. How to use your camera's zoom lens Zooming with your video camera Zoom Generally speaking, the zoom shouldn’t be used in a shot. It’s not that zoom should never be used but it must be very well planned. If you are trying to shoot a wide shot and then focus in a medium shot or a close-up, as we’ve discussed, you should capture your wide shot, stop the camera and then record the close-up or medium shot. In this case you would have used the zoom, but NOT while the camera was recording. The zoom would have been used just to re-frame the shot. There are however a few instances when you may want to use the zoom while you’re recording. We’ll start discussing those instances now. To show action You may want to emphasis action or motion with the zoom shot. Some open scenes start out with a zoom shot and then settle into medium shots or close ups of subjects. Slow zoom to create subtle framing changes Using the slow zoom is actually quite common in movies, but many digital video cameras are not capable of going slow enough or smoothly enough to be subtle. OR there is a manual control but using your hand may cause an uneven zoom speed. However, you can use your zoom to slowly move in on a character (although many filmmakers would prefer a slow dolly instead). Inaccurate zooming This brings me to another point with zooming. Too often, when people do feel the need to use their zoom, they see the image in a wide shot and they see the element they want to focus on. What happens next is that they press down on the zoom button to focus in on the area of interest but the zoom brings the shot into an area which is not framed properly so the camera operator must then tilt or pan the camera to fit the object in. This technique looks very unprofessional. To achieve a zoom shot without these adjustments, what you have to do is prepare the shot before recording, by zooming in on your subject and composing the frame. From this point, you can zoom out and know that you are in position. All that remains is pressing record and zooming in on your subject once more.   Continue Below... How to Use Your Video Camera Zoom Filmmaking: Dolly Shots How Much Does Film Equipment Cost?         .

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