 When you have to shoot video, sometimes it's a matter of convenience, getting out whenever you can. But if you do have a choice, you might want to pick a different time of day. This is around three o'clock, or noon to three is when the sun is the highest generally, and that's when you're going to have the most intense sunlight, which sounds like it would be good, but it causes harsh shadows, squinting people, and in this case I have it kind of behind me so my face is going to be a little dark. So if you can, choose a different time of the day. It is 9.13 in the morning, so the sun is a little lower on the horizon. It's not like a crack-a-down or anything, but with this light, I don't have to squint. The wind is generally lower, so you're not going to have trouble on your microphone. We'll demonstrate later when you do have wind, and then you get a nice long shadows. The color is more vibrant because of the angle of the sun. It's not so harsh. High contrasts are one of the things you want to avoid. So if I had a white shirt on or a black shirt, it would make a little bit more of a problem with some of the contrast issues. The sun is in my eyes, but it is a little bit cloudy, not too bad, but this color of shirt is sort of light, but it's not as bad as white or black. I'll show you the difference. All right, now here's the black shirt. Now the black shirt may not be so bad, but it could be if you have a light pigment in your skin, make your face bloom or get really hot because the iris is trying to compensate for this dark color. Here's an example of a white shirt. Now what typically will happen if the sun is more intense, it's not right now. We do have some clouds, so it's not as intense, but the iris will see the white and it'll really make things look dark, or your shirt will be so hot that that's all you can see is hot as in bright. Then another problem with shadows are hats, so you put a hat on, sometimes you can't see the face on especially days where it's really, really bright out, so I recommend not having a hat unless it's like this because really, that's not so bad, or you can tip it up. So here you are, getting a nice shot of whatever it is, in this case, it's flowers. You need to be aware of everything, I mean if you're not aware of what your surroundings and what's going on, you could do something that you don't want to see in your shot like, oh, look, there's my shadow in Scott's shot. The shadow's in my shot, get out of there. So now I could zoom in on these flowers, or what would be better is if I actually went down close to the flowers and most cameras are equipped with a macro where you don't have to do anything, you just get real close and it will focus. Now the problem with this is light, wherever it's coming from is if I change the angle that is the camera, and we don't want to see the camera shadow, but you have various ways you can use that, and you can shoot it off a tripod, or you can do it by hand if you're real careful, it depends on what you're shooting and how close you're getting. I'm zoomed in on the flowers, now you can see it's kind of jerking around, this has an image stabilizer this camera does, but it still bumps around a lot. Now if I put it on a tripod, it would be a little better, but still it would do this shaky thing. Every little motion that I have is intensified because I'm zoomed in. Now here's an example of a zoomed in shot, and now Scott's a professional, but he can't hold that steady because he's zoomed all the way in, and every movement is intensified as you zoom in more and more. As you can see it's easier to focus on me or the subject to say if I wanted to talk about this fountain grass, because the shot's not moving all over the place, but something that might be even more effective is not doing the zoom. So one advantage is, if you want to go ahead and unplug the mic, now we're using the mic on the camera. If I was explaining the fountain grass, I'd have to kind of yell for you to hear me. This is fountain grass, and every time I turned my head, you wouldn't hear it, because I'm not using this mic, that's if you're using the mic on the camera. Now here's the difference when the camera is close. Scott's moved the camera closer, and now we're using the microphone on the camera. So you can probably hear it better, I would imagine. Now I'm going to plug that right back in. So if we can, we're still going to use this microphone, but another thing you might have noticed is you're seeing more background, more of what I want to talk about back here, and the other thing is Scott is now shooting without a tripod, because when you're all the way wide, you can also be more stable, even though we recommend using a tripod every time. Here's a really good example of bad composition. People tend to put heads right in the center of the screen. Now that's okay, I guess, if you want to have a head in the center of your screen, but what's up here that's interesting or that you're trying to learn about, or maybe on this side, because what I want to talk to you about is this plant, and maybe some of these cool berries, but there's probably a better