First DVX shoot tomorrow - advice?

P

Peter Reynolds

Well-known member
Evening All.

Well, tomorrow at 8am will be my first professional shoot with the DVX100b. 4 interviews, 2 locations, with accompanying B-roll.

Now, I've shot many of these before with Betacams and a variety of Mini DV & DVCam cameras (so I know the basics of lighting and sound) but I've never shot on a DVX.

Any last minute advice?

I'm unfamiliar with adjusting scene files (haven't received Barry's book just yet), so if you have any tricks-of-the-trade or special settings for sit-down interviews, let me know.

Perhaps MATRIX should be ENRICHED?
SKIN TONE detail ON?
DETAIL level?

Any thoughts you may have would be greatly appreciated.

Wish me luck!

Peter
 
Common settings

Common settings

I've been doing a little digging, and I found that users "favorite" settings invariably include reduced detail (usually around -3 or -5), a master pedestal reduction (again around -3 or -5) and a detail frequency of "Trim".

I'll do a little testing myself after the shoot tomorrow, but if anyone has a simple explanation for these preferences, I'd love to hear it.

Have a great evening.

Peter
 
On the DVX, the gamma curves, Cinelike V I think gives the most clean image in terms of less noise & graininess when shooting low-light environments. The noisiest gamma setting is CinelikeD. Also, choosing matrix of "enriched" will bring out the vibrancy of the color, but could cause overly red subjects in the video to bleed their color into the surrounding area. I would prefer to choose normal matrix, or the cinelike matrix if you prefer that film-color tone to your footage.

By increasing the Detail level to the positive side, you will be enhancing the edge sharpness around the subjects in your video. By increasing the V Detail level in the positive side, also enhences the edge sharpness, but not as much as the Detail level setting. This results in sharper looking images. If you prefer the softness of the film-look, then decrease the Detail level, just a bit to the negative side & experiment with lowering the V Detail a little to the negative side also.

If you find that while shooting low-light environments & realize that your footage looks grainy (even when your gain setting is set to Low/off, which is 0dB) then you can increase the Detail Coring until your eyes judges that the graininess is minimised. Detail Coring & Detail Level & V Detail Level are inverse to each other. The more you increase Detail Level & V Detail level to the positive side, the sharper your image will look, but also the grainier it may get. The more you increase the Detail Coring to the positive side, the less edge-sharpness your video will look & the graininess will be minimised as you increase Detial Coring. So there is a balance you have to make & see with your eyes if the settings are satisfactory to your taste. Good luck on your shoot.

Andrew
 
Shoot completed

Shoot completed

Thanks Andrew for your tips. It was very clear and thorough explanation. I'll definitely be using some of your suggestions on my next gig.

The shoot went well (in case you were wondering). Both locations had a lot of rich colours (artworks, etc) and so the picture turned out great. I tried lowering the Master Pedestal to -3, which enriched the blacks slightly and gave a more robust look, at least to my eye.

One (small) mistake I made was forgetting to turn off the ND filter. I shot outside to begin with (it's snowing here), and had to use the ND filter. When I went inside, I didn't turn it off and only noticed the flashing "Turn ND off" when the interview began. Luckily I was able to turn it off and change the exposure after the first question.

Ah... The joys of a new camera. But so far, I couldn't be happier.

Thanks again!

Peter
 
Hi Peter,

Glad that your first shoot came out well. Ofcourse we all make some mistakes along the way, even I did, & still do sometimes, but then after a shoot I try to figure out what went wrong & why I made the mistake. Then in future shoots, I consciously try not to repeat them.

Most videographers on this forum prefer to set master ped at -7 for outdoor shoots. Reason why they set it to -7 is because the outdoor lighting (from the Sun) is quite bright, so even if they lower the master ped to -7, you can still see details in the shadow areas & they don't appear too dark. Whereas, if you shoot indoors with not too bright lighting, then you should increase the masterped slightly to between -5 to -3 like you mentioned. Since the indoor environment will mostly likely not be as brightly lit as an outdoor scene, setting the masterped to -7 during indoor shoots would crush the blacks too much that the details in the shadow areas will just be lost. Lost details in the shadow areas will mean that darker areas in a room with shadow will just appear as a dark blob of black & the camera wouldn't be able to differentiate between various shades of grey to black. It'll just be a black shadow with not details of shade in it.

The DVX is a great cam because in the electronic viewfinder & flip out LCD screen, the camera will prompt you what settings to set the camera at based on what the camera senses. For example, you mentioned that you noticed the flashing "Turn ND off".

Also, don't depend on judging how well exposed your video is just by peering into the electronic viewfinder (EVF), or LCD flip-out as the brightness & contrast levels of these two can be adjusted independently & is not an accurate indication of whether the actual footage captured to miniDV will be well exposed. Just because you see in the EVF or flip-out LCD that your scene is bright enough, or sufficiently well-lit, doesn't mean that this brightness setting is recorded to miniDV tape. Sometimes I've encountered that I use the EVF & Flip-out to open the iris so that the video "looks" well exposed on the EVF & when I upload to footage to my desktop, I find that my footage is either a bit overexposed, or underexposed. You have to turn on your camera's zebras & depend on it at all times for true & accurate exposure. I usually set my Zebra 1 to 80% & my Zebra 2 to 100% Another point to note is that it's easier to correct underexposed footage in post-production than it is to correct footage that has been too overexposed. Again, the Zebras will be essential in setting optimum exposure.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top