Filming Theatre Show - Questions

L

Lee Restarick

New member
Although I've been editing the shows for a number of years we have now decided to do the filming in house as well. Hi have a HMC81 for follow work and 3 Panasonic SD900 for static left, right and wide. I am doing a test run next week and would like some advice regarding the manual settings that cope well with theatre lighting. Generally the lighting is good but there can be a completely black background.

The SD900s I've simply set at manual (but auto focus still activated) but my major worry is getting the settings correct without getting blown out faces etc. There is also the matter of the white balance presets which have the indoor1/2 settings, are these useful? I also come across an AGS setting which I believe turns the camara off if it feels its been left in record mode by mistake. Glad I found that, turned it OFF!

The HMC81 I thought I could use in auto mode as its being used for some faster follow work. I'll also take an audio feed off the desk into this camera.

Any advice much appreciated for this very keen layman!!
 
Lee, Cameras and event performances can vary a lot, so i will just share what I do. I do often rely on autofocus, but how well it works out is camera dependent. Suggest never using auto white balance, either set for manual tungsten, or pre show, ask the lighting folks to turn on full white light and then color balance each camera to a grey card on stage. If the light is reasonably constant, just manually set the iris, or try the auto exposure setting. In cases where a lighting director was "creative", I have set the lcd to display the waveform monitor while I framed with a separate monitor. When lighting changes a lot I ride a remote iris control continuously.
 
I always use 3200 degree preset for white balance and it always work. I usually shoot dance so I'm never closer than a head to toe shot. So I can set the focus once in manual and it very rarely changes. Auto iris always seem to hot to too me, so I run a manual iris and trust the zebras.
 
Thanks for the replies. Good advice about the 3200 preset digitalgecko, I will try that out. I am also filming a dance show so your suggestions will certainly help. I'll also set iris to manual, they are pretty easy to work on the fly, certainly on my camera anyway. I will also try out the grey card technique Terry.
 
When using my old HMC150 I always had to set the shutter to 1/24 (filming at 24fps) in order to get enough light in the image. The dance movements never seemed skewed or anything. If I shot at 1/48 it was too dark and upping the gain just created too much noise.
 
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