AC130: Controlling exposre seamlessly??

C

ChrisHarding

Well-known member
Hi Guys

Apart from weddings I also film inside rental homes and as expected they have doors, walls and windows. Now I used to do this with one of my HMC80's and it handled autoiris seamlessly and it changes both shutter for you and also kicks in it's own ND filters.... you are looking at situation where you are filming from inside a walk in closet, across a white wall and then straight onto a glass window...so you have quite a few light changes!! Now with my 130's I'm a little disappointed as it's a tough job to even do this in autoiris ...just going from one area to another the camera is flashing ND 1/4 and as you hit the window although it wants to to switch to ND 1/16..you usually have to go to ND 1/64 ...in these cases you are on the ND switch almost all the time .... changing shutter speed is maybe a better way to go in manual BUT that seems also to be a painful process as it locks a manual shutter after 12 seconds.!!! So you have to push the dial select button to unlock and then select a new shutter speed.

Is there a nice seamless way to control exposure without having to resort to switching in and out ND's continuously???? With my old cams (admittedly the low light sucked with 1/4" chips) exposure was a lot more seamless..in fact in auto, totally seamless and in manual you could simply raise or lower the shutter speed with an up and down button. Even at weddings you dare not walk from deep shade to sun filming guest interviews without having the ND flashing at you!!

Any bright ideas??? Surely to goodness I can set the shutter wheel to I can rotate it up or down without having to unlock it first

Chris
 
Hi Chris,

I would suggest not to have the shutter on auto or even change it as it can change the way your image looks, if your camera would go from 1/25th to a very high shutter speed you might end up with going from a ghost like to a "saving private ryan" effect, as far as I know there is no way with your camera to make smooth transition from very dark to very light without switching the ND's, the reason why your camera's is asking for another ND is that it can't handle the incoming light anymore and it will cause diffraction if you don't change it which results in a soft image that looks out of focus if you push it too far.
 
The AC series cameras don't have any sort of automatic shutter control. They can have some automatic gain, but only if you put the camera in full auto mode; normally that would be recommended against for a pro, but hey, if it's what you need to do to get the shot, well, use what works.

Riding the ND filter switch is the normal way to do it. If you want it seamless, you might look into a variable ND filter for the front of the lens.
 
Barry_Green said:
Riding the ND filter switch is the normal way to do it.
Click to expand...

But that will show in one continuous shot, no? If I switch to another ND on my canon, the image gets a lot darker and you can't compensate that quickly enough with a iris adjustment without noticing.

The variable nd filter I didn't think about but use it on my dslr and that works very good indeed allowing you to keep your f-stop on a value you can choose depending on the result your after.
 
Thanks Barry and Noa
(Is this my mate Noa Put from Belgium by any chance???)
Yep that's the way I use the 130 too...but as Noa says it's certainly not anywhere near seamless!! You can see where the ND has been switched in and quite often because the 130 doesn't have the ability to tell you which ND is required it's more than often a 3 step process as the LCD will scream "ND 1/4" and after switching it will still flash "ND 1/16" and if it's very bright you will get "ND1/64" and all 3 steps will be visible ...However you can switch fairly quickly if you are moving from say deep shade to bright sun....if I'm on stedicam it means I have to stop and adjust. I rather liked the HMC80's as you were able to put them into full auto on a stedicam where you don't have easy access to the camera and go thru a range of lighting scenarios without touching the camera.

I presume that the reason for the AC 130 not being able to do this is the high sensitivity of the 1/3" chips as opposed to the 1/4" chips???

The AC-130 actually shouldn't have auto anything in my opinion as it's definately better as a full manual camera ...however it's tough rushing around at a wedding trying to handle manual focus and iris with the camera handheld!!! I have found there is a lot more work involved using my 130's compared to the HMC82 which is a lot easier for run and gun work!!!

Darn!! I will just have to get used to using everything manual!!

Chris
 
If you're moving from a closet to a window, you should really look into using ND Gels and attaching them temporarily to the windows in question. That way you would have a less drastic change of lighting conditions.
 
Hi Dannay

Time is all important here and some homes have maybe 50 windows!!! I have however solved that problem nicely with a Panasonic GH1 with a 14/42 lens and it cruises past windows and exposes perfectly... The GH1 on a simple rig makes a nice video camera actually!!! The GH simply changes iris and iso seamlessly as you pan over light and dark areas without any issues at all.

There is always a solution to tough shoots!! but thanks for the advice anyway!

Chris
 
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