five tips for better cooking videos number one is going to be change your camera angles one of the easiest ways to make your food videos more interesting and dynamic is to switch up your camera angles while you're filming a common misconception about cooking videos or videos in general is that people think that they need to film every single second of the process because of this people will normally just record one long video clip of them cooking from one angle this might be great if you're doing live cooking but if you're planning to edit this footage down to a shorter video you really only need to capture like 20 to 30 seconds of each major step in the recipe knowing this will allow you to get more creative with your filming instead of filming five minutes of me peeling five carats from one angle i'll literally just capture three or four peels of a carrot from one angle and then i'll change my camera angle to capture a few more peels from another carrot to create a two shot sequence of the process this makes for a much more engaging video and it helps keep your viewers attention and interest when they're watching you can get as creative as you want with this stuff and move your camera as many times as you'd like or even experiment with different camera angles tip number two is going to be to prep and plan first when i say prep i mean wash and cut all of your ingredients or measure out all of your dry stuff or your liquids and put them into their own individual containers or dishes this helps a lot with cooking in general because you're not scrambling to measure out or chop something while you're trying to cook something and trying to film all of this all at the same time oftentimes i like to break up my entire recipe into smaller tasks and film them individually as i prep for them for example if i need to make a gravy for a meatloaf dish i'll focus on filming just the gravy first so that it's prepped and ready to go for the meatloaf when it's time to shoot that after instead of trying to do both at the same time i know that the gravy can hold for a while so i'll take my time filming that and then i'll let it hang out on the stove for a little bit then i can take a little bit of time to take a small break and clean my kitchen a bit to reset for the meatloaf and now if you think about it i technically have two videos that i could upload that support each other and when i share my meatloaf recipe i can tell the viewers this goes great with my brown gravy recipe check that video out next tip number three would be to learn how to use your manual and autofocus settings a lot of times cameras they just have one wide focus and if you were to place something in front of that camera like a plate or a pen for example it might want to focus on the rim and not what you're cooking inside so learning to use your camera's different focus settings can allow you to select different focus options so you can switch from maybe like a wide focus option to an even closer smaller focus area another thing that i would recommend is learning how to use manual focus over auto i really only use autofocus for any parts where i'm talking directly to camera i think the sony zv1 and the zve10 that i'm using have amazing autofocus eye tracking features which i love whenever i'm filming my prepping or cooking parts though i switch over to manual focus oftentimes things like steam or even my own hands will get in front of the food and it'll cause the focus to shift from what i'm cooking to like my mixing spoon or something right by switching to manual focus i can control the camera to capture exactly what i wanted to focus on and i don't have to worry about autofocus hunting around my frame or my shot tip number four is gonna be lighting you can have the most expensive camera and lenses in the world but if you have terrible lighting it's not going to matter natural sunlight from a window is the best and free option and if you're going to use natural light from a window just make sure that you turn off all of your kitchen lights because most household lights have a yellowish glow to them i would recommend investing in a light kit there are a bunch of affordable options on amazon starting as low as 50 bucks i love the ones that i use because they have a huge softbox on them that make for a nice soft lighting one bonus tip that i would share is to buy all new light bulbs for your kitchen and light kit so they all glow the same color typically on a box of light bulbs it will say their kelvin color temperature another great thing about investing in a light kit is that you have full control over your lighting so you won't have to wait for a sunny day to film or deal with the sun popping in and out of the clouds and messing up your shots and exposure you can film at night and still have great looking videos most light kits also work great for food photography as well i have a video showing how to use this inexpensive light kit that i got from amazon and if you want to learn more about lighting your food content i'm coming out with a course and i'll put a link for both of those in the description of this video my fifth and last but most important tip is going to be to eat first one of the worst things you can do when filming food content or any content at all really is to do it when you're hungry and i've noticed that whenever i'm filming and i'm hungry i tend to rush some of the shots because i just want to eat the food already i also get pretty hangry when things aren't going as planned and they never do and i'll often get frustrated when i'm trying to juggle cooking and filming this could lead me to messing up the recipe or missing some steps or getting lazy with my filming especially at the end when it comes time to shooting the plating or styling the dish when it comes time to take a photo for the thumbnail and the youtube thumbnail photos for recipe videos are honestly probably more important than the actual video and this is something that you do not want to rush so just make sure that you eat something before or you are at least snacking while you're filming so that you don't rush the important steps of the production process oftentimes the recipe or the dish that you are filming might also be the dinner for you and your family so if it's possible i would recommend filming the dish much earlier in the day so that you have time to get all of your shots and so your family isn't rushing you to wrap up your video production so they can eat if you can't start earlier because of work or something i would recommend making extra food so that you can plate and style the shot of the food the next day i hope you found value in this video if you want to make better food content consider subscribing catch in the next one