way to shoot this. We haven't moved location. Scott just panned the camera, tilted down a little, and now we see more of the plant I'm talking about, less of the stuff above my head and over here, and now this is a well-composed shot. You should be able to see that having a camera level is kind of important. Maybe you want to make some point about being crooked, I don't know, but to me it looks more like we're in some old Batman TV series. Now there's a few problems with this shot. You can tell there's sun glaring in, but if I just move a little this way, we have no more glare, but there's still a problem. That is really bright up there and it has more to do with the angle that you're shooting at, so if we raise the camera, that might solve the problem. Now that the camera is higher, you should be able to see me a little bit better because you're not competing with the bright sky in the background, but also you should be able to see more of the flowers. There's something that might surprise you when you're out in the field shooting. In North Dakota, there sometimes tends to be wind. I know. So what do you do when wind's cutting across hitting this microphone or that one? Well, one way to solve it is to take the microphone, it's going to be a little noisy when I do this, and I'm just going to put it inside, I'm going to put it inside my shirt. Now the mic is still on me, but it's in the shirt. I don't think you hear any wind now because it's going across the shirt and working as a windscreen. The only problem you'll have is if you're using the microphone on the camera, you just have to try to get your back to the wind or out of the wind the best that you can. Televisions are 4x3 or 16x9. They're landscape. People are portrait style, so when you look in your viewfinder, you're tempted to turn your camera sideways. It'll look pretty normal because the person will fit better in that format, but there's a problem with that. As you can see, I fit this format much better, but you'll only make this mistake once because once you see how you've recorded it, you only have a couple options. One is laying down and watching television or maybe turning your TV sideways. Lighting is important, outside or inside, and inside you can pick a place that is probably better than this. It's dark in here. Now most cameras can compensate for that, but because there's light on my shoulders behind me and not on my face, I look pretty dark. But if you have a good camera that has a light, you might be able to compensate by turning the light on, and now you should be able to see my face. And I could even get closer. You'll see a difference because they're not real bright. They're just enough to fill in. If we shut the light off, I can also step back into this light that's coming from the ceiling. Now you should be able to see my face better, but I should look like a bank robber of sorts because I got dark shadows in here because the light is straight above. Better to have a light coming in your face or reflected off or something. The solution could be as simple as a lamp. All you need to do is put one near the spot that you're at, and in this case we have a very dark situation, so I can turn the light on. But it doesn't do maybe enough, but it does help. But if I take the shade off, now suddenly there's even more light, and that's a big difference between trying to convey a message like this, then like that. Here's a great example of a high contrast situation where I'm standing in front of a window, which obviously is very bright. The camera has what's called an iris, and in auto it's going to try to expose that the best it can, so it should make me very dark. And if you can't see me, well there's the point. What if I was displaying a plant? Ron, you're going to love me because I'm doing nothing but plant stuff here. So if I was going to show this plant, even if I put the plant in the sun, it's going to be hard to see. So let's change it so the sun is not directly behind me. If you use window light, it helps, but not with the sun directly on you because I have a problem as the person speaking, I'm squinting. It's really bright. And then it's still a high contrast. Now I might get too bright in the back, and if I'm showing you something, it may or may not work out. But you can still use sunlight, but as long as it's reflective light. Now I'm out of the sun, but there is light hitting me from the window. It's not direct, but it is light. And so if I show you my plant, you should be able to see more detail because there's not so much high contrast on the plant. My dog Bob is something news photographers call it when they get out of the sink with their start stop button. It's important to record what you need and don't get what you don't want. Now you know enough, and we're all more intelligent because of it. And good. How's that? Yeah. All right. Very good. Do you think, okay, any problems with it? Well, unless we change your face. Yeah, funny. Hey, you know, does anybody know about that Chapman money yet? Well, that $20,000 you gave us? Yeah, I think we should get a, you know, like a plasma screen or something.