Camera set-up for ending on Video and/or Film

Cecil_Beta

Active member
Greetings from Australia.
First I would like to say what a great discussions you have here. I have been reading as a guest with great interest the various threads. I know you all have a wealth of knowledge on the DVX.

Finally I am about to purchase a PAL DVX100AE (I delayed my purchase after finding out from you guys about the impending DVX100A last year.)

Cutting to the chase, I am about to embark shooting a documentary in 25P which could end on either video or film or both. (Hopefully both.) I guess I will have to compromise some camera settings.

Does anyone have any suggestions for camera settings, eg thick or thin that are suitable for both film and video?

Please don’t tell me I can’t have my cake and eat it and have to decide on the final media before I shoot.
 
Re: Camera set-up for ending on Video and/or Film

Well, Cecil, you can have your cake and eat all you want :)
You should definatly shoot in thin if you even think that there is a remote possibility that you will be blowing up to film. You might also grab an anamorphic adapter for that added resolution, however, shooting with the squeeze mode gets good results as well. If you end up having some flickering when going to video you can apply a slight gausian blur to smooth it out, that is basically what the camera is doing anyway. Other than that, just play around with the settings to find out what look you need for your documentary.
 
Re: Camera set-up for ending on Video and/or Film

;)
Scharky,
Thanks for your advice. Sorry about my slack speed of reply to you. Put it down to change of season down here.
Commenced day one of shooting today: don’t have an anamorphic adapter (yet) so will have to use squeeze.
Half-way through the shoot this morning I discovered I hadn’t selected squeeze. :o Oops... Can I mask the earlier shoots in post so it matches what I do squeeze? Can’t reshoot obviously.
Cecil B
 
Re: Camera set-up for ending on Video and/or Film

Hello, also from down under.

You may want to check out this site:

http://dvfilm.com/maker/dvx100settings.htm

According to DV film, these settings should be same for both Pal and NTSC cameras. I've shown these settings to a local film blowup expert who agrees they're about right.

The main thing he emphasises when shooting for film blow-up is avoiding high contrast as it makes the blowup appear poor. Contrast can be always added in post without compromising the blowup. He also highly recommends using the anamorphic otherwise you're losing 25% of your pixels, noticeable in the blowup. Sounds like it's too late for you though if you've already started shooting.

Hope this helps
 
Re: Camera set-up for ending on Video and/or Film

if there is a chance of going to film you best ask the transfer house that will do the blowup. they usually have thier own ideas about the settings and know what works for them. going back to video is not an issue i think. the blowup is the "problem"...
 
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