HPX250: HPX250 PAP 1 vs PAP 2 for infinite white background

[chromeboy007]

Hello - I rented this camera for a commercial shoot tomorrow. I heard all about PAP 1 and how clean and how much more light you can in the frame so I want to use it, but I also heard that it is a terrible idea when your frame is very bright, which an infinite white background will be. Does anyone have any experience?

Thanks

 

[Donald Gregory]

Hello - I rented this camera for a commercial shoot tomorrow. I heard all about PAP 1 and how clean and how much more light you can in the frame so I want to use it, but I also heard that it is a terrible idea when your frame is very bright, which an infinite white background will be. Does anyone have any experience?

Thanks

This may be coming a day too late, but I pretty much exclusively use pap1. But if you're using an infinite white background , I see no harm in playing it safe using pap2.

 

[chromeboy007]

This may be coming a day too late, but I pretty much exclusively use pap1. But if you're using an infinite white background , I see no harm in playing it safe using pap2.

Ok cool thanks. I did my shoot with PAP 2 just to be safe. It looks great regardless. But next time whenever I have stationary shots, I'll try PAP 1.

 

[digitalgecko]

If your shooting with a lot of light, then shoot PAP2 so you can use a larger iris setting. Otherwise at PAP1 you will have to iris down and then enter the world of diffraction. PAP2 with lots of light, PAP1 with low light.

 

[harddrive]

If your shooting with a lot of light, then shoot PAP2 so you can use a larger iris setting. Otherwise at PAP1 you will have to iris down and then enter the world of diffraction. PAP2 with lots of light, PAP1 with low light.

What the differing PAP settings do is apply more or less electronic noise reduction to the image - PAP1 applies more.

Good side is a cleaner picture - but it's at the expense of other artifacts and especially the dreaded "noise ghosts". They tend to slight, often barely visible , and may not be a problem most of the time (they manifest as slight noisy trails after images with a plain background) - but what makes them dangerous is that the effect can be amplified by certain types of post work. That is especially true for chroma key, and I've seen an example where the raw footage looked fine, but was virtually unusable for chromakey.

My advice would be to normally always use PAP2 - unless you're in a low light situation. Don't look upon them simply as an alternative to ND filters for controlling aperture.