TOP 3 ways to shoot HANDHELD 

Good stuff! A couple of notes for emphasis from an “old timer”. Majority of my career was pre-digital, and I gripped on a lot of low budget action flicks. 1) Wide lens. Unless you’re shooting an earthquake, you don’t want to be on a long lens. Long lenses emphasize micro shaking of the camera. Wide angle smooths it out. 1A) A wide lens at a midrange aperture will give you great DOF, meaning follow focus is much less of an issue. Avoiding opening the lens all the way will give the operator more latitude, especially if they move close to the action. Shoot at a higher ISO or use more lighting if a higher ISO is giving you noise issues. 2) Action. Hand held is great for fights and foot chases. The frame is already filled with movement. Camera instability is much less noticeable. Shakiness of a hand held camera will often accentuate the action. 3) Smooth out the shake using inertia (the weight of the camera). This is especially a good technique for man cam and crash cam. Use your legs and hips, knees slightly bent. This should help reduce fatigue on your arms, too. 3) Bonus Pro Tip: Because you’re moving about, you’re going to be fighting lens flare. A French flag or eyebrow on the matte box isn’t going to cut it. The solution is to float a handheld solid flag (18x24) over the lens, keeping the front element shaded. This requires a skilled grip to perform the job while avoiding the flag dipping into frame or their body coming in from the side. If you don’t have a skilled grip, practice practice practice with someone. Even if you’re shooting with a gimbal or steadycam, you’re still going want someone to float a flag. Lens flare has been popularized by JJ Abrams and others, but you should avoid it in camera whenever possible. Leave lens flare to post production. It’s very difficult to fix, but adding it is relatively easy. 4) Dedicated spotter. Don’t rely on the cable puller. 5) Practice at home with whatever camera you got at home. Add weight to your lighter cameras (even phone cameras) for practice. You can even test yourself for improvement with a laser pointer mounted to your home camera. Once you’re comfortable, try to get in a little practice with whatever camera you’ll be using on the shoot.

That was really thoughtful and useful -- thanks for sharing, brother!

Thank you for this video my friend! I have never used my C200B handheld yet, so this video is really ‘handy’! Pun intended! 😅👍🏻👍🏻

I like a shoulder rig on an easyrig for handheld shooting. And I can easily fold in my Zacuto handle and lower the camera and shoot below my shoulder tucked into my body.

Your new lighting setup is looking as amazing as your LA setup used to look. Could you make a new video showing your new VT lighting setup on your new space? Best studio look on RU-vid! 🏆

Have not tried the shoulder or crash cam. I really like the belly cam. Unfortunately, I wound up with the C200, as opposed to C200B...the B version had been out of stock for weeks, and I grew impatient. The EVF gets in the way. So, I do more of a hip cam, instead of a belly cam. There are some videos on RU-vid, regarding the removal of the EVF. One of them shows, what appears to be, most of the steps on how to do this. However, in the comments, someone claimed that they followed the steps in the video, but now their C200 will not work at all. I would love to convert my C200 to a C200B...and not have to be without my camera for weeks, while Canon has it. I imagine that I'm not the only one. Would love to see you do a video on that. But, I know you're busy...

Handle held is very good for music videos. Narrative film should be on a tripod or stable system %90 of the time, nothing worse then an indie film with just shaking shoulder footage

There was a weird scratch in the audio at certain points Great video though!

I guess this guy does not know about tilta wireless follow focus handle which allows you to operate and pull focus both. He just assumes everyone is working at a high level to get access to 2nd person or focus pullers. LOL