Monkey's Magical Treehouse of Awesomeness

[MonkeyGirl18]

I can still taste the olive.

My meal was good. Ate too much salad, though.

[galled]

I think it's kind of funny that you went to a place named "Olive Garden" and don't like olives!

[MonkeyGirl18]

Olive garden doesn't serve olives in majority of their food.

On another note, I'm done with all this stress and projects. Stress just keeps building and it's getting hard to manage.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

like the soup and salad at Olive garden - but haven't had much success with their main entrees

[galled]

I've only eaten there once and can't say I liked it. I'm a big Italian food fan, but not so much there.

School is tough. I just keep telling myself that there's an end to it and focused on how good it will feel when I was done! The funny thing is after years of crunch mode, I found it really hard to shift back (would wake up in a cold sweat thinking I forgot something or was late for class!).

That said, school was one of the harder thing you do in life. Working is a lot easier in many ways.

[MonkeyGirl18]

I shouldn't keep my stress bottled up inside for so long. Deadlines come up and it bursts and I freak out, which is the reason I bottled it up in the first place, to not freak out. It's been pretty manageable, I've had luck with things being pushed back and getting most of my work done, but there's always that one thing that sets it off.

I should have been done with a project of mine by now. But, because I'm new at filming, I messed up a few times..... Been having issues with finishing it up.

[galled]

You can probably save it in the edit. Most newbies leave too much in, so you may already be closer to the sweet spot.

[MonkeyGirl18]

eh, when the teacher wants shots to be 5 second and in focus, you kinda can't put 10 seconds clips in and you can't have out of focus shots. If I broke the rule of thirds, it wouldn't be so bad.

[galled]

Oh... I know autofocus is frowned upon, but if you don't have a good monitor to check focus, auto may be warranted. I know too late now perhaps, but once you've got focus, you can flip to manual and it won't hunt.

[MonkeyGirl18]

I can't use auto, period. It defeats the purpose of learning how to work a camera.

[galled]

I can't use auto, period. It defeats the purpose of learning how to work a camera.

I understand. But what you do is set to auto to get a ballpark focus, then flip to manual before you press record. No one wants autofocus during the recording (because it'll either focus on the wrong thing or hunt).

[MonkeyGirl18]

I get what you're saying and I know my professor wouldn't know, but if I can't get focus on my own, it's kinda sad. I still can't figure out how to blur the background, even after the professor showed us. But he didn't let us try it out ourselves so I don't know how to even do that and it's frustrating.

I tried to find YouTube videos, but all I ever find is people telling me how aperture works and not, step by step, how to do it.

[galled]

Well, like I said, without a high resolution monitor, it's nearly impossible to get focus using the screen on a video camera. (And consumer camera don't have a calibrated focus ring!) A phone is much better, but all bets are off when you shoot outdoors! Even with a monitor hood, it's really difficult to see anything useful for focus.

What you're after is low depth of field. Wide aperture (low light or ND filter) and longer lens. What helps is physical separation between the foreground and background (bring your subject close to the lens).

[MonkeyGirl18]

I hear that from every YouTuber but that isn't exactly step by step. I have done everything I could to achieve it to no avail. It's annoying.

[galled]

I can help you. Give me some info. What are you shooting? How much distance from foreground and background. How much distance from foreground and camera? How much light is there and how much can you control? Which camera are you using?