My go-to cameras for conference video for the past few years have been the Sony PXW-X70. But if these rooms (or at least the parts of them where the speakers take up residence) are too poorly lit for good video, there’s very little I can do about that once the session is rolling. A few times I was moving chairs to make room for my tripods and plugging my Tascam into the soundboard as the moderator was introducing the next speaker.įor the most part, I’m shooting these sessions for highlights, so it’s not the end of the world if I miss a few seconds at the beginning, or even if it takes me a few minutes to get my shots framed and focused. Other times, like at a conference I shot in DC this past April, at several times during the show, I was asked to swoop in and do an impromptu setup in a room to grab a particular session, usually just a few minutes before the session started. But even with advance setup, if a speaker decides the way to get intimate with the audience is to come down off the stage and speak from the shadows, there’s not a whole lot I can do to make that speaker look good while I’m on-site.

At most of the conferences I shoot, I don’t have a lot of control over how the speaker and stage are lit, but if I’m working in a given room throughout the week and can get in to set up the day before the event, I can usually work with the A/V crew to get at least a little more light on the speaker so I don’t have to use too much gain.

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