When direct sunlight hits your camera’s lens, the result isn’t nearly as magical as you might hope. What you end up with is known as lens flare, and it can wreak havoc on your footage. How to avoid it? If your camera accepts a lens hood, that’s the best solution, but you can always shade it with your hand or a piece of cardboard. Just make sure that whatever you use doesn't end up in the shot.

Establishing shots do exactly what their name implies – establish a scene’s setting. Many scenes begin with such shots to show the audience where the action will take place. For instance, before showing a student and professor speaking after class, you might want to establish the scene with a shot of the particular building or university. Due to web video's inherently short nature, establishing shots are becoming less and less common in made-for-the-web productions. But if the setting of a scene is unclear, you still might want to throw one in to clarify – that is, unless you want to keep your audience deliberately in the dark.

If you’re looking for something to buy with that Metamoney you earned through Producer Rewards, the last thing you should be looking for is a fancy professional camera. Don’t get me wrong, we’d all love to have a 3-chip, $2,000 camera with a 20x optical zoom, but it’s really not essential unless you plan to produce full time or are currently shooting video with your cell phone. Smart producers get the most out of the camera they have by improving the peripherals – shotgun microphones, better editing software, lighting equipment, etc. You may even consider throwing down some money on a video production course. The point is, web video resolution is still too low to worry about shooting everything in HD. If you’re going to spend, spend smart. 

In a previous tip, we said that it is generally not a good idea to shoot a scene with light coming through a window and from inside. While this is still the case, sometimes the situation cannot be avoided and requires a solution. If you find yourself in such a predicament, the first thing you should do is set your camera’s iris for the subject(s) inside, not for the window. While this will over-expose the window and make it too bright to see, at least your subjects will be decently lit. Since the sunlight through the window is much stronger than indoor light, another thing you might do is add lighting inside. This will even out the contrast ratio between the bright window and the dark interior and make finding an ideal exposure much easier. If adding light isn’t possible, you can also subtract it by putting up a black mesh filter or scrim over the window.

Using a neutral density filter can make your life significantly easier if you find yourself constantly shooting outdoors in strong sunlight. The beauty of these filters is that they reduce the amount of light coming through the lens, but don’t require you to change your iris setting. This means that you can play around with your aperture to change your depth of field while still getting ideal light levels.