Before you shoot, you learn

For many people, the camera is the most fascinating part of the video/film production process. Interns always gravitate towards the camera and want to “shoot something” right away. Modern cameras have many features that will take an inexperienced camera operator and make their footage look decent, but it really is important to understand the basics of how a camera works before you try to push the limits.

Why should you know about professional video cameras?

You might be successfully shooting all of your videos on your iPhone or that small Handycam that your parents bought years ago. That’s absolutely fine. The more you practice, the better you will be at framing shots and using images to tell stories. However, when you get hired as an intern at a production company or at a television station, you will need to understand the equipment that the professionals use everyday. Luckily, professional video cameras have standard controls that are common to all models. The simple reason for this is because most camera operators back in the day couldn’t afford to own a professional camera.  They were very expensive.  In order to make equipment accessible to most operators, the equipment manufacturers needed to standardize the controls. This standardization carried over to today’s professional cameras as well as into some prosumer camera models.

Mmmmm . . . chips

There are many varieties of cameras out there these days.  Some are single chip CCD cameras, some are 3 chip CCD cameras and some are CMOS cameras with both single chip and three chip configurations.  They can also have different chip sizes ranging from 1/3 inch chips to full frame 35mm chips – creating a vast array of potential camera configurations.   Well, for this post we will be studying a professional 3-CCD camcorder – just to make life easy.  Also, because I happen to have one lying around.  So let’s get started . . . a professional 3-CCD video camera is made up of three different parts:

• The lens
• The optical block
• The recorder

In the old days, these three parts were actually two separate units – a camera and lens and a field recorder that was about the size of a large suitcase.  They were tethered together with a large umbilical cable and needed a crew of two for the ultimate in portability.

1974 Panasonic NV-3085 portable reel to reel video and WV-3085 camera. Image courtesy: www.rewindmuseum.com

But that was then . . . today, most modern video cameras are single units with two of the three main parts located in one convenient camera body and an interchangeable lens. Some times the lens is fixed to the camera body, but for our purposes we will focus on cameras with interchangeable lenses.

Panasonic HPX500 P2 HD camcorder

The “eyes” of the camera

The lens of the camera should end up being a post all by itself.  This is often the most expensive – and most important part of the camera.  A well-crafted lens will make your images sharp and dynamic. If you don’t already know what a lens does, you’re in bigger trouble than I thought.  Here’s a simple explanation for now – I’ll get more specific in later posts:

The lens is the part of the camera that “sees” the world that we see. The lens contains special optics that concentrates the light reflected from the image that we see and focuses this light onto the optical block.

Images turn into electronic signals? It must be magic . . .

Well, it’s not magic but it’s more math and science than I’m comfortable explaining.  So let me give you a brief overview of the camera’s optical block – the heart of any video camera. The optical block consists of a beam splitter (or prism) and three separate CCDs. The prism splits the light from the lens (which is our image) into its three primary colors; Green, Red and Blue. The CCDs take these images that are now Green, Red and Blue versions of the original full color image and turn them into electronic signals. On CMOS cameras, this process is a little different – but this post will focus on CCD type cameras. We’ll get to CMOS on another day.

Why does the image get split into three primary colors?

In order to keep image quality to a maximum the video signal gets recorded into three separate representations of the full color image – a green version, a red version and a blue version. This happens to preserve the maximum amount of color information for the image. See my post on Component vs Composite video for more information.

Where does all this stuff go?

These newly created electronic signals need to be saved somewhere . . . that “somewhere” is the camera’s recording system. The recording system stores these electronic images on videotape or as files on flash memory devices. The latter is considered a “tapeless workflow” because tape is not involved, just files on flash memory devices. Some examples are Panasonic’s P2 cards, Sony’s SxS card, standard SD cards or Compact Flash cards. File-based systems are becoming more of the norm these days because they allow for instant editing on most edit systems. However, a file-based system also creates the need for additional storage when you archive your footage. Tapes are a better way to archive footage but they don’t allow for instant access. Tapes need to be captured or digitized in real time.

What did we learn today?

You may never need to open up that camera that you’re shooting with and remove the optical block – actually it’s just a really bad idea to open up any camera at all!  Never do that!!  However, if you know a little about how the equipment works, you will find that it is easier to troubleshoot any problems that you might have in the field.  I will be mentioning troubleshooting a lot in these posts.  The quicker you can understand how to troubleshoot problems, the more valuable you become in this business.

Coming up . . .

In my next post, I will take you on a tour of a professional video camera and show you everything you need to know before you throw one on your shoulder.  From there we will look at each of the functions (gain, white balance, filter wheels, etc.) in greater detail so that you will eventually be comfortable around the gear that the pros use.