I see zebra stripes now what?

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pcproff

Member
OK I am a total newbie to cameras this high end just got mine this week I upgraded from an HV20 (I know big jump) but I seem to get zebra stripes on blow outs and high lights. The camera recommends the neutral gradient filter but that seems to bring back the highlights and make the subject darker. Any tips as to how this can be fixed? To give you guys a scenario I was shooting the subject with sun to my back and to their face and there was a white wall in the distance being washed out. Thanks all hope to meet alot of you.

Cheers.
 
Set your camera to manual iris, and go with a smaller aperture. (ie. higher F-stop) until you get rid of your zebra's. All they do is point out where your footage is overexposed. Depending on the look you're going for, some zebras could be okay in small areas, but generally you don't want any over-exposure since it won't give you any information to play with in post (it'll just be a white blur with no image behind it)
 
Are your zebra stripes at 80% or 100%? Pressing the zebra button toggles between the two types and turns them off altogether.

If you have the zebras set to 80%, you will want an exposure that shows some stripes on the "uber" highlights. :) However, any highlights you want detail in should not zebra. You can use the zebra stripes to hone in on your correct exposure.

If you have any stripes in the frame with the 100% setting, your exposure is too high. However, you will have stripes in light sources (such as a lamp or the sun) and reflected highlights even at a proper exposure.

I suggest working with it until you get the "flavor" you like when you shoot. Working with exposure is part art as much as science. :)

Hope that helps... :)
 
Hey guys thanks for the response. To answer the question about the iris I have varizoom manual control on my tripod arm and I use it but it tends to darken my subjects when that happens. Time for a light setup?? haha..

SS my stripes are set at 80% and it happen when the sun was hitting a white house yesterday. The whole wall was blown out by the subject's face was crystal clear. Now when you say hone in on exposure your talking about changing shutter speeeds or is there another way besides iris and shutter?
 
iris and shutter is the way you will mainly affect exposure, but mostly iris, as shutter speed infuences how motion looks on the video (and sometimes is desirable to set at a certain setting for effect), if your camera has built in ND filters then you can also use that to help get rid of blown out images, if it doesn't you can add actual ND (Neutral Density) filters to the front of your camera.

And on the other side, if your images are under exposed, you keep on adding light till you like what you see.

- Derrick
 
Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but if you had a white house in the sun, and your zebras are at 80%, you would have been underexposed and should not have seen it as blown out??? Even 100% zebra setting should have worked unless you let them dominate the viewfinder.
Did you have the ND filter on? You "usually" should outdoors.

As a "general" guide to run & gun shoots, if you set Zebras at 80% and open iris until you first see zebras on skin tones, then back off, you will have acceptable exposure on skin. This is way generalizing, but it's helped me many times over the last 30 years.

As mentioned, practice in all sorts of situations. You'll pick it up soon.
 
Hey Ted, yes it seems like now I am paying attention more to the facial exposure. So I will use iris and ND filters thanks to Derrick for those recommendations.
 
sure man, and something else, it's all about managing contrast in your scenes. your camera has a specific dynamic range it can capture, so keep that in mind when filming.

the closer the light intensity matches (difference between light and dark) on different elements of your image, eg. the background compared to the foreground subject, the better you can expose for a good overall image. keep that in mind when framing your shots.

- Derrick
 
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