Episode: 4273
Title: HPR4273: Improving videography with basic manual settings
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4273/hpr4273.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 22:21:54

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4273 for Wednesday 18 December 2024.
Today's show is entitled, Improving Videography with Basic Manual Settings.
It is hosted by Trickster and is about 17 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, how I learn to stop worrying and love the exposure triangle.
Hi, this is Trickster.
One of the hobbies that I never thought would appeal to me is that of photography,
more specifically videography, because I have been creating YouTube videos on and off
for the past 15 years.
And I was surprised it appealed to me, but in retrospect, it's the same sensibilities
that appealed to hacking any sort of vintage tech or software process.
In that, if you understand the machine, you understand how it operates and you understand
all of its settings and what they do, you can adjust the output, you can affect the output.
So whether I'm hacking an assembler on a 40-year-old computer or I'm shooting video of that
40-year-old computer, it's sort of the same.
Sensibilities at play.
Now, I've learned a lot of tricks for shooting videography indoors over the past, like I said,
about 15 years, and I thought I would pass that on because I've been working with other
people also making YouTube videos on vintage tech.
And a lot of them suffer from, you know, I put my cell phone on a stand and I hit record
and how come it doesn't look as good as this guy's video or that guy's video.
And when I tell them, well, you just need to make a few manual adjustments, they usually
run screaming from the room.
It turns out, really, honestly, that photography is not terribly difficult to understand.
You really need to only understand three things.
Those three things are points on what is called the exposure triangle.
And they correspond to settings, manual settings on your camera.
So I'd like to talk about those and then I'm going to give you sort of a cookbook list
of steps of how to set up an indoor scene to get to a base level of competent videography,
meaning if you just simply follow these eight steps in order, you're going to get decent
video results no matter what camera you're using or cell phone you're using or what your
setting is.
It's certainly better than just putting a cell phone on a tripod and hitting record
and hoping that you can fix it in post because sometimes you can't.
So first before anything, we need to make sure that we can access manual settings.
Now on a real camera, this is easy.
There's always a dial on the top of whatever camera you have and it probably has letters
like P and A and S and some symbols.
You want the letter M, M stands for manual, so rotate that dial to M and then you should
have access to these settings I'm going to cover in a second.
If you have a cell phone, there are ways to get manual controls on cell phones.
Modern cell phones are starting to include them already.
I think the iPhone does, the iPhone like 16 does, it's got to, I don't have an iPhone,
so I'm going off of hearsay.
So forgive me if that's wrong, but some Android phones do as well.
I've been using the Sony Xperia line for a long time, specifically because it does come
with a manual camera settings app.
But if you don't have either of those or you don't know how to get to the manual settings,
there are two free applications apps that you can use.
One is closed source, one is open.
The closed source one is the black magic camera app.
It's available for both iPhone and Android and it exposes all of your phone's manual
photography and videography controls.
And then the other is open camera, which I know is available for Android.
I'm not sure if it's available for iPhone and open camera is open source as its name
implies and it also exposes all of the manual settings.
So what are these three settings, these magic settings you need to know?
I won't go into too much detail because I don't want to bore you, but it's important
to know what they are and what they do basically.
And they are aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
And they're sort of in that order of importance.
So what are they, aperture is how open the hole is in the lens to let light in.
You might think, well, I want all the light to come in.
So I just open it all the way.
And generally that is kind of what you want to do.
But it has a trade-off, the more open the hole, the narrower the focus range is.
So that means, for example, if you open, if the aperture is all the way at its bottom
number.
So something like F2.8 or F1.4, the low numbers.
The hole is all the way open and a lot of light hits the sensor, which is great if you're
shooting at night or something.
The drawback though is that what you're focusing on is only going to be in focus for about
maybe a foot or two in front of and behind of what you're focusing on and then it starts
to get blurry.
The good news is that that's what creates these creamy, soft, you know, out of focus blurry
backgrounds that you see in movies all the time.
But there can, but there can be trade-offs.
Well, the other trade-off is that, well, what happens if you close the hole now, closing
the hole focuses the light coming in to a narrower area and that increases the focus.
So if you want the subject and the background in focus, you would close down that hole.
