Health and Safety Tutorial: the Equipment

To ensure that we use the camera properly, and that we understand what we are doing, we were given a health and safety tutorial in which we learned about the cameras which we will be using to film our thriller openings. This is crucial because the cameras we are using are very high-tec, and therefore very expensive. The tutorial included everything from how to turn the camera on to where we can actually use it (not in pouring rain etc etc).

Here is a brief outline of what we learned regarding how to use the camera

•     How to insert the SD card
•     How to insert the battery
•     How to open/close the tripod
•     How to properly secure the camera to the tripod
•     How to turn the camera on/off
•     How to zoom in and out
•     How to switch from auto to manual
•     How to record/stop recording
•     How to view playback

Here is a brief outline of what we learned regarding safety issues

•     Never touch the lens because finger prints will show on our clips (and they are expensive to replace)
•     Never expose it in pouring rain (there are umbrellas we can use to shield the camera)
•     Never leave our SD cards inside the camera after giving them back to staff
•     Always bring the camera back on time

To compound our understanding of these important instructions, we were given the task of blogging about taking certain shots - see previous blog: Research and Practice: Camera Shots
Both of these introductions to the JVC camera really helped us to become familiar with our equipment.