Shifting From Photographer To Videographer: Where Do You Start?

You’ve been a photographer for many years, and you’re curious about making videos. After all, your camera likely has some amazing video capabilities. But moving to video is daunting; there’s so much more involved than still photography. Here are a few thoughts to help you get started.

Start Here

This isn’t a detailed tutorial that will explain everything to you, or this article would end up like a Russian novel. This is a guide to point you in the right direction for the things you need to learn.

Frame Rate: The first thing to decide is whether you want to set your frame rate to 24 fps or 30 fps. 24 is used in films and has a slightly smoother, more natural feel than 30, which tends to be used for TV. 60 fps tends to be used for fast-moving sporting events and gaming videos, where capturing every detail is important.

I recommend you start with 24 fps if you want to tell a story and want a film-like look.

Shutter Speed: Now you need to follow the 180-degree rule, which means your shutter speed should be roughly double your frame rate (e.g., 1/50 s for 24 fps). This gives motion a natural look.

Bit Rate: Most cameras can record in 8-bit or 10-bit. 8-bit gives you over 16 million colors, and 10-bit gives you over 1 billion. If you want to manipulate and color grade your footage beyond minor tweaks, 10-bit is the better option.

For very high-end productions, typically for commercials, TV, and movies, some cameras have the ability to record in 12-bit in a raw format. I wouldn’t worry about that just yet—it opens up a whole can of worms we won’t go into here, including faster memory cards, storage, and editing issues from lack of computer processing power.

I recently shot a documentary film that will be streamed and played in movie theaters, and I shot it in 10-bit. That’s more than enough for most productions.

Composition

As a photographer, you already understand good composition and lighting. But now you need to bring movement into the equation.

A good video or film guides the viewer’s eye over a sequence of clips seamlessly. There are two things to pay attention to:

Camera Movement: You need to decide if moving the camera is going to help tell your story and move the video along, or not. A beginner mistake is wanting to include lots of “cool cinematic” movements. Often, locking the camera off on a tripod for a static shot is the best solution.

Whatever you do, there must be a consistent pace and rhythm to a sequence of clips. One clip with quick camera movement, and the next with no movement, may be jarring, so plan your sequence of shots before you hit record.

Continuity: It’s important to match the direction of motion and your subject in a sequence of shots.

If someone is walking from left to right, and in the next shot they are walking from right to left, that’s poor continuity and makes no sense to the viewer. Likewise, camera movement from left to right in one shot, and then from right to left in the next, is typically not a good idea.

The viewer should not be distracted from the story by what you do with the camera and the way you edit. These things should enhance the story, which means they should go unnoticed.

Focus

Many filmmakers will tell you that you should use manual focus. This means getting cinema lenses and a pull focus, which gives you far more control than a photography lens, which has less focus throw. Manual cinema lenses are great but can be very heavy. You typically need an adapter too, plus you need to add rails to accommodate a focus puller. So now you have a heavy rig developing.

I’ve found that a photography lens is fine for most scenarios and would recommend you start there. Modern hybrid cameras with good eye-focus tracking can do a really good job shooting video, and if you lock off your shots, you can pre-focus and switch it to manual.

Focus is a personal thing, and it also depends on what you’re filming. The one scenario I can think of that would cause problems using focus tracking is something like a wedding, where there are multiple people moving around. Having manual control might be the better option. It really comes down to practicing to see what works best with your style of filming.

The worst thing is having the lens hunt during a shot. There’s also something incredibly rewarding about nailing the perfect manual pull focus.

Good Audio Is Essential

Audio is totally new to most photographers, and the area where we tend to mess up the most. Audio also happens to be as important as the video, so we need to master it very early on in our video journey.

Don’t skimp on audio—buy the best mic you can afford. You need to decide if you need an on-camera mic or an off-camera mic on a boom.

I have both of these audio solutions, which are often used together. I have an on-camera shotgun mic in addition to an off-camera shotgun mic connected to an external recorder. It’s good to record voice and ambient sound separately sometimes.

Editing

This is a huge topic, and I won’t go into details right now. I’ll just say there is a lot to learn regarding editing techniques, adding audio and graphics, and color grading.

The main thing right now is to decide what editing program to use.

There are three main editing software choices:

• Adobe Premiere Pro: You’ll already have this if you have a Creative Cloud subscription. It’s a great choice, feature-rich, and does everything you need to do. It’s my preference.
• DaVinci Resolve: There’s a free version you can download, which is very good.
• Final Cut Pro: Mac users often choose this software. It’s possibly the easiest of the three to learn.

There’s a lot of petty arguing online about DaVinci vs. Premiere and which is best. Here’s the bottom line: Both are industry standard and used by professional editors. Both are very good choices if you want to take video production and filmmaking seriously. Final Cut Pro is not so common for professional use. It’s great if you want to edit wedding videos, etc., but if you want to pursue a professional career in videography and filmmaking, and work with finishing editors and color grading specialists to package a production for distribution, my advice is to choose either Premiere or DaVinci and deal with the steeper initial learning curve.

A Few Other Things To Consider

If you have a camera with video capability and a good lens or two, you’re ready to start making videos, but there are a few things you might need to make life easier.

• Memory Cards: Depending on the quality of video you film in, you may need a bigger and faster memory card than what you use for photography.

I shoot video in 10-bit, often in ProRes HQ, and the file sizes are big. A couple of 516 GB memory cards are essential. I use ProGrade cards with a read speed of 3,400 MB/s and a write speed of 2,400 MB/s. They’re perfect. Look for reputable brands; don’t skimp on buying a good card. SanDisk, Lexar, and OWC are all reliable brands.

• Neutral Density Filters: Shooting in bright daylight at 1/50 second with a shallow depth of field means you’ll need some neutral density filters to maintain your shutter speed. A good place to start is a variable neutral density filter (VND). My preference is a 2–5 stop filter. I get great results from Freewell.

• External Drives: High-quality video files fill up drives quickly, so you’ll likely need a couple of external drives to start with (one as a backup). I find working off a fast external drive is better than working directly on my computer’s hard drive. I use 4 TB solid-state drives these days and recently moved over to X10 Pros from Crucial, which have read speeds up to 2,100 MB/s and write speeds of 2,000 MB/s. I’ve had good luck with SanDisk SSDs too.

• Tripod: It’s possible to use your photography tripod and ball head for locked-off shots, but if you want to do lots of panning, you’ll need to invest in a good fluid head. This can be a bit of a headache, as many cheap brands claim their products are better than they actually are. Not all fluid heads are equal. Manfrotto is a safe bet to start with.

For pro use, particularly if shooting with large lenses and heavy rigs, you need to look at brands like Sachtler or Miller.

It’s a Wrap

I want to wrap things up by saying over the past four years, I’ve shot more video for clients than I have photos. I believe video is an essential skill for photographers to learn if they want to make a living from their camera. I took an interest in video about 30 years ago and dabbled with it on and off since then. I owned a creative agency and directed promotional videos and commercials. I’ve shot travel-based documentaries, and for the past eight years, I’ve been creating video content for websites and social media on a regular basis.

I’m fortunate to have so much experience with video because it’s getting more important. It’s the preferred medium for people to consume online and the most effective communication tool. My intention is to write a series of articles, and I want to give you as much value as possible. So please let me know in the comments what aspects of video production you’d like to learn about or discuss, and I will do my best to address them in future articles.