4 Easy Tips to Record Great Video Footage While on Vacation

Would you like to record videos of your vacation that really capture its essence and look amazing? Maybe you’d like to capture videos that are worthy of being uploaded to social media immediately, or that you can edit into a travel video of your own later on?

Regardless of what you want to do with the footage, you need to first record great video footage of your vacation. That can be a bit challenging, which is why you should try using the following tips:

• Record at a high frame rate

Typical video cameras tend to capture videos at 30 frames per second – which is good, but you should bump it up to 60 if possible. Recording at a higher frame rate will make your video look smoother, especially when there’s lots of action and movement taking place in the shot as is often the case with vacation videos.

Be sure that you have enough storage with you however, as recording at a high frame rate will increase the file size of your videos as well.

• Make sure the camera is kept steady

It cannot be stressed enough how important it is that your camera is kept steady while you’re recording. If it is steady the video won’t look shaky, and its quality won’t suffer because of slight shifts in its focus.

Ideally it would be best if you use a portable travel tripod to mount your camera. However if that isn’t an option and you need to hold the camera in your hands – be sure to grip it with both hands and keep your elbows near your sides so that they have more support.

• Try recording outdoor shots during the golden hour

Essentially the ‘golden hour’ is the hour right after dawn, and the hour right before sunset. During that time the lighting conditions are really quite something, and not only does the sky look spectacular but everything else looks amazing as well.

In short – you should take advantage of that and try to record outdoor shots during that time. If you want to you could plan your trip so that you can spend the golden hour solely recording the video footage that you need.

• Use an external microphone to capture the sounds alongside the sights

Sound can have a transformative effect on your video, and provide emotional cues about its mood and tone. However recording good audio while on vacation can be tricky as the built-in microphones on most video cameras is not that good.

That is why you should try to bring an external microphone along with you so that you can capture high quality audio alongside your videos. A portable shotgun microphone is normally the go-to choice for many people, as you can point it in the direction that you’re recording and it will capture audio from that area.

Don’t be too worried if the videos that you capture on vacation aren’t ‘perfect’ – as there’ll be many factors that are outside your control. Most issues can be cleared up during post-production as you edit and cut together the video, and for example you could use Movavi Video Editor for that to even add photo to video if you want to.

As you can see none of the tips listed above are particularly difficult, yet the impact they’ll have on your video footage will be significant. If you want you can give some of them a try before you actually go on vacation, so that you get a better idea of how they will affect the videos that you record.