National Geographic The Ultimate Field Guide to Digital Video

by Richard Olsenius

With the explosive popularity of camera phones, streaming video, and YouTube.com, digital video is fast becoming as ubiquitous as the snapshot. National Geographic stands at the forefront of this emerging trend with an essential how-to guide. Illustrated with clear, step-by-step photos, it teaches an easy, logical first, make better-quality videos—and then, edit them into accessible, fun, and creative projects your family will cherish. Straightforward instructions cover every important choosing and using equipment, creating a story, shooting the right footage to tell it, transferring work to the computer, editing, and sharing.

In these visual lessons, award-winning filmmaker Richard Olsenius demystifies digital video for the novice and offers hints from his 35 years of filming for the more experienced user. To begin, he explains the bevy of camcorder choices and how to pick the right one for the job, as well as the range of accessories available. Next—how to shoot a better video, including ideas to formulate beforehand, technical skills to practice, and insider tips from the master's own work. Olsenius then walks us through downloading and editing (both Mac and PC formats), and coaches us on the many ways to share video these YouTube.com, podcasts, websites, e-mail. As an added bonus, National Geographic provides links to online tutorials that enhance the fun and ease of learning.

This book will be for the growing market of digital video users what National Geographic's top-selling guides have been for still photographers—the best information out there, from a trusted, up-to-the-minute source.

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 2007

Reviews

[R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

While most of the book is now very dated (describing hardware and software from 2007), the section on shooting video is still very applicable to today.

[Nathalia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taking off one star because it's old and another star because it didn't go into much detail on the lighting aspects as I would have wanted it to. Despite this, I still think it's a great book to pick up. I needed a book to give me the basics without scaring me away and it did just that. I think the Shooting Your Video section was the best part of the book. That's really what I needed, to have an idea of how to go about planning a shoot. Without this idea, I felt like I was winging it too much. For that, this book is helpful and timeless.

[Daniel Messer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diving into some books to get some tips, ideas, and inspiration for some upcoming video projects!

[Kendell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good amount of useful information.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has a few interesting tidbits, but it's awfully old (6+ years since published when I read it) considering how fast technology changes.

[Jason Whitaker]

very basic

[John Humpton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great book, if this was 1989