Last week I was recording a presentation for the conference Kontent Horizons. I did not want to just use a webcam and laptop mic, so I had borrowed a Sony Alpha II camera.

I cleaned up the stage, which means mess everywhere but where the camera looks, and used my wife as a model to set up the camera aperture and focal point. I even did a test video and everything looked good.

I changed the battery pack to get a nice hour of recording window and talked through the whole presentation. You know the feeling when you have all the footage you need? I had that, for about a minute.

I plugged the SD card into the computer only to find out that I am completely out of focus and the frame is missing a lot of light 😫. I ended up re-recording the next morning.

Lesson learned: The focal point of a camera may be reset if you exchange a battery pack. Always do a test video BEFORE recording a presentation.

Bonus: As I'm using my iPhone to record the sound from a clip-on mic, I also found out that if someone calls you in the middle of the recording, the phone stops recording. And you have no idea as it's on MUTE! There went another 45mins of my life 🥱. I hope the presentation will be worth it, it's about choosing the right Jamstack tool, and you can see it on Kontent Horizons for free 😊.