Lab 8 Auto Focus

This is a photo I took in the Auto Focus setting (AF). I went as close as possible to the flower and zoomed in and looked through the viewfinder. I then rested my index finger on the shutter button until it was in focus. Then when it was in focus, I snapped the shot.

This was a photo I took using the continuous Auto focus setting (AF-C). In this photo I was trying to demonstrate and show how to focus on a subject that is moving i.e. a person walking. This was a staged photo.

 This photo was also taken in the Auto Focus setting (AF). In this photo a subject that is dominated by regular Geometric patterns. I did this by choosing a building with the windows being in a consistent pattern. The pattern became abstract with the angle I took the photo in.

Into to Digital Media, Mission 2 - YouTubing (Reflection)

Firstly, I think this presentation is definitely a lot better than my last mission GIF’s. With that in my mind, there was still points to be improved on. I enjoyed doing this mission on YouTubing because I had to learn how to use a software called “Final Cut Pro”. I used this because it was a pre- installed editing software on my Mac. I learned the skill to make my video for YouTube. I learned how to: cut clips and move them around the timeline, add music, delete and duplicate frames, add effects, add text and change the quality from 140p to 720p or 1080p. This was good because considering if you edit a clip in a video it is then yours. I also wanted the quality, so I ended up getting a 720p video. I also learned how to render and upload a video to YouTube. This was very helpful because I would like to start this as a hobby. I also learned how to screenshot on my MacBook. I am using now to show screenshots of my presentation and YouTube channel in the vlogs. I learned all this by researching and watching tutorials, and as ironic as it sounds, on YouTube. 

 

A few things I discovered while doing this was that it would take a lot more work and a lot more time than I had anticipated. This was great because it showed me and gave a great insight to the skill you need to be a YouTuber and what my favorite YouTubers do every day before they render and upload the final product to YouTube. I also discovered a few things. I discovered that I already knew most editing thing skills that software’s require you to have. This was very helpful in the editing stage of the mission. I also figured that a lot more people knew a lot about YouTube like me. This is one thing I wouldn’t have ever expected. This was handy because I wouldn’t be embarrassed to say anything, I thought we should include in the mission because they were like-minded people like me. I discovered that you shouldn’t include as much History and should always include an intro or contents and an outro or conclusion.  

In this mission we had a lot of successes and failures.  One of the successes my group had was we had very little errors. We had a lot less errors than in our last mission on gifs. This was due to the fact we were more prepared, and we put more work into it. This was also because in the last mission we did GIF’s. This didn’t give us a lot of space to explore and that much to write about. We could still talk for eight minutes, but we ended up including unimportant information. Not only this, it also affected our blogs. It affected our blogs in the way that we had a lot of trouble writing five hundred words for each blog. We also didn’t have as much pictures and didn’t rehearse. This made us default to just reading what people could already read on the PowerPoint.  

 The aspects I was most proud of in this project was the quality of our YouTube video and the design we put into our channel name. I think was because we spend a good chunk of time editing our videos to make them the best we could. 

Into to Digital Media, Mission 2 - YouTubing (Presentation)

I decided to create a YouTube compilation, as that was our community for our YouTube channel. My compilation was going to be of “fast workers”. As I did a compilation of fast workers the other two people in my group did a “Fails Compilation” and a “Beauty” Compilation. I used a software called “Final Cut Pro” to edit my YouTube video. This was an easy enough to use software as it came pre- installed on the Mac Book. It was also very easy to use.  It was a very useful software as you just had to drop the video into the timeline and then use could do anything to the clips. Cut parts out of it, add music, add graphics, split and merge clips together and then finally preview and export it to any social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube).  Then we had upload every video to YouTube. This was a very easy process because YouTube guides you on every step. Although it can take a few minutes to an hour to render the video it’s an important step because this will give your video better quality, stop buffering and create no lag. Even though it will take a while you could go away and do something else while you’re waiting. After the video is 100% rendered, it brings you to another page. On this page you have to give your video a title, description, cite sources you used and set an age limit to it. The editing and research took up most of the time, meanwhile the uploading stage was the easiest part.

After all the videos were created we had to get to work  on the PowerPoint presentation. We used Microsoft PowerPoint to make this, not only because it was simple but also because it was on every computer in the school. For this we decided we would each have the same number of slides each. We had 12 slides including the slide based on each one of our videos. This meant we would each have 4 slides to present. This would be fair as we all had the same amount of slides to talk about. We decided we would each choose three from the topics: Historical moments, history, our channel analytics in comparison to a bigger channel, genres, and the biggest trend of each year from the beginning of YouTube. As well as the three other slides we would talk about we had our own slide focused completely on our YouTube video. For this slide we would talk about the research of the videos, the software we used, the editing process and the uploading process.  After that we would have to answer any questions anyone would have. We were meant to make the presentation last eight minutes max. But instead we ended up getting twelve minutes. This would have been avoided if we had rehearsed more before we presented our project. The sources we would use for research was: Social Blade, YouTube, Wikipedia and Google images. We referenced all this in the presentation.

Into to Digital Media, Mission 2 - YouTubing

Planning:

The first thing I had to do was choose a topic I would like to do and have an interest in. So to do this for each topic we had to go to a certain part of the room. So I went to a part of the room where there was a group of six people who wanted to do the same topic. This was very convenient because that made sure there was enough people for only two groups. After that I had to form a group with class mates I had not yet worked with. So when I had formed my group that had a total of 3 people.

After that we had to plan out every step.

These included steps such as: Asking what target audience or community was our channel aimed at, create the channel, plan out the type of video each of us would make, make the video, upload the video, create the PowerPoint check analytics at different times and then present it to the class group.

So when we first created the channel, we had to ask ourselves what community was this channel aimed at. We decide compilations because in doing that we each choose a different types of compilations. This would also stop us from using the same video clips as each other. I, myself, chose fast workers compilations, while the other two chose fail compilations and beauty compilations. Then we had to create a channel which meant creating a new email on Gmail because if we didn't the analytics and recommended videos would have been very biased.

So to make a new channel we had to come up with a good memorable name that told the people who we were. So the name we finally agreed upon was "Community Compilations". This was a fitting title because we made different types of compilations but for a community that enjoyed watching compilations. So to start off I watched a few videos from a few different compilation channels just to get a feel for them and understand what made the videos successful and what kept the viewers watching a full eight minute video considering our brains are hardwired with a short attention span.

To create the video I used a software called 'Final Cut Pro'. This was an easy enough to use and it came pre-installed on my laptop. It was a very useful software as you just had to drop the video into the timeline and then use could do anything to the clips. Cut parts out of it, add music, add graphics, split and merge clips together and then finally preview and export it to any social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube). It basically had everything you need to create a good quality video for YouTube. The uploading stage was very simple though. You just export the final edited version of the video to YouTube. After this you are asked to give the video a title and description while the video renders. Then YouTube goes through the video to inspect if it breaks or disobeys one of the guidelines. Then you upload the video and check the analytics every two days at least to see if the channel grows at all.  

The is a picture I took in "Fluorescent Daylight" mode. I shot the photo in manual mode, with RAW/JPG.  I think this mode worked in this photo because although it ws a bit of a dull area to take a photo in, the sunlight helped this mode work in the work in the picture. In Adobe Bridge I changed the saturation and exposure to give the items in the photo like the skip, the gate and the wall more of an outline.