How to Shoot SMOOTH HANDHELD FOOTAGE - Stabilization Tips and Techniques

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] first time doing this in a few months it was kind of weird I shoot almost all of my footage including the entire intro to this video that you just saw 100% handheld no gimbals or stabilizers or anything except the occasional tripod I've gotten some questions lately about what gimbal I've been using and if I've been using a gimbal to shoot the b-roll in some of my recent videos and the answer is no what seeing us I've been receiving those questions recently I figured I'd go ahead and make this video to share a bit of knowledge and a few techniques with you that can help you to achieve more stable handheld footage starting out with camera settings when I say camera settings I'm basically just talking about image stabilization there are three different kinds of image stabilization that your setup my offer that you can use to make your handheld footage smoother the first and most effective is optical image stabilization this is stabilization that's built into your camera lens and depending on which lens manufacturer you're using this could be called is VR VCOs pretty much anything over the three lenses that I shoot with only my 85 millimeter telephoto lens has image stabilization built in this really isn't something that I have the option to work with but it's definitely gonna help out a lot if you have it available in the lens that you're using the next best option is Ibis this is a long legged wading bird found in marshland areas along the Atlantic coast wait wrong definition Ibis stands for in body image stabilization it basically just means that your camera is actually moving the sensor around inside of the camera to compensate for those vibrations and shakes this isn't an option I have with the camera I use but if you're shooting on Panasonic or Sony there's a good chance your camera has this built in and it definitely helps out quite a lot when shooting handheld the final setting you can enable for more stable handheld footage and the only one that I use on most of my footage is digital stabilization this is also built into the camera nothing is actually moving it's all done with software because you're basically going in and stabilizing the clip after the fact this does result in a minor crop but I think if it's the only option you have it definitely helps out a lot and is worth enabling without a doubt all three of these stabilization options are extremely helpful no matter what you're filming but depending on what kind of video and clip you're shooting you can also use slow motion to really help out with getting those smooth shots shooting at a higher frame rate like 60 or 120 frames a second and then slowing the clip back down to 24 frames a second in post will really help to make those bumps and vibrations a lot less noticeable shooting at 60 frames a second helps immensely and even just shooting at 30 frames a second and then slowing it back down to 80% speed helps out more than you would think finally you cannot necessarily reduce but kind of mask the camera shake and vibrations in your clip by shooting with a wider focal length the wider your lens is the more dramatic your camera motion it will appear so compare these shots it's the exact same shot taken at 85 millimeters then 35 millimeters and finally 16 millimeters at 16 millimeters that small handheld camera motion appears like a really large dramatic movement on camera you can really see the entire frame everything in that shot moving around the camera where I said 35 millimetres you can still see it moving but it's a bit slower less noticeable movement and at 85 millimeters you can barely even tell that the camera is moving forward now that we've gone through those settings that are more or less dependent on the camera and lenses that you're using let's take a minute to talk about the techniques that you can apply no matter what you're shooting on I want to start out by mentioning that it can definitely be good to kind of just know your limits when you're shooting handheld so basically what I mean by this is don't try to be a gimbal if you're not shooting on a gimbal there are so many huge dynamic camera motions that you would usually go for with a gimbal that just look like absolute garbage if you attempt them handheld that being said let's start out by talking and it about points of contact right so basically the more points of contact you have with the camera the more stable the shot is going to be so you already have both hands on the camera hopefully and the idea here is to add a third point of contact to make your handheld shots a bit smoother so what a lot of people will do is use the camera strap and kind of push against their neck using the camera strap and add some tension that way to stabilize the shots and what I like to do is just hold the viewfinder up to my eye for a lot of the shots and have that third point of contact there even though we're adding all these points of contact up here and you're using your arms and your hands to hold the camera steady it's super important to minimize the role that your upper body plays when you're actually moving the camera because handheld camera motion is all in the legs I'm not kidding a lot of people will try and get handheld shots by holding the camera out and pulling it back or trying to use their arms to like awkwardly rotate it around something and that's likely gonna make your footage look really really shaky but what it's best to do to get those steady shots is to really just lock your arms off not move them at all and use your legs to kind of push yourself around lean to the side or lunge forward to get that push in camera motion your legs aren't just