XL2..not wait!!!

Hi All -
i want to post a question but it doens't have to do with FCP this time. the thing is that other forums are not as good as this one...so I was wondering..does anyone know of a camera forum..

mike...any have you ever thought of starting a camera forum?

Yea I need help with my Canon GL 2 so a camera forum would be cool.
Everything I'm shooting has a lot of noise in the video signal even in good lighting. It looks like I'm shooting in super low light.



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Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

Good forum for the XL2 is over at DVINFO.net

[www.dvinfo.net]



Michael Horton
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Dean - check your camera and make sure your gain is not on -

Mike - I am already a member of DVinfo...I was just sugesting a new forum for lafcpug.

thank you!

> Everything I'm shooting has a lot of noise in the video signal even in good
> lighting. It looks like I'm shooting in super low light.

It could be your LCD screen's brightness is set too high. A "Brightness" control on a camera almost never refers to how bright it's shooting -- it's referring to how bright the LCD screen is. If the screen's too bright, you might be tempted to adjust exposure down to compensate, thinking the image is too bright, and what you get is mud.

And I always hold to this maxim: In video, given a choice, overexpose rather than underexpose. You get no image on video if you underexpose, but even a bright blue highlight can be taken down in post to recover detail for overexposed shots.

Finally, never trust auto iris. Always set your focus and exposure to manual.

And I would humbly suggest the opposite: its better to slightly under expose than to slightly overexpose. And that, even though grain will increase, you can never recover from a blown out highlight -- in-spite of what is suggested above.

You can save a slightly under exposed shot, but cannot fix a blown highlight. The detail in a blow out is gone forever.

-Christopher Johnson

"And I would humbly suggest the opposite: its better to slightly under expose than to slightly overexpose."

I agree. Digital video, in that sense, works in the opposite way than actual film does. You'll have more success from a post-push than from a post-pull. That's not to say you should go around underexposing everything, but err on the side of slightly dark if there is a question between the two.

- - -

And Arod, you might also want to try the forums at [www.cinematography.com]. There is a "video only" section that might be of some use to you.



- Justin Barham -

> And I would humbly suggest the opposite: its better to slightly under expose
> than to slightly overexpose.

I have to completely disagree on that one. Even though the Apple Pro Training book suggests underexposure, it's as I wrote before -- I've seen a completely blue sheet of non-white-balanced sun backlight get rolled back to reveal faces where you can't see any, whereas trying to push up an underexposed shot would result in whitewash.

"It could be your LCD screen's brightness is set too high. A "Brightness" control on a camera almost never refers to how bright it's shooting -- it's referring to how bright the LCD screen is. If the screen's too bright, you might be tempted to adjust exposure down to compensate, thinking the image is too bright, and what you get is mud."

I shoot mostly through the view finder. I'm going to see if it has to do with the gain being on. I've tried using a lot of different settings from the Av to TV and the easy (full auto) and full manual I have zebra turned on set the exposer so there is just a little zebra in the whites.

Hi Derek, that is great you can recover from highlight blow-out in video color correction. Awesome.

In my six years of editing, the only place I have ever seen, or heard of such a phenomena being even remotely possible is when color correcting a RAW image from a digital camera, with the RAW editor in Photoshop.

Good to know of your experience. I hate having the added grain from recovering an underexposed shot.

-Christopher