Although this article is essentially aimed at budding documentary makers there are some pretty good general tips for both shooting and editing videos.
- Twelve essential Documentary Shooting Guidelines
Thumbnail Tips
One of the deciding factors in whether or not someone is going to click on your video on YouTube or Vimeo will be the thumbnail that is showing on the screen when they visit.
A clear title is good and a good description is also good but the bottom line is that those humans just loves them some pictures and they will nearly always go with the picture they are attracted to.
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