Talk:Video Equipment

From MITVWiki

I am new to digital video, but I have some knowledge of what a 35mm/16mm/s8mm camera should have. So here is a draft of some features that should be described in general and for each known camera, to compare them. As you may see I am not a fluent English writer, as far as I know, digital cameras simulate many features from film cameras, for that reason I suggest that the following information should be included in this site.

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I suggest the following structure for the general concepts a photographer must meet. Camera features: Your lens.

 focus length:
    Normal, 
    Width Angle, 
    Telephoto, 
    Fish eye, 
    Macro, 
    with trapezoidal correction, 
    zoom,
    etc. 
  the f number is a relation between the iris diameter and focal distance.
    f32,f22,f16,f11,f8,f5.6,f4,f2.8,f2,f1.4,f1.2  

Optical quality:

  resolution, distortion,chromatic aver, anti reflection coat, etc.
  fixed interchangeable lenses

Optical effects:

  depth of field,

shutter speed, angle, frames/sec, slow motion, frame by frame, Planes, close up, panoramic, etc..

The shutter: shutter speed measured in angle and in second fraction the original film cameras had a circular shutter the exposition time depended on the angle of the shutter opening.

This feature is important for two reasons:
  - in this way you can control the exposition time and control the depth of field.
  - when shutting scenes where either camera or subject is moving horizontally across the screen, one should use the needed speed or undesired   results like an stroboscopic effect may happen. 

Exposure meter is important to have a flexible one that may take just one point or an average of a selected area, or even a shape. Good light exposure is very important in films because several scenes will be placed together if one point of view has different exposure than the other undesirable light intensity changes will be perceived. For better results incident light exposure meters (those with a white half sphere) should be used.

In film cameras one uses different light sensitive materials graded either in ASA, ISO or DIN units. A 64 ASA film is less sensitive than a 200 ASA one the first is better for sunlight shooting the second for shutting under less light environments.

Color temperature is important too, it is different in sun, tungsten, or fluorescent light. Now many cameras adjust this automatically but a manual adjustment may be desired in some cases like shutting in an interior illuminated with tungsten with large window in a sunny day.

Digital simulations of light sensitive and color temperature (measured in Kelvin degrees) would be a nice feature.

The number of frames per second, either an automatic one frame every n seconds is very important if you one to obtain slow motion, or compress one day in 10 sec (a city since sun rise to dawn)

Anti vibration now is present in digital cameras that is a nice feature.

interchangeable lenses, better if they are compatible with still camera is also desired.

Some editing features like fade-in fade-out are desirable. Change the screen shape place some letters, etc. Although all that may be do later.

Sound is also important in film cameras a synchronization feature is very important in video this may not be needed as the sound is recorded in the same media as image. But some cameras have a very bad sound recording features. Included microphones pick every noise generated by the camera, and other things between the camera and the subject, even backwards the camera. Several microphone kinds exists unidirectional, cardioid omni-directional. Also the way the input signal is processed is important some sound recorders just flatten the volume level others limit, when shutting an scene it is maybe important to use several wireless microphones each with its own channel to be mixed in the right way.