a few dvx questions

J

JayR

Active member
As I posted recently, I just got a new AG-DVX100B camera. Some of the questions below may be dumb but I am trying to learn how to use it to it's fullest advantage.

1. If I'm shooting 24p, what is the best shutter speed to shoot on. Someone I know said 1/24 but I thought I would ask here.

2. Do you recommend like cinema-like Matrix if I'm making short films?

3. Do you recommend having the ND filter on or off?

4. What's the best way to obtain a shallow depth of field (making images in the foreground focused while the background is out of focus.)

Thanks in advance.
 
As I posted recently, I just got a new AG-DVX100B camera. Some of the questions below may be dumb but I am trying to learn how to use it to it's fullest advantage.

Congratulations on a great camera purchase.

1. If I'm shooting 24p, what is the best shutter speed to shoot on. Someone I know said 1/24 but I thought I would ask here.

As the default, leave the shutter to "off" for a good all around motion. For quicker motion at the expense of light loss, use a faster shutter. In a nutshell, there is no right or wrong shutter settings. Use your common sense.

2. Do you recommend like cinema-like Matrix if I'm making short films?

Again, experiment and see the results. The matrix basically has different knee curves which is a fancy way of saying how the camera interpret low and high light clipping and handling.

3. Do you recommend having the ND filter on or off?

First you have to understand the basic of photography. If you need shallow depth of field, and you are shooting during the day, you need to set your iris wide open, but usually, you will overblow your highlight (overexpose), thus rather than increasing the shutter speed, you can switch on your ND filter to cut down the amount of light and therefore allowing you to shoot that scene with iris wide open. That's just one way to use it. Sometime even the built-in ND is not enough and thus a mattebox is used to allow for additional filteration and for ultimate light control.

4. What's the best way to obtain a shallow depth of field (making images in the foreground focused while the background is out of focus.)

Again, if you have done photography, it's pretty simple principle. The wider the iris, the shallower is the image. Having said that, the focal length also play a part in this. If you shoot an object (a person) 3 feet away, even at the widest focal length and with wide open iris, provided that you focus on the subject, it will be quite shallow. If you place the object farther away (20 feet) leaving everything the same, you will get deeper plane of focus. Thus, you need to zoom in on the subject for a shallower deep of field.

If you shooting during the day (with lots of available ambient light), move farther back from the subject and zoom in fully, preferably with a bigger iris (lower f stops - in this case, at full zoom, the dvx will give you f.2.8) and adjust either your shutter or ND filter) to prevent over exposure (i tend to use the ND filter as I don't usually bother with the shutter unless I'm filming something that has quick motion). This way, you are maximizing your DOF by using the biggest possible iris and zooming in (longest focal length) and still having a good non over exposed image (with the ND filter enabled).

I hope you can get something out of those explanation. Cheers and keep shooting.
 
It seems everything has been answered already, but I always thought when shooting in 24p the shutter is best to be set at 1/48 and on 60i at 1/120. Wouldn't it be best to always have the shutter set to something either way rather leaving it on automatic even when not filming sports/fast moving objects?
 
Lee_B said:
It seems everything has been answered already, but I always thought when shooting in 24p the shutter is best to be set at 1/48 and on 60i at 1/120. Wouldn't it be best to always have the shutter set to something either way rather leaving it on automatic even when not filming sports/fast moving objects?
Click to expand...

Yes, correct. Actually by leaving the shutter to OFF, it does not mean that the DVX is on AUTO mode unless you are on AUTO mode in which the shutter will be selected for you. By having the shutter OFF, the dvx is set to a default shutter of something (I can't quite remember what the value is) and it won't change unless you set it otherwise.
 
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