AC160 Making the most of your AC 130/160

kwkeirstead

kwkeirstead

Well-known member
Here is a link to a 1:27 clip done last night at a supper club.

http://youtu.be/tyGE5l76jO8

I was at Filmic, 12 db gain (low lighting gave me few options), at 1080/24p and F3, distance from stage about 25 feet.

The tripod was 7 feet up to minimize disturbance from a continuous flow of passers by, all of whom seemed determined to trip over the tripod legs.

I need to make a note to get a supply of razor wire to establish a 4x4 perimeter in these places.

Looks better to me than previous recordings I have done.

I find it pays to follow Barry Green's advice re use of a) white/black balance at the start b) waveform monitor on the LCD, c) watching the IRIS over/under exposure meter, d) Y-Get Marker, d) EVF mode w/ EVF on black and white w/red Focus Assist.

Comments on how to improve would be appreciated
 
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You don't need razor wire but you would be wise to get some yellow "caution" tape to keep people away from the tripod.
 
Noah... I like the portable riser kit idea - In the specs it says "14-gauge steel tubing" which is great.

I will definitely go for the yellow tape as my outside perimeter then, for an inner perimeter, all I would need to do is hot wire the guard rail of the riser kit to 110 volts then make sure I don't touch it myself.
 
Hi Walter

With low light like that the 1/3rd sensors are not really going to be much good ..You have to remember that although you would like (or even expect) sharp pristine video, it is a supper club with low lighting and viewers will also expect it to be a little dingy too so rather not beat yourself up about the quality...consider the low light shot as "mood setting" It's always tough trying to get a tripod into small spaces..maybe it would have been better to go to the back of the room, put the tripod as high as you can (I've even used a table) and shoot the 160 as a back camera and zoom in a bit to frame just the stage. With things like live performers, you really need one camera running audio and a wide shot and then a handheld camera up front so you can cut in individual performers as well as audience reaction (clapping and cheering) ...it just makes the production more interesting.

At weddings sometimes I would like to put a sign on the fixed camera saying " Do Not approach or Block this camera ... it has an integral TAZER system that will activate if anyone is too close" Wherever I shoot I always take a GoPro with me!!! stick it on a lighting stand and leave it running high up..it never gets blocked and can provide some awful footage too but more than often the result is delightful!!!

Chris
 
Have you considered the use of a small boom to get you the elevation you need? May be a bit more stable and easier to set up. That is what I have found in my work, I often have two cams on small booms (mine are called "Baby Boomers" avail on ebay for a reasonable investment).
 
ELn614 . . The WFM does block the LCD image, so I rely on the EFV.

As various members have complained, the EFV sceen is tiny but putting it in black/while mode with the red focus assist works pretty good for me. I would probably like to eventually get a 7 or 9 inch monitor but not much point doing that unless I can afford to get a high res monitor otherwise it probably would not help much with focusing.

I made a bad mistake the other day with recording a chorus of singers who appeared on a stage preceded by various acts where I had everything pretty much right. The singers all had black shirts and white pants and I did not notice until 1/8 of the way thru their song list that i was over underexposed.

I immediately changed things it but was never able with Sony Vegas to get the same level of brightness at the mp4. Its seems editing effects in Sony Vegas do not show up in the preview so you have to go from say +15 to +18 then wait, then if the result is not what you want, again at +21 etc. After many hours (would have been smarter to make a test .veg with 1 min before the change and 1 min after then play with the numbers).

I do like Sony Vegas despite the 600 page manual (which does not go into enough detail) for the simple reason it lets you run 6-8 renderings at the same time. I have an Asus G73J with 8MB and i7 processors which is a pretty good laptop but nothing close to specialized editing machines/processing boards.

Right now I am letting it run all day and night to generate and upload mp4's for about thirty-five 2 minute songs. When this is done, I will post here the URLs in case anyone wants to look/comment.
 
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