Camera

15 Tips & Tricks on Your DSLR from John Cooksey at Elite Video
Here are the 15:
1. Bring portable LED light for backlighting and hair lighting.  Hmm.  $40 light.
2. Bring a softbox for interviews.
3. Bring along a $50, Russian-made F2 Lens.  Low F-stop lens?  Helios 44-3 58mm, F/2 lens.  Set at F/2 for the soft focus background.  The lens is manual focus only.
4. Use a shotgun microphone instead of a lavalier microphone.  Better sound, deeper base.  His mic samples contain no EQ processing.
5.  Use slow motion on a very short segment.
6.  Lazy background lighting.  Position your interview subject in front of a pre-lit background. 
7.  Glide-cam, a movie, or stabilization--slow, stabilized circles around your subject. 
8.  Add professional flare with After-Effects [like this one] or motion templates.
9.  Make shots from multiple cameras match, using color correction in post.  5D Mark III Canon and Canon HFG 30.  Add saturation to the latter, poorer quality camera and you'll get some terrific blends.
10.  Get a painter's pole [and camera adapter] for high shots without having to use a drone or crane. 
11.  Brinno Time-lapse camera.  He recommends the TLC 200.  John attaches it to a flex arm and mounts it anywhere on a job site to capture the day.
12.  Combine speed and slow motion in the same shot.  This feature is done on reality shows all the time.
13.  Put your camera on the floor/ground and get shots from there.  Put it down and ignore the camera, and people will grow curious and start looking at the camera.  You'll get some interesting shots. 
14.  Reaction shot.  Film people's reaction to a particular action, movement, or event.
15.  Walk/Reach camera over things.  Take it off of tripods and flex arms and just walk it over places and areas through a section of your field.  You can go forward or pull back.  Your arms have a lot of length.  Use them. 
16.  Start off with a Dutch angle and twist. 

This site has other guides for the Nikon 3100D DSLR.

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