Exposure control on FDR-AX33

D

David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
I'm a little confused by the manual settings on the Sony FDR-AX33, and what passes for an owners manual for the camera is severely lacking.

In the settings, I see where I can manually set iris, shutter speed, and exposure.

I understand iris and shutter speed, but what does 'exposure' control? I mean, the combination of iris and shutter speed controls how much light reaches the sensor, right? Isn't that 'exposure'? Or does this control relate to the ISO setting? When I go manual on the 'exposure' control, all I get is a line at the bottom with a "+" on one end and a "-" on the other. I'm able to adjust the slider on that line and the image gets brighter or darker, but there's no scale or reference numbers or anything to indicate exactly what it is I'm setting or to what value I'm setting it. When I go manual on the shutter speed or iris controls, they give me relevant numbers as I change the settings, but the 'exposure' control gives me nothing.

Can anyone give me some insight on this?
 
The AX33 has a BAD problem as far as using it for serious filmmaking is concerned. One I didn't realize until today.

In all the promo material and info, Sony says that the camera has many manual functions -- focus, iris, shutter speed and exposure, among others. Sounds great, right? But what they DON'T tell you is that you can only choose ONE of these to control manually at a time. If your iris is set to 'manual' and then you set your exposure to 'manual', the camera sets the iris back to auto! Outrageous!

This camera needs a 'Magic Bullet' hack that will allow manual control of ALL these things at the same time.
 
I found the AX33 to be best put to use with all the exposure handled automatically. Sure, there're situations where it's better to fine tune with the very limited manual controls, but I pretty much just shot all auto. My AX33 accidently got put into the clothes washing machine and so died a premature death. If I remember correctly, the LCD screen didn't even show what the iris, shutter, gain values were. What I would typically do is set the AGC Limit to something low enough to force the iris to open up to max, and then set the shutter speed to 180 degrees. In order to see what the camera was doing in various lighting conditions, I had to use Sony Prepare to open the clip and look at the metadata, which showed the shutter, gain, iris values. The AX53 is the same in this regard, but I like it much more. It's a little bigger but has 20x zoom. The AX100 lets you control all the exposure settings individually or set any of them to auto. But the AX100 is only 12X zoom and no BOSS. Since my AX33 was damaged in the water (lens had soap film on the inside and and camera wouldn't power on after being dried out) I took it apart. I measured the BOSS degree of movement. It has 6 degrees freedom of movement from centered position to up/down, left/right (or 12 deg. stop-to-stop). Here are a few autopsy photos.

Mark
 

Attachments

  • AX53 Lens-Sensor back view.jpg
    AX53 Lens-Sensor back view.jpg
    56.4 KB · Views: 0
  • AX53 Lens-Sensor front view.jpg
    AX53 Lens-Sensor front view.jpg
    62.7 KB · Views: 0
  • AX53 Lens-Sensor side view.jpg
    AX53 Lens-Sensor side view.jpg
    274.7 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
Well, here goes. I'm only going to tell about this because there's a slight chance it might be somehow therapeutic.
I was somewhere in the South China Sea aboard an aircraft carrier. At 3am, I decided I would go down and do my laundry. Knowing my buddy was down there already, and that he always wants me to get video of him doing things aboard ship, I decided to throw my little camera bag into my laundry bag and get some shots of my friend. I got down there and was basically running on auto-pilot as I was very tired. I dumped all my bag into one machine, closed the lid and started the wash cycle. About 3 minutes later I realized my camera bag was nowhere in sight. Opened the lid and pulled out the soaking wet bag. So, in all, I lost the camera and 3 batteries. We observed a little moment of silence at the realization that this camera just died. I let it dry out for several days but a soapy film was on the inside of the lens and it wouldn't power up on batteries or the charger. I had it just long enough to be impressed with the B.O.S.S. and eventually got two AX-53s.

The End
 
Mark Watson said:
Well, here goes. I'm only going to tell about this because there's a slight chance it might be somehow therapeutic.
I was somewhere in the South China Sea aboard an aircraft carrier. At 3am, I decided I would go down and do my laundry. Knowing my buddy was down there already, and that he always wants me to get video of him doing things aboard ship, I decided to throw my little camera bag into my laundry bag and get some shots of my friend. I got down there and was basically running on auto-pilot as I was very tired. I dumped all my bag into one machine, closed the lid and started the wash cycle. About 3 minutes later I realized my camera bag was nowhere in sight. Opened the lid and pulled out the soaking wet bag. So, in all, I lost the camera and 3 batteries. We observed a little moment of silence at the realization that this camera just died. I let it dry out for several days but a soapy film was on the inside of the lens and it wouldn't power up on batteries or the charger. I had it just long enough to be impressed with the B.O.S.S. and eventually got two AX-53s.

The End
Click to expand...

That's a tragic story, but at least it has a happy ending. I hope you gave the AX33 a decent burial -- at sea, maybe?

The B.O.S.S. is very impressive! Almost eliminates the need for a Steadicam -- almost. In many ways, the AX33 is a great camera. I just wish it had full manual control of all functions simultaneously.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top