In this paper, I use the idea of a ‘take’ to indicate that I have looked again at previous moments in a long‐term participatory video for research project to ‘rethink’ them from a different perspective now. My aims in doing this are to acknowledge the recent increase in critical engagements with participatory video, to raise concerns about uncritical uses of Western realist film production conventions and to call for renewed scrutiny of our methodological practice as researchers. I look at the conventions of ‘white balancing’ and ‘framing the horizon’ within a wider suite of film production techniques to argue that even when applied within a participatory epistemology, they inevitably develop a particular way of looking for participants and researchers that is ambivalent, rather than feminist, in its effects. The paper concludes by suggesting that as geographers (and other social scientists), we would do well to be more cautious of participatory video, and more circumspect in the claims we make about its empowering effects, including its ability to enable a feminist practice of looking.