Manual Control breakdown/situation sheet

B

budha

Active member
I am still getting used to using manual controls on my camera, and I was wondering if there was some sort of cheat sheet on the internet that could help me out depending on where I'm shooting/what kind of effect I am looking for.

For example, it would say: Indoors Low Light set your iris to, set your shutter to, etc

If you want a small DOF you set your shutter to this, and your iris to this etc

If you need a larger DOF, you zoom out, you set your shutter to this etc

Does something like this exist?

Thank you
 
Not to be rude, but get any book on photography or cinematography and you'll learn all you need.

A cheat sheet is ridiculous. It's simple and it's It's all relative anyway.

If you want a shallow DoF then you open your iris all the way, then change the shutter accordingly to get the proper exposure. But the faster the shutter speed the more strobey your footage will look. Most films shot at 1/48th at 24FPS.(180 Degree). So if you open your iris, and shoot at 1/48th, obviously your exposure probably won't be right. If it's over-exposed then you'll need to use ND filters and lower your ISO / Gain to compensate. If you need to take it down more, then you'll either need to stop down your iris, or increase your shutter speed, or both. That's basically it.

If you're under-exposed, with your iris open, and shutter at 1/48, then you need more light, don't bother shooting. If it's an emergancy then you can increase the gain / ISO or shoot at 1/24 if you're so inclined.

Keep in minde your DoF will only get as shallow as the size of your sensor or film will let you. I.e, at F1.8 35mm has twice as shallow DoF as 16mm because the rear focusing plate is twice as large. So if you're using an itty bitty video camera shallow DoF is not really possible.

Hope that helps.

- G
 
Dewy,

No thanks a lot, you were not being rude. I was just wondering if there was an online source that had a more in depth article about what you were describing. Like I understand, I know the basics, but I was looking for an article basically like "photography for dummies" of some sort that was very informative/easy to understand.
 
budha said:
Dewy,

No thanks a lot, you were not being rude. I was just wondering if there was an online source that had a more in depth article about what you were describing. Like I understand, I know the basics, but I was looking for an article basically like "photography for dummies" of some sort that was very informative/easy to understand.
Click to expand...


There were a number of tables for the film based cinematographer to use to calculate DOF, given a focal length, distance of subject to lens, and F-stop... but in the modern digital video camera, while some support for manual f-stop is there... finding out say a distance chart to take the numbers like 0-99, that the DVX uses as 'focus' numbers, to actual feet and inches, and further find the real focal length of the lens to determine a priori what the DOF may be... is fraught with lack of info...

Then there's lighting and trying to find the 'effective' ISO number to use a meter... like everyone who uses the DVX has a broadcast scope to read off IRE values...

Some of these pieces of information are available by search DVXUSER with various key words. But basically you do have to sleuth out a lot of the info by various google searches.
 
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