You would, you know, you would close the aperture to numbers like F8 or F11 or something
like that, the higher numbers.
But closing the hole lets less light in.
So the image can get darker and so that's the trade-off there.
So that's what aperture is.
Another speed is simply how long light is allowed to hit the sensor.
So low shutter speeds are things like a full second or half a second or a quarter of
a second.
Those let a lot of light in.
However, that's a long and up time that if there's motion in what you're trying to
shoot, whether it's photography or videography, lower shutter speeds, they let light in which
is good in darker areas, but anything in motion has kind of a blur motion trail to it.
Conversely, if you go to higher shutter speeds, like one 60th of a second or even one one
one thousandth of a second, then light is only allowed to hit the sensor for a very short
period of time, which is a darker image, but no motion blur because, you know, how much
motion can you get in one one thousandth of a second.
So that's shutter speed and then finally there's ISO.
ISO is a term that came from film cameras.
It was the rating of the film stock and so lower numbers meant that it took a long time
for the film to react.
So you'd use it in sunlight, I guess.
Lower numbers would be better and then higher numbers are the film would start to react
much faster when light hit it and that was perfect for dark environments because not
a lot of light is hitting the film.
So that was the film days though, for digital, the ISO directly translates to gain.
It's how much gain is applied to the signal when it hits the sensor.
So low numbers apply almost no gain and by gain, I mean, literally like turning up a volume
control on a stereo or something like that, low ISO numbers apply very little gain.
So we're talking ISO 200 or 400, whereas high ISO numbers like ISO 1600 or 2500 or higher
than that, the more you turn it up, the more gain is applied, which can make a dark image
brighter, but they amplify not only the signal, but also the noise.
So generally you don't want to crank up the ISO unless you have to, like unless you're
shooting in like near darkness or a really dark scene, generally you want that low.
So those are the three points of the exposure triangle.
Now what can you do with that info?
Even if you don't understand that, here is a pretty simple cookbook to getting a good
starting point for any of your photography or videography.
And I follow this process every time I do and it seems like my results are getting better
and better.
So I hope this can help you.
So it's pretty much eight steps and you do these in order.
You're trying to shoot video of whether it's a thing like a product or something, or let's
say you're doing a motherboard repair or whatever, or just yourself a talking head.
Step one, adjust lighting in the real world to get the look that you want.
A hacker is very familiar with the idiom garbage in, garbage out, and the same thing applies
to videography.
You can't fix everything in post, so make sure you have enough light.
The camera is doing what?
It's capturing light.
If you're trying to shoot something and there's not enough light and you think you can
fix it in post, don't assume that you can.
Because remember what I said about ISO?
If you crank up the gain later in post, you're going to be able to find the noise as well
and then you'll have a noisy image.
So in the real world before you even turn on the camera, add light, film in front of
an open window if you don't have good lighting, and if you're not sure if you have enough
light, add more.
So step two, set the camera to full manual, which we already covered.
We need individual control over all three of those points on the exposure triangle, aperture,
shutter speed, and ISO.
Step three, set the ISO to the base ISO of your camera or cell phone, meaning set it as
low as it goes to start with.
Because ISO is amplification or gain, we don't want to set it high because it's going
to introduce noise.
If the image is still is crazy dark after getting through all these steps, you can go
back to raise the ISO.
But for now, set it to the base ISO.
Now what is the base ISO?
Unfortunately, the base ISO is the setting at which the camera does not apply any gain.
Usually at the very lowest like 200 ISO 200 or ISO 400, it's going to depend on your
camera.
Look in your camera's manual or check the internet or something.
And if you're not sure, just set it to ISO 200.
Step four, set the shutter speed to match the frequency of your lighting.
If you are shooting indoors, you probably have either incandescent or LED lighting that
you may not notice is subtly flickering at the frequency of your mains voltage.
So if you're in a PAL country, it's probably 50 hertz.
And if you're in an NTSC country, it might be 60 hertz or something like that.
And this subtle flickering can produce horizontal banding on your video.
So to eliminate that, you set the shutter speed to match the frequency of the lighting.
So that's really going to be either one 50th of a second, one over 50, or one 60th of
a second, one over 60.
