Another reason to NEVER judge exposure off the LCD

Great stuff and I am in line for the book! One reason I bought the HMC over the xh a1 was the Wave Form Monitor, I feel this is overlooked by many. I am finding it more useful every day I shoot with it. I shot one scene where I decicded not to trust the WFM and make it brighter according to the LCD. Well when I got home and loaded the footage I realized I should have trusted it! Its a great feature and I like all of you am enjoying the camera more and more.
 
Thanks for the Pluge trick,
I have been fooled by the screen too many times...
I am more familiar with histograms, also thanks for the links
to understanding wave forms.
 
the only thing i use the viewfinder for is framing. i don't use it for color temperature or exposure whatsoever. i manually white balance to ensure it is correct, and use zebra.
 
Strobe Media said:
While i was out shooting yesterday, a slightly overcast day, and i used the zebra function, and i put it to the very point where the zebras were completely gone and the shot was rather underexposed.
Click to expand...

Expose for the subject. If you adjust your image until even the skys don't show zebras your subject will surely be underexposed.
 
This thread makes this old "Analog" guy happy, having grown up with vector and waveforms I was thrilled when I found out the HMC had one on board.
 
Brian.

I too really really love it. Especially for greenscreen work. Man it really simplifies the set-up and gets exposure nailed so well and I also tend to like to use it while I'm lighting a set to just see where I'm at. Zebras are great but have the WFM is the cats PJs.. so to speak.


5 years ago.. how much would it have cost to get a cam that has a WFM option or an outboard version?


It would be cool if this could also go out the video ports.. Anyone think that might be an firmware update?
 
I was on a shoot yesterday with my HMC150 and Redrock Micro M2 adapter and discovered a little bug with the 150, well hopefully a bug and not operator error. Upon receiving my 150 last fall, I did what I also do with every other camera I had owned and that was to set my LCD to color bars. I made sure that the LCD brightness was set to high and then turned on the color bars and turned the brightness level down to about -3, -4. Right around there the 11% IRE bar was just barely visible in a dark room.

Now, on yesterdays shoot I was using my M2 adapter and the 150, which has the built in flip feature. The flip feature and the LCD backlight level reside on the same button, but you control which one you want to use through the SW MODE camera settings. I had mine set to LCD REV which flips the image vertically. Now, remember, my LCD backlight level is on high, and the brightness level is set around -3, -4. Well, I had my camera turned off in between some interviews and upon turning the camera back on I hit the LCD button to flip the image and I noticed that the LCD looked very bright, much brigher in fact than what I had just been looking at prior to turning the camera off. Even the PA I was working with said the screen looks much brighter. Keep in mind the lighting setup and camera angle did not change. I went back to the LCD brightness setting in the menu and confirmed that it said -4, however, I knew that what I was seeing was not -4. As soon as I selected the brightness setting and changed it up or down 1 unit, the screen dropped in brightness significantly, back to what I knew -4 to look like. I then brought the brightness level to 0 and at that level it looked closer to what it looked like when I first powered the camera on.

So it appears that if you are using some sort of custom brightness/contrast settings for your LCD and you are using the LCD button for the image flip feature, there may be some underlying issue going on here. If anyone else can try to recreate this phenomenon, I would appreciate it. Fortunately I do use the waveform and was able to set the exposure to the levels it was giving me, so the footage was not under/overexposed.
 
Strobe Media said:
While i was out shooting yesterday, a slightly overcast day, and i used the zebra function, and i put it to the very point where the zebras were completely gone and the shot was rather underexposed.
Click to expand...

ya getting rid of all the zebras just means you're not blowing anything out. doesn't say anything about the shot as a whole. the solution: either live with blown skies and open up the iris to expose your subject properly or... light up your subject so you can keep your pretty skies and properly expose the shot. reflectors work wonders outdoors btw...

if you're shooting people, a quick run n' gun way to get good skintone exposure is to set your zebras at 70%. open up your iris just to the point where you have zebras on skin and you're good to go.
 
Cheeze. that's a nice tip on the face.. but ya have to compensate for darker skin tones and such.. Also for almost every exterior shot in FL I use a circular polorizer and haze filter... and possibly also a grad filter. That makes the biggest difference in not having blown out skies. I've become quite a Nazis about that stuff... No blown out skies for me!
 
Justyn said:
Cheeze. that's a nice tip on the face.. but ya have to compensate for darker skin tones and such.. Also for almost every exterior shot in FL I use a circular polorizer and haze filter... and possibly also a grad filter. That makes the biggest difference in not having blown out skies. I've become quite a Nazis about that stuff... No blown out skies for me!
Click to expand...

Here here!!!! I agree with Justyn.. The sky is a big part of the"sell" in my shots in sea and sky and landscape locations. If it is blown out it is a no sell. Got to shoot the whole frame guys, that is the picture. Grads and polarizers and bounce and.....the whole frame.
Don't always want to paint and to end up with Miami CSI color but they sure have the sky thing down.
 
BrianMurphy said:
Here here!!!! I agree with Justyn.. The sky is a big part of the"sell" in my shots in sea and sky and landscape locations. If it is blown out it is a no sell. Got to shoot the whole frame guys, that is the picture. Grads and polarizers and bounce and.....the whole frame.
Don't always want to paint and to end up with Miami CSI color but they sure have the sky thing down.
Click to expand...

It helps to have the latitude of 35mm film.
 
Justyn said:
I am very very glad for the WFM. especially on doing greenscreen stuff... really speeds up the lighting on that. simply awesome!


Did you guys see this? THis is AWESOME HERE. SIMPLY AWESOME:


http://www.rosco.com/us/video/roscoview.asp
Click to expand...

That is certainly bad ass. I haven't seen anything like that before. At first I didn't realize they had applied something to the window as I watched the movie before reading the page (heh) but ... criminy, that could really be useful in a number of ways.
 
Its simply awesome if you are shooting against a window and the light changes throughout the day.. you can dial it in and not re-gel the windows and such.. Its not cheap, but again... ND gels for the windows are expensive anyway. I can't wait to justify this purchase....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top