One of Tokyo shooting

[Cinetastic]

Last Wednesday I dashed to BIC Camera in Ikebukero and bought the HV20 charged the batteries and went out for some Night shooting. Unsure of my changes to the out of the box settings,　the next day I got the BIC man to put the Menu into English and locked Cinema mode for color gamma and changed HDV to 24p.

I went to the roof of Sunshine 60 and filmed zooms and daylight footage, and shot more at night locally. I added the Wide lens, and the 3.3W Halogen little light on various test shoots this week (too cold yesterday with snow in Shibuya!). Today at Toshimaen I was well enough in control of the camera and how I use it to　do a `final` version of the testing to try Cinema color with 24p, setting the auto exposure to the bright street scene and then calling up Function Exposure to lock that. I was able to pan into areas of shade of (dakened) trees and have some light of the original exposure be viewable in the background.

This has become my modus operandi, and will want to try a Grey card (part of the Greyscale) to set the exposure in the Key light for later tests.

I am loving it all so far, and am amazed at the Night exposure, and even without the little 3.5W Halogen lamp. I think the Cine Gamma setting brought from the XHA1 looks great and also the 24p works for me.

[Toenis]

So there is a simple way to lock exposure? Like having shutter on 48 and then locking the aperture at the suitable exposure?
Please tell us how easy it is to perform this exposure locking action.

Or is it like on the page 49 in the manual:

Mode switch P: (except for the [ FIREWORKS] recording program).
1 If the joystick guide does not appear on screen, press ( ) to display it.
2 Push the joystick ( ) toward [EXP].
• If [EXP] does not appear on the joystick guide, repeatedly push the joystick ( ) toward [NEXT] to display the joystick guide.
• The exposure adjustment indicator and the neutral value “±0” appear on the screen.
• If you operate the zoom while the exposure is locked, the brightness of the image may change.
3 Adjust ( ) the brightness of the image as required.
• The adjustment range and the length of the exposure adjustment indicator will vary depending on the initial brightness of the picture.
• Pushing the joystick ( ) toward [EXP] again will return the camcorder to automatic exposure.

Cheers,
T

[Cinetastic]

I have not made any sense of the supplied Japanese manual, but I am only shooting in Cinema Color mode and using 24p HDV. But yes, that is the way to get the exposure up on screen and then I have it locked - but it can then be slid dark or bright. But beware...

One thing I did try, and did not like, was a Night shot locking the exposure to a key light and then using the exposure slider to darken the picture. I immediately noticed the shutter changing on the LCD giving a worse longer shutter (and picture echo is how I would describe).
I found it the `same` in reverse, in the sense that it did not give a picture the same (as an auto exposure) if setting the exposure lock in a dark area and manually brightening it. I much preferred the look of the auto exposure (which I would then lock) than the manually brightened adjustments of the slider. Hope that makes sense - i.e. I prefer the look of the auto the camera gives at Night in the key light of a particular shot, which I can then lock.

[Noel Evans]

Hey Cinetastic, irrelevant post however there are a few of us in Tokyo atm, so I am going to organise a get together if interested. PM me a contact, mobile email if you have is best. Cheers Noel

[Cinetastic]

Thanks Noel! I have sent a PM. Cheers, Andrew.