Step five, adjust the exposure, how bright or how dark it is using the aperture.
So with our ISO and our shutter speed set, then the only way we can make the image brighter
or darker is by opening or closing the hole in the lens, and that's the aperture.
So don't touch ISO and shutter for now.
Start making it lighter or darker by adjusting the aperture.
And at that point, you're probably done.
The shutter speed matching the light flickering frequency is really the main takeaway from
this entire episode.
It prevents horizontal banding in the image, which can be really distracting.
But if you'd like to keep going and earn extra points, step six is setting the white
balance.
So white balance is just simply ensuring that white is white.
Some cameras, all cameras really, have a setting that determines what white is.
Light can vary in what people call temperature.
So you can put a white sheet of paper in front of your camera, and if it's set to a warmer
white balance, this is measured in Kelvin, so something like 2700 Kelvin, it'll seem
kind of like warm or redder or orange here.
And then it can also have a cool cast to it.
This would be higher Kelvin numbers like 6500, and then it would be sort of bluish.
And then right in the middle is 5,000 Kelvin, which is like daylight.
Rather than try to adjust it manually, your camera has a white balance selection.
What that does is you put something white in front of it, and you select manual white
balance just, and it takes a picture quickly of the white thing in front of you.
And then it readjusts its understanding of what white is.
So you do that, and now everything won't have a color cast to it.
Step seven, focus on your subject.
You may be tempted to put everything on autofocus, but unless you know you'll be moving the subject
a lot, or the camera a lot, try to resist using autofocus, because sometimes it guesses
wrong.
I've seen a lot of vintage tech repair videos, where someone is trying to repair something,
and then they get their hand in front of what they're repairing for just a second.
The camera refocuses on their hand, because that's what's in the center of the frame.
Then they move their hand away, and it's still stuck.
And now it's out of focus for the rest of the shot.
If you are in manual mode, you can also set manual focus.
And generally, most cell phones and cameras will let you literally tap on what it is you
want to focus on.
So you do that, and that thing isn't focused, and now as long as the subject doesn't move,
and the camera doesn't move, it'll stay in focus the whole shot.
And that can be a good thing.
Finally, step eight, this is not required, but it's something I do.
Put a color chart in front of your subject for a few seconds when you start shooting the
video.
A color chart has either 12 or 24 or 48 color rectangles on it.
These are called color chips, and they are calibrated at the factory to be very specific
colors and very specific reflectivity, illuminosity, whatever you want to call it.
I use the color checker passport video.
This used to be called the exorite passport video.
And you might be thinking, well, why would I put a color chart in front of everything
if I've just done all of these steps?
You know, shouldn't my video be perfect?
Well, it probably is perfectly neutral, but the color chart helps just in case something
got missed, or it can help achieve peace of mind.
For example, when I do white balance, sometimes I'll do the white balance and I'll be using
a particular color profile in my camera, and the color profile, even though it's set
to standard or natural or something like that, the camera may add a color cast to the scene.
If you put the chart in front of your subject and record a few seconds of video of that, you
can later use that footage to color correct the rest of the footage, because a lot of
video editing software, I'm thinking of DaVinci Resolve, and then there's also plugins
for Premiere.
The software can then look at the rectangles who captured, and if any of them deviate
from the known values, it can then automatically color correct it.
So that's what I like to do.
It's not required.
Now, if you get through all of these steps, what you'll have is a perfectly neutral starting
point for video.
It should have the least amount of noise, the least amount of horizontal banding or flicker
from the lights in the room, and by adjusting the aperture to get things brighter or darker,
it should also be in the same range.
Because you did it all on manual settings, you might have learned a little bit about
how the exposure triangle works, but most importantly, they're not going to automatically
change on you when you're shooting video, and sometimes they change badly and don't
go back to the regular setting, and then the rest of the shot is ruined.
And if you're the subject of the shot, you don't know that.
If you're not looking at the camera and the flip-out screen or whatever it is you're
using, you may not know that it's wrong, and you'll shoot 20 or 30 minutes of footage,
and it's all unusable.
So don't be afraid of manual camera settings.
Start with this cookbook, even if you don't understand what the settings do over time
you will.
I hope this helps you with your videography.
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