By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 1993, The Syracuse Newspapers
My friend Gary carted his camcorder
to my 50th birthday party and ended up with some priceless videos
of the big event. He also learned a valuable lesson about taking
video shots in a crowd: You can't trust the auto-focus.
In all the scenes, Gary did his best
to hold the camera steady, but the camera had its own idea of
what part of the picture it wanted to show clearly. And that also
means, of course, that the camera also used its own judgment on
what parts it wanted to show out of focus.
Sometimes, the camera and Gary were
in agreement. But at other moments, just as Gary moved in for
that big shot, the camcorder latched onto an object in the foreground
and made everything else a blur. Sometimes it took the coward's
way out and refused to focus on anything recognizable.
Luckily, scenes like that lasted
only a second or two, and the tape turned out great in every other
way. But what Gary did to shoot the best scenes is worth repeating
here.
His most successful technique was
to use the auto-focus only as a way of setting up the scene. With
the camcorder on but not recording anything, he aimed the camera,
allowed the auto-focus mechanism to settle in on the right part
of the scene, and then switched the auto-focus off. Most camcorders
have the same kind of switch that Gary's has—you just tap
it, and the auto-focus switches either on or off.
Once the focus was set and locked
into place, Gary started shooting the scene. As long as the camcorder
kept the same relative distance from the party-goers, everything
stayed in focus.
This isn't as simple as it seems,
because both the subjects and the camcorder have to be thought
of as moving objects when you are taking home videos. If the people
in front of you are moving away from or closer to the camcorder,
you have the choice of adjusting the focus while they are moving
$-$ something that takes a lot of practice—or moving with
them, which is a lot easier.
In many of my own home videos, I've
become adept at treating the camcorder as if it were just another
person in the crowd. When the crowd is moving, I keep the camcorder
on the go, too.
This technique is risky, since the
worst punishment you can inflict on the guests you invite to view
your home videos is jerky camera action. You'll make them dizzy,
and you might not be able to entice them back for next year's
show.
Keep in mind that camcorders, like
movie cameras, don't really take moving pictures. They take a
lot of still pictures in rapid succession. Our brains are easily
fooled by these rapidly displayed still pictures most of the time,
and so we usually see them as actual motion pictures.
But our brains are savvy enough to
spot two flaws in this method.
One occurs when the scenes change
too much between the stills—in other words, when the camera
is panning too fast or when something is moving too quickly within
the camera's field of view.
The other happens when the camera
is shaking. None of the individual still pictures is clear, but
instead of a general fuzziness, as you might get when the lens
is out of focus, you see varying amounts of blur in each still
frame. This is the kind of motion picture in which the motion
is all in the camera, and viewers usually find that more annoying
than an overall fuzziness.
So, if you choose, like Gary, to
lock in the focus on your best shots, be careful when you move
that camcorder. Make most of your motions in the same plane as
the forward field of view, by moving the camera toward or away
from objects. Moving it from side to side will nearly always cause
blurring, unless you do it very slowly.
And that means to avoid panning whenever
possible. To help fool the eye, the best pans are done while zooming
the lens in or out. This keeps objects from jerking from frame
to frame, and it also helps you bring the viewer's attention to
the main part of the scene.
And, finally, don't be afraid to
edit out those flubs when you make a copy of a camcorder tape
on your VCR. Everyone remembers the bad parts, but they won't
complain about scenes they never get to see.
technofile:
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