Introduction to using cameras

Today's lesson was spent in the Studio with Matt and Phil. Here we were given a short introduction to the use of Camera and Tripod. The camera we used was a Sony NX5

This advanced piece of filming equipment costs around £2,500, although this may seem expensive, for a professional camera this is quite reasonable. As well as learning how fix the camera to the tripod, inserting the battery and turning on the camera, we were taught 4 main functions: focus, zoom, exposure and white balance.
Focus: this is adjusted using the first wheel on the lens of the camera. A useful technique that enables the operator to achieve sharp focus on the subject is setting up the shot then zooming in as close as possible to the subject, ensuring the focus is clear, then zooming out again.
Zoom: This is adjusted using the second wheel. This camera has a 20x zoom allowing brilliant close up shots.
Exposure: This can be adjusted using the wheel closest to the camera. Exposure refers to the amount of light in the image. If there's too much light the shot will become over exposed and very bright. if there's not enough light it will be underexposed and very dark. for extremely bright shots there are three additional ND (neutral density) filters that can be added in camera.
White balance: This is adjusted using a small switch on the side of the camera. There are too settings for different types of lighting. For example tungsten lighting will require a different white balance to natural sunlight. The aim is to make the colours look the same on camera as in real life.

Here is an image from our lesson: