Fujifilm Video For Beginners
If you’re new to video pal2tech posted a great tutorial about shooting video with an X-T camera that you can view above. I am also including his recommendations below.
- What you should have
- You should have a good lens like the Fujinon XF18-55mm zoom or Fujinon XF10-24mm zoom since both are affordable and have OIS
- IBIS can be useful, but if you do not have IBIS use an OIS lens or gimbal
- You should get a good mic since the onboard mic isn’t great and audio makes up about 60% of your video so good sounding audio shouldn’t be overlooked
- You can get an on-camera direction mic or a lav
- You should consider getting an ND filter so that you do not have to stop your lens down too much.
- A variable ND filter can be very useful if you do not want to buy a bunch of ND filters
- You should have a quality SD card that’s 300mb/s and 32-64gigs that’s fast enough for 4k video
- Setup
- Make sure you have OIS and/or IBIS turned on since some lenses need you to go into your settings to turn on IBIS/OIS and you can add +DIS is you are feeling very shaky from a lot of caffeine but it will slightly crop your image in
- Shoot in 4k even if you do not need it because you will be happy you have it in the future
- Set your movie AF mode to area so you can pick a focus point instead of having the camera choose for you which is what multi does
- You can pick your focus point with the touch screen or nub on the back
- Go into IQ and set your sharpness to -2 so that your footage looks less like smartphone footage
- You should also set your tone curve, highlights, and shadows to -1
- Film simulation can be anything but Velvia, bleach bypass, or black and white unless you are going for that look and if you want B&W you can do that in post because it is hard to turn B&W into color but easy to go the other way
- Recommend you use Provia, Classic Chrome, Pro Neg Std.
- Set mic level limiter to on
- Turn wind and cut filter off for audio
- Leave external and internal mic level adjustment on auto because the camera does a good job at choosing for you and do not set them to off
- Lav mic you might want to manually set the mic to -20 or -15db but if conditions are all over set it to auto
- Turn off auto power off in the power settings or 5 min
- Set your performance mode to boost and if you have a choice set your boost mode to increase EVF frame rate for smoother video
- Set auto power-off temp to high
- Switch off the viewfinder and only use the rear LCD screen with the view button by the EVF
- Your video settings will depend on the use case
- Quick, run/gun shooting style
- 4k 16:9 at 30fps and 200Mbps H.265 (H.264 LPCM if your computer can’t handle H.265 All-Intra) Long GOP
- Set your shutter to 1/60
- Cinematic high quality footage
- 4k 16:9 at 24fps and 400Mbps H.265 (H.264 LPCM if your computer can’t handle H.265) All-Intra
- Use Eterna with the dynamic range set to 400% which will make your base ISO 640 ISO
- Set your shutter to 1/48 by setting your shutter to 1/30th and then use the rear command dial to make it 1/48th
- Use an aperture of f/2 or f/4 to get a shallow depth of field
- Use your ISO dial to get proper exposure
- Use an ND filter if you can’t get your exposure right by adjusting ISO or stopping down
- Set your white balance manually and do not leave your camera on auto white balance
- It is fine to use a piece of paper if you do not have a calibration tool with you
- Use Face/Eye auto-detect if you’re using the 18-55mm because it does a great job
- You can make it a custom button
- Make changes to your AF-C custom setting if the camera is not tracking your subject well with the defaults
- Avoid using the zoom feature while shooting unless you have a specific reason because it is better to move your self towards the camera
- If you do not have a gimbal practice your duck walk for stability
- When panning it can be good to put something in the foreground to make your shot more interesting looking
- Quick, run/gun shooting style
Fujifilm X-T4:B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
Fujifilm X-T3: B&H Photo / Amazon
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