When I was asked whether I would shoot some video for a singer/songwriter/guitarist I initially replied that I didn’t really have the kit. But then I realised that my humble Nikon D7100 had a supposedly pretty good video function that I’d never even used! As this was a “straightforward” add-on to a planned promo stills shoot, I decided to give it a go.
Behind-the-scenes phone shot of Andrew Morton’s video shoot.
I’ve photographed Andrew before when he was in a band but this was the first time I’d seen/heard his solo work. He gives Jacques Brel and Scott Walker amongst his influences and that was certainly apparent in his excellent original material.
I shot the video on my 50mm f1.4 lens at f2 using a single spotlight provided by the modelling light on one of my Bowens flash heads. The background was grey, lit to be almost (but not quite) black.
Andy sang live to a prepared backing track and this mixed audio was fed straight to my Nikon. This meant that Andy was creating the music as we filmed but this proved to be no problem at all with very little need for re-takes.
And the result? I was AMAZED at the quality of the video and sound. This has definitely given me the taste for further exploiting the video function on my D7100 and I’m now dreaming up some video projects (I did a fair bit of moving image as part of my MA Fine Art but the quality was never as good as those delivered by my Nikon).
I’ll share some edited video as soon as Andy publishes it.
David Rann Photographer 