Well this is the 2nd installment on camera operations. Hopefully since the last time you have had some time to fool around with a camera of some sorts and figured out the zoom and maybe even the focus and white balance. In this article I will inform you guys and gals on how to manually set your camera for surf videography.

The first thing to do when maually setting the camera is to turn the fuctions dial to 'M' (M stands for manual).

*The next step is to white balance, white balancing is the simple procedure of telling the camera that the colour you are correcting to is white so it can adjust other colours from there. If someone has not white balanced there colours maybe too dull or bright or of an odd odd hue (bright blue whitewash etc). Whitebalancing is only present on digital camera's as proper film camera's have pre - balanced film stock which adhere to either Tungsten or Daylight. Tungsten being a measurement of indoor light and daylight being ofcourse daylight.

To whitebalance all you need is a flat white surface (I use the slick of a bodyboard) have your friend tilt the board so it has a nice covering of daylight then zoom in so all that is in frame is white then press the manual whitebalance button and hold until the whitebalance icon stops flashing. You have now whitebalanced your camera - congratulations. If you want to play around you can whitebalance to different colours. For instance if I whitebalance to Blue everything will have an orange hue. If I white balance to Orange everything will have a Blue hue. If I whitebalance to Red everything will have a Green hue and so on.

* The next step is to adjust the Aperture. the aperture is an adjustable iris which limits the amount of light which passes through a lens. It is measured in F stops. F22 being an extremely small opening and F2 being almost fully open. On extremely bright days you may need to change the F stop to around F8 I usually shoot with an F stop of around F5.6. On dull days and at night you will need to go to the lowest F stop to allow maximum light into the lens.

* The next step is to adjust shutter speed. The shutter speed is the amount of time in fractions of a second that the film is exposed to light. 1/10000 being extremely small and 1/4 being extremely large. The higher the shutter speed the more sharper a video is for slow motion etc. A low shutter speed allows the film to look blurred (because the objects are fast moving). Having said that you do not need to go over 1/1000 of a second and that only on bright days. I usually shoot with a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second with an F stop (aperture) of F5.6. If you adjust the shutter speed higher 1/2000th etc you need to adjust the aperture accordingly. For instance if I was shooting with a shutter speed of 1/2000th I would have an Fstop of approx. F4, If I had a shutter speed of 1/125th then I would have an Fstop of approx. F11. You really have to decide yourself how you want your image to look. (this bit may sound difficult but its actually quite easy).

* The next step is to adjust your focus. Make sure the camera has manual focus activated. Then using the optical zoom (not digital because you are only enhancing the image that is already there which reduces quality) zoom in as far as possible. Make sure you zoom in on something which allows you to focus the camera properly. An object at the other end of the beach, a boat or island out to sea etc. Then adjust the focus ring accordingly until the image is in focus then zoom out now all your images will be in focus from no zoom to full zoom. This is very important when it comes to filming (an out of focus image is useless). Also if you are filming someone surfing on auto focus and something obstructs view (whitewash, another person) then the camera may try to focus on that leaving the rider blurred THIS LOOKS SHIT! and extremely amateur and may result in a wasted shot.

So now you have all your manual settings done try some filming. If you want compare some automatic footage with some manual footage. There should be a large amount of difference in quality!

Remember to loosen the head of you tripod so it may move freely with out jerking. Panning is the term given for a horizontal movement (useful in landscape and lifestyle shots) and tilt is the term used hor vertical movement (also useful for landscape and lifestyle) it also allows you to easily follow the rider.

* NOTE: cheap cameras may have fairly lame manual adjustment settings not really allowing you to take full advantage of the manual functions some cameras offer. If you do have trouble setting any of this refer to the cameras manual it should have all the answers located in the pages.

Next week I will move on to advanced camera OPERATIONS which will include how to properly shoot water footage and specific names for shots as well camera terms and some tricks of the trade.

Thanks for reading - Merlyn