Before you press record, you need to lock in the fundamentals. These settings ensure your footage looks natural, cinematic, and easy to color-grade later.

🎛 Camera Exposure (The Correct Order)

Always adjust your exposure in this order:

1. Shutter Speed

Set your shutter speed to double your frame rate

• 24fps → 1/50

• 30fps → 1/60

• 60fps → 1/120

This creates natural motion blur that looks cinematic. Once set, do not change it.

1. Aperture

Set your aperture as low as your lens allows to let in more light and create a shallower depth of field.

1. ISO

Set ISO to the lowest value or your camera’s native ISO

Lower ISO = cleaner image with less noise.

If your image is:

• Too bright? If your ISO is as low as it can go, close your aperture

• Too dark? If your aperture is as open as it can be, increase ISO

📊 How to Expose Correctly

Don’t guess, use your histogram.

A histogram shows the distribution of how bright or dark the pixels of your image are.

How to read it:

• Left = shadows
• Middle = midtones
• Right = highlights

If your scene is dark, the data will lean left.

If it’s bright, it leans right.

For a balanced image, aim for a soft bell curve in the middle.*

*Keep your scene in mind. If you’re filming a darker environment, your histogram will naturally lean toward the left. If you’re shooting in a bright, high-key scene with lots of light, it will lean toward the right.

What matters most is avoiding crushed shadows or blown-out highlights, not forcing every shot to look perfectly centered.

🎨 White Balance

White balance controls color temperature.

Set it once. Lock it. Never leave it on auto.

Why?

Auto white balance will shift colors mid-clip, making footage impossible to match during editing.

Match your white balance to your lighting using a preset or custom temperature:

• Daylight

• Cloudy

• Tungsten

• Custom Kelvin

💡 ISO Rules

Turn Auto ISO OFF

Your ISO should never change while filming.

Auto ISO causes exposure flicker that ruins shots and makes color grading painful.