The HMC-40 meets Burt Reynolds

[Sherri Nestico]

Videotaped an exclusive interview with Burt Reynolds today at his museum in Jupiter. I was very pleased with the color in this video, considering the lighting inside the museum was quite subdued. I used my Comer 900 light to fill in some shadowing on Burt's face.

He is a very nice man and very funny. He had us all laughing with his one-liners.


Videos: Burt Reynolds interview, part 3 - Treasure Coast, FL | TCPalm.com

[Tony Spring]

Interesting to see that the camera flashes aren't looking too bad with the cmos chips and the Comer light looks great.

[Rick Lutec]

That seemed to turn out well. I also was impressed by how the 40 handled flashes.

[Sherri Nestico]

You know, the thought never entered my mind about camera flashes and the cmos rolling shutter issue. I guess that's because I've never experienced it with the HMC-40. Normally I work apart from the photographers - not because of the rolling shutter thing but in an effort to not have still-camera motor-drive shutter clicks all through my audio. But in the cases where I have worked with the photogs inside with flash guns going off, I don't ever recall seeing the rolling shutter effect visible in my video.

[Vaughan Wood]

Sherri,

Would I be right in assuming the camera was on auto focus?

Doing lots of events over 15 years, I've found that still camera flashes can upset auto focus and about half way through the interview after a flash, I notice that the camera focuses on the background, (as Burt's head is off centre), and stays there for about a minute until Burt moves across the camera centre and the focus resets itself for a while until another flash has it focusing on the background again.

I can see it from his hair, which is going soft.

Probably would have been fine without the still photographer there, and why do they have to take so many shots during the interview, when they only need one or two publicity shots. They do the same during weddings now, and totally mess with the audio.

click click, .....click click.......I'll stop my rave now! I'm over photographers!!!!!

Cheers,

Vaughan

[Sherri Nestico]

Hi Vaughan

Yes I did have it in auto-focus mode. I usually do that for interviews since - in theory - the subject isn't going to move around much.

The photographer who was with me routinely fills up one or two flashcards at each assignment. He takes literally 1,000 shots and then complains about how long it takes him to go through everything he's shot to pick one or two photos for the web and the paper. He's our best photog, though.

[Charles Papert]

Sherri:

Seems like, given that the camera "chose" to focus on the background at certain points, it would be better to lock the focus on the subject in manual mode. With 1/4" chips, you'll have plenty of depth of field for the person to move around (outside of getting out of the chair and pushing their face into the camera!) and you'll be able to avoid the roaming focus issue.

You also probably want to stick closer to the camera both to aid the eyeline and to keep your head from bobbing into the frame.

Considering the interior lighting was subdued, as you said, it might have been even nicer to bring up the fill on Burt and bring down the overall exposure to effectively drop the level on the background just a little--it's best not to have bright background objects that can fight for attention visually with the subject.

I worked with Burt on a movie called "Hostage Hotel" about 12 years ago, he was quite a character!

[Paul Digges]

Sherri, definitely looks pretty good, and must've been a treat to shoot an A List celeb like that. However, I would say quite the opposite about shooting an interview in autofocus, I would say that an interview is the perfect situation for manual focus since you know the person is rooted and not going to go anywhere.

Overall though, nice video. This one seemed to be sharper than your others to my eye.