HALF OF OPERATING IS KNOWING WHEN NOT TO MOVE THE CAMERA

Just because you can move the camera doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes the strongest frames are the ones that move the least and allow action to play within their borders.
A lot of this is about body language. I’ve noticed that most people tend to move around a central point: if they’re sitting at a desk, for example, they’ll sit in one position for a while, then lean in across the desk, then lean back, and return to the original position. If they do this fast enough, and you have a wide enough frame, you don’t really have to move the camera. You can let them “play the frame,” although you have to be limber and watch for the unexpected.
“Micro operating” is the habit some operators have of reacting to every small movement, even an eye twitch or slight head turn. This style is appropriate for certain things, and whether you employ this style or the “less is more” style has a lot to do with who you’re working for.
The bottom line, though, is that just because you’re an operator doesn’t mean that you need to move the camera to prove your worth. I once heard a producer complaining to a DP that the grip and electric departments stood around during takes, and he hated that he was paying them to stand around. The DP corrected him: “You’re not paying them to stand around; you’re paying them to do exactly the right thing at the right time.” The same is true of an operator: there’s no shame in not moving the camera as long as your moves are proper when you make them.
My personal style is to find static frames that play for long periods of time, and then when I do move the camera I simply move from one composition to another. This isn’t appropriate for everything and I have to adjust when necessary, but left to my own devices this is the kind of style that I prefer. I call it the “David Lean” approach: the compositions in his films are like paintings, and the camera rarely simply follows someone. When the camera moves it is typically making a transition from one “painting” to another.

WHEN IN DOUBT, KEEP MOVING

There are times when responsiveness is the key to getting a shot, usually in a situation where you’re shooting either very emotional or action-packed material. Keeping your hands moving a little bit on the wheels, in the case of a geared head, or keeping your hand in motion on the pan handle, in the case of a fluid head, can speed up your responsiveness. I learned this trick originally from a sound mixer, who always wiggled his hands on the mixer knobs during takes. I asked him why, and he told me that it is much easier to move your hands quickly in response to a loud noise if they are already moving. If your hands are standing still it can take longer to react. He never wiggled his hands on the knobs enough to affect sound levels, but if he had to turn them quickly his hands were already in motion.
Later I saw camera operators on features and sitcoms doing the same thing: keeping their hands moving on the wheels just a little bit, so their hands were already in motion if they needed to make an adjustment. I’ve discovered the same trick works with fluid heads: by moving my hand around a little bit on the pan handle without moving the camera, my response times increase dramatically.

LEARN THE GEARED HEAD

I really enjoy working with geared heads, although I rarely get to use them anymore. Most of my projects can’t afford to rent one for me. Hopefully this will change with the advent of the Gearnex geared head, which I’ve now used on several shoots.
The geared head offers an incredible amount of control over camera moves, especially dolly moves. For some reason it’s very easy to match pan and tilt speeds to a dolly move by spinning wheels rather than moving a pan handle around. The wheels also offer a wide range of possibilities from very subtle adjustments to aggressive camera moves that stop on a dime.
There are a couple of ways to learn the wheels:
(1) Buy, rent or borrow a geared head and strap a laser pointer to it: learn to write your name in light on a wall.
Although this is the most commonly recommend way of learning the wheels, I’m skeptical of this method as it teaches you to write your name in light on a wall—which is something you’ll never do. In my career—approaching 23 years in the film industry—I’ve only once had to follow text with a geared head, while operating second camera on a feature called “No Way Back.” A gang member spray painted words onto the side of a tunnel, and I had to follow his writing in third gear, with no rehearsal, on an 85mm lens. I nailed it, and I’d never done anything like that before.
So, having said that, I’d recommend skipping this technique and moving on to the next two tricks, which I think will help you considerably more:
(2) Buy, rent or borrow a geared head and strap camera to it: follow people around.
Learning to read, and react to, body language is a huge part of operating a camera. You’ll get a lot farther faster if you learn to follow people around and interpret body movement and language through the wheels than you will simply learning the craft of moving the wheels, which is what the laser pointer technique teaches.
(3) In the absence of a geared head, train your brain to do the right thing.
Around the time that I wanted to learn the geared head I read an interesting scientific study. Two high school basketball teams were told to practice plays in different ways: one physically executed the plays for one hour every day for a week, and the other team thought about executing the plays for one hour every day for a week. In the end both teams improved, and they improved about the same amount. Apparently thinking about executing physical moves can have some practical benefit to actually learning those moves.
At the time I was sporadically practicing my geared head moves while working on a TV series. I was a camera assistant, and at lunch I followed the art department around as they redressed the set. I couldn’t do this consistently, though, and reading about this study gave me an idea.
Whenever I watched TV I moved my hands as if I was operating a geared head and executing the move I saw on TV. As the camera moved on the TV, I moved my hands to follow:
Right hand: clockwise (top of wheel rotates to the right) to tilt up, counterclockwise (top of wheel rotates to the left) to tilt down.
Left hand: counterclockwise (top of wheel rotates away) to pan right, clockwise (top of wheel rotates toward me) to pan left.
After a few weeks of TV practice I did a LOT better the next time I got my hands on a geared head.

SPEEDLITE 430EX II

I consider the 430EX II to be the core of the Canon flash family.
It’s a reasonably priced, fully functional flash that does everything you need a flash to do. As a first flash purchase, I recommend the 430.
It has the focus-assist beam to help you focus in the dark. It can swivel and bounce. It can be used in manual mode with radio triggers, so it makes a great remote slave either with a third-party radio system or with the built-in Canon wireless system.
And although the 430EX II is somewhat less powerful than the larger flashes, I find its smaller size and lighter weight more comfortable for long hours of on-camera flash photography.
I love the 430, and I have lots of them. If you remain a Canon shooter for long, you may end up with lots of them, too.