important if you're standing still and moving the camera side to side or front to back if you're walking with the camera it's super important that you bend your knees and kind of ninja walk while you're holding the camera it looks a little silly when you're doing it you might get some funny looks but you're not gonna get good footage walking with the camera handheld if you don't walk kind of kind of like a duck I guess so all that you're really gonna need to remember from this video is slow motion don't skip leg day goose walk no duck walk yes and you should be set and one final technique that I found is helpful for shooting my own handheld footage is to kind of stay focused on one point so what I mean by that is keep one point one object in the center of the frame and kind of just push towards it pull back from it orbit around it just keep that point in the center of the frame this gives you a good point of reference so you're not shaking the camera from side to side even if it's slow moving the camera on naturally is something you're gonna see in the final clip everything I've shared so far has been a shooting technique so something that you apply while the camera is in your hands and these are definitely the tips to rely on do all of these things don't disregard any of this if you can help it if you want to get that stable handheld footage but we also can't forget about a few things when editing you can fall back on if you have a clip where you just didn't get it right well you have a clip that just has a little bit of a bump in it it's just not quite stable enough warp stabilizer works wonders not always not always sometimes it really messes up your clip but if you have a pretty good clip to start with and the camera motions like relatively simple it's slow motion warp stabilizer is incredible warp stabilizer is not the key to smooth handheld motion by any means but I do put it on just about every clip and it does make a difference it crops in a little bit but it's fine because it really just takes out that extra little bit of unnatural shake and just makes the clip mmm pretty much perfect not perfect pretty much perfect so no matter what I would almost always recommend just trying it just slap warp stabilizer on the clip and just set the amount to like 5% not even anything major just enough to smooth out those last few bumps and vibrations and if you're in one of those situations where warp stabilizer just doesn't work at all like it crops in and makes the whole frame black or it makes the entire picture look like jello or something we've all been there depending on the type of clip and motion that you're working with you can open that clip up in after-effects and then stabilize it by tracking one or two points in the image definitely doesn't work on every single clip and it's a kind of tedious process for just stabilizing a clip a bit more but if you're in a situation where you really need a stable as a shot and work doesn't work this is definitely the next best option finally one technique I'll use when I'm editing to not necessarily make the shot more stable or more smooth but basically just enhance it and kind of make it a cooler camera motion that seems more dynamic than something you could achieve just by shooting handheld it's just animate a bit of motion in in post because you have to scale in I wouldn't do this if I was editing a 16 by 9 video but when I edit videos that are in a widescreen aspect ratio I'll use that extra information on the top and bottom of the frame to animate the video under those black bars to move up or down depending on the shots so if you have a shot where the camera is just pushing towards an object you could basically go in and post and animate a fake tilt up onto that clip it basically just adds that extra little bit of complexity into the shot and makes it look like a camera motion that would be a lot more difficult to pull off handheld that's the last piece of advice I have to share with you today but before I close this video off I want to mention that it's important to not just focus on getting quality like smooth steady camera motion but to also get unique creative shots it's really easy when you're shooting handheld to revert back to the same two or three camera motions a basic orbit around maybe a push in pull out and it's easy to make your videos get really repetitive by shooting just those camera motions so get creative with it orbit around an object while you're moving up or down and create this cool like spiral effect kind of make like a dolly or a jib motion by standing up and down while you're holding the camera basically just don't wet the pursuit of steady camera motion prevent you from getting shots that are interesting to watch so that being said I hope you've learned something new from this tutorial the first one back from a few months hoping you enjoyed it found some kind of value in it and if you did do feel free to share your support by leaving a like on the video sharing it with your friends or even subscribing to my channel I upload two new filmmaking tutorials one new filmmaking tutorial ever you need that right every single week but that's all for now keep reading and see you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 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Channel: Aidin Robbins

Views: 81,935

Rating: 4.9627104 out of 5

Keywords: aidin robbins, aiden robbins, aidan robbins, smooth handheld shots, smooth handheld video, smooth, handheld, handheld video, handheld shots, shaky video, shaky, smooth handheld footage, handheld video tips, tutorial, no gimbal, without a gimbal, how to get smooth footage, how to shoot handheld, shooting handheld

Id: _gyE5fJPeiU

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019