C200: Black balance body cap

S

Stills2HDConvert

Well-known member
Page 53 of the C200 manual states: "Place the body cap back on the lens mount and then turn on the camera."
Page 53 of the C200 manual also states: "If the sensor is not completely shielded from light, [Error] will appear on the screen."
When I put a lens cap on a 17-55 2.8 lens that is attached to the C200 I don't get an error when I do black balance.
Do you put the body cap on the camera when you do a black balance?
 
You should in theory use a body cap during the black balance process for the best results, but sometimes a lens cap is enough. It will depend on your environment.

If you're running a black balance indoors, a lens cap is most likely enough.

A black balance with only a lens cap out in the desert may leak some light in and disrupt the analyzation.

At the end of the day, if you don't receive an error, you're fine. The software will tell you if the process failed (error).
 
Yes, I think that 99% of the time, a lens cap is more than adequate to black balance. I usually close down the aperture all the way and dial up the ND to max to be safe (though I know I'm being crazy).
 
dave12781 said:
Why not just use the body cap always, like they recommend?
Click to expand...

Because sometime you may already have a lens and other stuff on the camera and it would be a pain to take it back off. Personally, I come from a background where you don't take the lens off to black-balance. On ENG cameras you just activate BB and the camera automatically closes the aperture down(ENG lenses apertures fully close unlike still lenses and a lot of Cine lenses). My 17-120 also has a fully closing aperture, so you can just close it all the way, too.

All that being said, if I already have a lens on the camera, I'll just put the lens cap on. As long as your fully excluding light from hitting the sensor, you're good.
 
Toss a towel / jacket over it, put the lens cap on, that'll usually be enough. If you get an error it's probably only because you really messed something up.
 
dave12781 said:
I get that, but that isn’t what they recommend so why not just follow the manufacturer’s instructions. It might be almost as good.. but almost isn’t perfect...
Click to expand...

I agree. It isn't exactly a hardship to throw a body cap on, and they may be telling us to do it this way because it's fool proof. Maybe it'll only work 90% of the time with a lens cap. Maybe their software that detects whether or not the black balance went perfectly isn't great. Maybe that software is expecting a body cap. No maybes when you just do it the way they tell you to.

Why use "common sense" over the educated answer straight from the engineers of the machine?
 
I generally remove the lens and place the bodycap for black balance. It is a pain in the field as I don't want any dust on the sensor. Removing long telephoto lenses in the field is a challenge.
 
I've done hundreds of ABB's, and I use the lens cap instead of the body cap about 90% of the time, and I've never gotten an error.

As long as the sensor is totally blacked out, you're fine. Close down the iris and throw on max ND if you're in doubt.

But really, look at the waveform with the lens cap on, even on a bright day, and look at the waveform with the body cap on in black room. I imagine you'd struggle to tell the difference. It's black it's black it's black.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top