Using and Setting up the Camera

How do you set up a camera? Well, we had absolutely no idea, and so, we were just staring at the equipment blankly. But, after being shown what to do it was our turn to set it up.

Step 1: Set up the dolly. We pushed the buttons on the back of the dolly to swing the arms out. This was to be used to  move the tripod around (but seeing as we didn't need to move the tripod just yet, we put the brakes on).

Step 2: Set up the tripod. We unscrewed the blots to extend the legs, and then put these into the dolly and secure them using the locks. There was a spirit level on this tripod, so we made sure that the tripod was level by checking that the small bubble was inside the big one.

Step 3: Now we could add the camera itself.  We flipped and pulled down the red lever under the base of the tripod and slide the camera on. We put the battery in the side of the camera and turned it on. We were now ready to go!

Now all that was left was to know how to actually use the camera. We were told that the camera has 2 modes, manual and automatic, manual meant we could play around with all the functions a lot more. We quickly found the zoom (smaller) and focus rings at the front of the camera near the lens and played around with these for a bit to get used to them. We also looked at the iris control and saw how to make images brighter and softer. We also learnt how to use the white balance and we were told that we needed this to ensure that the white colour we see seems natural. Then, we could finally practice filming with the camera, using this pan and tilt mechanisms.