2026-04-13 Book: John Hedgecoe's Camcorder Basics

John Hedgcoe’s Camcorder Basics—A Quick and Easy Guide to Making Better Videos is a 1995 book from a prolific photography author of over 30 books. Including foreign translations and revised editions there are 168 books of his listed on the web.
John Hedgecoe (24 March 1932—3 June 2010) established the photography department at the Royal College of Art. He was a professor there from 1975 to 1994 and Professor Emeritus until his death at 78 from cancer.
Camcorder Basics is a very minor example of his books, but also so well done it could make you jealous. Of course it doesn’t hurt this book has over 400 colour images!

The Contents page shows some of the planning and depth of the subject. Camcorders were the rage at the time with families able to move from relatively expensive and complicated film movie camera systems to small cameras that could be trained on everything family oriented, like Weddings and Vacations. You are shown series of frames illustrating wide shots, medium shots and close shots. Along the way the reasoning of what you are doing, things like pacing and positioning, are clearly explained.

Many of the topics are two-page spreads. This example of Way 9—Framing the figure from the section Twenty Ways to Improve Your Videos is an example. Note the small coloured box titled Useful Tips. It is a reoccurring design and teaching element.
Later sections have numbered series of shots showing how to record your subject while avoiding jump edits and cross cuts. Editing was covered in the final two pages as “Cuts-only editing” using your home recorder/playback unit and your camera.
While the book has a price on the cover of $29.95 this copy had a marked down discount price of $3.95. This book was given away free by a thrift store.

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