From the course: DSLR Video Tips: Gadgets & Gear

What is a loupe?

From the course: DSLR Video Tips: Gadgets & Gear

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What is a loupe?

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Robbie Carman: Hi there! I am Robbie Carman. Rich Harrington: And I am Rich Harrington. Robbie Carman: And Rich, this week, we're going to talk about loupes. And I know that people think you're a little loopy, but that's not what I mean. I mean this piece of camera gear that you have in your hand. Rich Harrington: Yeah, well this is a traditional loupe, and this is actually designed for photography purposes, not DSLR purposes. So you could take this, put it on the back of the camera, checking things like the focus, exposure. And this will get used all the time in a field workflow because if you are out shooting landscapes or sunrise, sunset, you really couldn't see what's happening. Now this type of loupe doesn't actually magnify the image, so a photography loupe typically is a one-to-one view. It's just designed to block out the light. But a video loupe does more than block out the light. Right Rob? Robbie Carman: That's right Rich. And the thing is that as we've gotten more advanced with DSLR cameras, everybody sort of realized one thing, we've hit on this in other episodes; everything looks good on the camera LCD, right? And that's actually a bad thing. A lot of times you'll have footage that's soft and out of focus, or over-exposed and that kind of thing, so enter the video loupe for our DSLR camera, like this one made by Zacuto. And there is a whole bunch of brands that make these loupes, but they all essentially do the same thing. And that is they attach to the back of the camera, just kind of like this. They kind of just snap on, some of them have little brackets on the bottom of the camera, so you can sort of swing them out back and forth from the camera LCD. But they attach to the back of the camera and they do a couple of things. First, they magnify the actual image that you're seeing on the camera LCD which is essential when you need to get critical focus. The other thing that they do is they block ambient light. You can sort of see that this is a self- contained unit that's blocking the LCD screen. So when I look into it, I'm not bothered by all the light coming in from around me which makes doing things like checking exposure, and that kind of stuff much easier because the camera LCD is not going to be washed out. Rich Harrington: Now you're using one of the older styles that they had there which allowed you to attach to an adhesive frame. I actually have what they call a guerrilla plate here, pretty straight forward. And what this is doing is just screws to the bottom of the camera, and then it's a metal plate, same thing, snaps in place. Always a good idea when you're using this, you'll notice that this particular one has a lanyard; putting a lanyard on these, because last thing you want is for this to bounce. The other little thing I want to point out is we're going to talk all about exposure. This little red dial here, it can be deadly. It's a diopter, it allows you to adjust. And it's just one of the tools we use when we set focus. Now when we come back, we're going to take a look just at that actual fact, how do we use this to make sure we have critical focus when shooting DSLR video?

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