Production Assistant: Camera Zoom & Focus Control

Video Transcript

"Now in this segment we're going to learn what the zoom control is, what the focus control is, and how to use them both. Now the zoom control is right over here. All it is really is a not really a trigger, but if you've every played with a remote control cars with the little wheel on it to steer them, that's kind of how it is. You want to take it like this, it does have nice little grooves for your fingers to go in, and you always want to use your thumb while controlling it. That way it's you do have a little more control with your thumb than you can think of. Now to zoom in you push to the right hand side. To zoom out you push to the left hand side. Now when you're zooming you always want to make it smooth if it's on air, if it's not go right ahead and zoom in fast, zoom out fast, which ever you want to do. And then with your focus what you want to do to get proper focus on a subject, is you want to zoom in all the way to that subject, and with your focus you want to either take your focus inward or outward. Which is actually moving the lens inside inward or outward. Now if you go to the left it moves it out, just like with the zoom. If you go to the right it moves it in. And once you have perfect focus, which really you have to look at with your eye, there's no button or sensor saying that's focused. You have to look at it with your eye, and you can tell because it's going to be a really sharp image. Then from there you zoom out, and you set your shot, and then you get ready to go. Now you always want to make sure you focus on a subjects eyes if you're doing a human. That way because obviously the face is going to the subject of the shot, that way you have absolute focus on there. Now there are some guys out there that may want to focus on other parts of the body, but that's not the correct way to do it."