Thoughts on Video for the Holidays

The last few articles or several have been photography oriented, which is representative of audience interests of course, but with the coming holiday season, I wanted to encourage everyone to go make some videos.

It’s never been easier and as my podcast co-host has mentioned, with the new stabilization technologies in modern cameras, shooting video can be more ad hoc than in the past.

Perhaps you are taking the kids or grandkids skiing, snowboarding, sledding or skating. You all know what you need to do to make still images of these activities so I’m going to suggest adding to that once you have your stills done.

Settings

This is pretty easy for anyone. Put the camera in video recording mode. Set your video frame rate to 30fps or whatever is closest to it on your camera. Set your aperture to give you decent enough depth of field for your subject, and set the autofocus to continuous. Finally set the ISO to Auto-ISO.

That’s it

You could of course shoot video in program mode as well, whatever you prefer. Or if you don’t want to take your big camera, use your smartphone. Video editing software can now handle vertical video, as you will see if you have ever looked at Youtube Shorts. Myself, I like to hold the smartphone horizontally so my video fills the TV screen, but that’s just me.

If you are shooting with a smartphone, the software that you use to download to the computer can usually do some basic video edits including trims and cuts as well as some common effects. If you are shooting with a camera that uses a larger sensor, the software that is included with the camera can typically do the same thing.

Video Editing Software

If you don’t want to use the stuff that came with your camera, your operating system on your computer can also do basic video editing without pain or hours required. If you have a Macintosh, iMovie is incredibly easy to use. If you use Windows, Photos on Windows 10 does basic video editing. If you have Windows 11 launch the Video Editor app and you’ll be offered the opportunity to download Photos Legacy from the Microsoft Store, or if you have Office 365, you can use the basic version of ClipChamp at no cost. It’s very easy to use as well.

However you spend time in the holiday season, invest in yourself and make some videos to share with friends and family. It’s so easy, if you aren’t doing it, you’re the one losing out.

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