Question 1: What is a CCD?
Charged couple device – A movement of electrical charge, a chip within the camera that controls the shutter speed and iris
Question2: What is white balance and what purpose does it serve?
The white balance is there to tell the camera what is white. White is the centre of the colour spectrum and by setting it, the camera will tell which colour is which.
Question 3: What is shutter speed and how does it variations affect what you are filming?
Shutter speed determines how much light gets into the camera, and how many frames per second there are. The quicker the shutter speed the less light will be let into the camera.
Question 4: What is Interlace and Progressive scan?
Question 5:What is the difference between 50i and 60i?
50i is 25 frames per second and is also known as PAL. 60i is 30 frames per second also known as NTSC.
Question 6: Explain to me how an Iris works and what affects this has when you are filming?
The iris works like a human pupil, when filming in the dark the iris could be enlarged in order to let more light in. Making the iris larger would also make it have a shallower depth of field. In the light, the iris may need to be much smaller in order to let in less light, this would also create a larger depth of field.
Question 7: What is gain and how does this affect what you are filming?
The gain electronically lightens what you’re filming, like a filter. However it adds noise to the picture but is better to do before post-production.
Question 8:What does ND stand for and what is its purpose?
ND is a filter (Neutral Density) that acts like ‘sunglasses’ which darkens the image if there is too much light.
Question 9: Explain how you would focus the camera and what functions are available to help you do this?
To focus the camera I would use the rotating dial in front of the camera lens to zoom in on the subject. If the subject is a person it would be ideal to zoom in on the eyebrows where the most detail is found. The peakin and focus assist give you colours around all the focused areas.
Question 10: What is meant by 4:2:2 sampling and what are other variations of this?
This relates to the quality of the image. Another variation would be 4:4:4, which is a very high quality. In this case the two chroma components are sampled at half the sample rate of luma.
