How to Put Your Summer Vacation Up On The Web

 The Secrets of Shooting, Editing and Posting Your Summer Vacation Videos

By Mark Shapiro

 page 2 of three

How to make your summer videos look good – tips and tricks

So lets assume that you and gear successfully made it to your destination. How do you shoot at the beach and at other holiday destinations? How do you get great looking video and professional sounding audio?

First, keep your equipment dry and clean. If you shoot at the beach be very careful to keep sand and seawater away from your camcorder. When the camcorder is not being used, wrap it up inside of a plastic bag, inside of a DRY and sand-free towel, and then shove it back into the ugly bag. If you do a lot of shooting at the beach or other wet zones, you might want to invest in a special case that is water resistant.

How do you handle the DEW problem?

One issue often faced by vacationers using tape-based camcorders is the dew warning. You leave your nice cool air-conditioned room, into the hot and muggy air, and within seconds, tiny droplets of moisture begin to condense onto the cool metal and electronic components inside your camcorder. This is not good. So, your camcorder, smarter than you, decides to shut down and gives you the dew warning.

What do you do then?   First, don’t freak out – it’s just temporary. After a while – ten minutes, half hour, the camcorder’s innards will warm up to match the outside air and moisture will no longer condense on it. Resist the urge to open up the camcorder and blow the moisture away. All you will be doing is blowing more moist air inside the camera.

The secret is to acclimate your camcorder to the outside temperatures. Keep it in the warmest part of your hotel room, or if you are traveling in an air-conditioned car, away from the cold air vents. You could try carefully warming it up with a hair dryer before taking it outdoors.

This is a problem for camcorders with video heads that record to tape. If you are shooting on a camcorder that records directly to DVD, to flash or to a hard drive, you shouldn’t have this issue. 

Controlling the Sun – Filters and Using AE – Sun/Sand/Beach modes

There are a couple of easy ways to help improve the quality of your images when shooting during hot summer days – especially at the beach.  The best times to shoot are early morning and the hour or two before sunset. I especially like sunset hours when everything starts turning a bit reddish. Often called “magic time” by professional cinematographers, almost everyone looks beautiful when bathed in the warm late afternoon and sunset light.

Another option, if you HAVE to shoot when the sun is high, is to use an ND (neutral density) filter. These are little more than a piece of glass or plastic that effectively acts like sunglasses for your camcorder, cutting down the glare and making the shots look less contrasty. You can also use ND filters to artsy up your images a bit. When shooting in bright summer light, almost everything is sharp and in focus. You might want to allow your background to fuzz out a bit in order to concentrate on the subject in the foreground. By reducing the amount of light reaching your lens, you reduce the depth of field that allows you to make backgrounds softer.  In addition, as mentioned earlier, an ND filter helps protect your camcorder’s lens against the elements like salt spray and sand. It is much better to have a cheap ND filter be scoured by sand or dirt, than your camcorder’s expensive lens.

Most camcorders have a dial or menu control with AE (auto exposure) settings, By using the sand and beach setting, the camcorder will stop down the aperture to help reduce glare and contrast, and will also adjust the color balance to make faces and people look more realistic.

Let Everyone Shoot

Here is a lesson that took me years to figure out. Let everyone shoot.  Your kids, your friends, your significant other. Tape is cheap and you can always edit out the stuff that looks awful. Not only will you get new and interesting angles and subjects that you might have never discovered yourself, but most importantly, when you are watching back the tapes of your vacations in a few years from now, no one will be wondering where you were while the rest of the family was enjoying the trip. Did you actually go on this trip because we never got to see your face? We need to see you in your movies. So let your kids shoot and make sure that you get your smiling, beaming face into your vacation tapes.

By the way, if you don’t have children to help, you might want to get a Quik Pod Pro, a cool little $30 gizmo for holding your camcorder away from your body so that you can get into the shot. It also includes a folding tripod to stabilize your shot and is small enough to fit into your purse or backpack.

 QuiKPod Pro Review

So remember, take your time, make plenty of lists and be prepared with all the accessories, charged batteries and spare tapes of bland DVDs you may lead. And of course, make sure you take videos of yourself having fun!

What to Shoot

Guide to shooting on vacation – shoot lots of signs

Have you ever looked back at the videos you shot from a trip or vacation you took maybe a year or two ago and wondered, just where the heck was that? Why did I shoot a close-up of that statue? What was so interesting about that bridge?

Sound familiar?  Here’s a tip. Always videotape signs and other identifying images that will explain to the viewer, and you, where and why. In addition, if you plan on doing some editing, these kinds of shots make great video cutaways that can be used to hide shaky video or a bad cut.

You might want to collect various postcards and magazines. Most travel destinations offer a plethora of free magazines, brochures, and other imagery that you you usually toss away. Instead, if possible, throw it into a suitcase for use when making your video. Maps can be very useful, especially when documenting a long and complicated trip.

When I am on vacation with my camcorder, I try to shoot maybe twenty seconds or so of each sign as well as verbal commentary of what is so special about that particular site or location.  With my camcorder on a tripod, I aim it at the sign and just let the camcorder roll and then talk about location and why it is so interesting and important.  If my words later sound lame, I can always edit them out from the final video.

I must confess that my family hates it when I dawdle to shoot signs. “Dad, we know are in Hawaii.”  But later, when I am cutting it all together, and need a title section, or a cut away or just can’t seem to recall why I took a picture of that house, it all comes into place.

Another good idea - especially if you are going to take the time to later edit your videos, is to provide a running commentary of where you are, what you are doing and what you are experiencing. Kids love to do "news" broadcasts. Give them a mike and allow them to record a "remote" from the vacation spots.

My favorite travel shots

One of my favorite shots is to start on a close-up of sign and then zoom out and pan sideways, pulling out from the close-up to show the big picture as well as my family cavorting and having fun.  A similar shot is starting tight on one of my girlfriend’s  laughing face and then zooming out to show where she is. I did a shot like that in Jamaica. Starting with a fuzzy and hard to figure out close-up of her eyes, I pulled out to show that she was standing in a waterfall, with water cascading all over her.  In a similar vein, you could start tight on your child studying something intently and then pull out to show what is just so interesting.

 page 3 of three

back