Need Advice: Baseline Settings for Filming Wedding

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Denniscasey

Well-known member
I normally use HMC40 for daylight outdoor action. At last minute friend asked if I would video son's wedding (no charge favor). From many forum notes I know HMC40 is not at its best in low light like church wedding. I am going to have to go with whatever light there is and rely on camera settings to get best results. At least I will have a chance to check lighting out the night before wedding. Given no experience with indoor video all I could think of that would help HMC40 in low light would be to slow down shutter speed (maybe 1/30) but that would mess with motion so probably not a good idea.

Any suggestions would be appreciated--I have seen posts mentioning problems with white balance, focus, etc. I have to say I am not experienced enough yet to try too many manual settings and will probably leave camera in full auto to at least minimize "operator error." I will see if church can supply an audio feed otherwise will have to rely on HMC40 mic. I did recently buy Rode Stereo Videomic Pro, but don't yet trust myself enough to use that at this event (again issue of "operator error").
 
Yeah, getting good footage in a low light interior is a bit of a challenge with the HMC40. Whatever you do will involve trade-offs of some sort. It's best to experiment a little before the shoot. Definitely try to shoot a few tests at the location if you have the opportunity. Shoot a few clips at different settings and make note of what you did for each, then see which you like best. That said, here are some recommendations.

Using a 1/30 shutter isn't a terrible idea. Your alternative would be to add a lot of gain, and which looks worse is partly a matter of taste. Pick your poison. If I'm shooting indoors with no control over lighting, I like to shoot 24p with a 1/30 sec. shutter and B.Press gamma. Weddings don't usually have that much motion, at least during the ceremony. If you can use a tripod or at least a monopod to keep camera movement minimized, then 1/30 doesn't look bad at all. The slightly "dreamy" look might even be a bonus for something like a wedding.

If adding gain is necessary, I like to use B.Press as it helps to hide the shadow noise, and it adds some contrast. Note that B.Press lowers the black levels and makes the dark parts of the image even darker than they would be in the other gammas.

These settings look pretty good to me with very little noise up to about 9db of gain. Over 9db, the noise starts to become visible, but is not necessarily distracting. 12db usually looks ok, but over that is getting into trouble. Sometimes a little post work can make such footage usable, though.

Also bear in mind that, under these conditions, autofocus is not going to work as well as you may be used to, especially zoomed in.
 
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Thanks for input, Wesley. I recall your comments regarding wedding shots with HMC40 from earlier posts and good idea to do some test shots ahead of time. I will try to get into venues for wedding and reception. Dennis
 
I don't yet know how bad the light will be, but given challenging light conditions is one format "better" (relative term) than another--Wesley you mentioned shooting at 24p (1080 or 720?) but is that more for the film look than trying to squeeze in the most light? I normally shoot either 1080 60i or 720 60p outside with good light.
 
Thinking more about this, if I film at slower frame rate ( 24p like Wesley, or 30p vs 60p or 60i) it would seem like I give each frame more time to collect light?? Is that right?? Question now is whether resolution of 1080 or 720 makes any difference in terms of "light gathering?" Dennis
 
Denniscasey said:
Thinking more about this, if I film at slower frame rate ( 24p like Wesley, or 30p vs 60p or 60i) it would seem like I give each frame more time to collect light?? Is that right??
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Eh...sort of right. The shutter speed, not directly the frame rate, determines how much light is gathered. For example, a 1/30 shutter speed at 24fps will be the same brightness as a 1/30 shutter speed at 30fps. However, lower frame rates allow you to use longer shutter speeds without it looking odd. As a general rule-of-thumb, it's usually common practice to keep the shutter speed at 1/2 of the frame rate for natural looking motion, or at least as close as you can get.

Denniscasey said:
Question now is whether resolution of 1080 or 720 makes any difference in terms of "light gathering?" Dennis
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On the HMC40, I don't think that it makes a significant difference. On some cameras it apparently does. The HV20, for example, apparently scans the sensor differently if you are shooting 24p than it does in 60i. The 24p mode on that camera is a bit more light sensitive. The XF300 is purportedly the opposite, with the 720p and 1080i modes being about a stop more sensitive than the 1080p modes. I've not noticed any such differences with the HMC40, though.

Now, if your final deliverable is only going to be standard def anyway, like a DVD, then you have a little more leeway with the gain. Scaling down a noisy, high gain 1080p image to 480p hides the noise to a degree. Just experimenting once I noticed that a 1080p video recorded with the gain cranked up nearly all the way to 24db (can't remember now exactly the setting, but it was up there) looked just fine on a standard def crt tv.

Edit: One other advantage to 24p is that, if the room is DARK, you can bring the shutter speed down to 1/24 as a last resort. Motion looks quite blurry, but if the camera is on a tripod, and the scene is somewhat static, then it's an option that you might be able to get away with using.
 
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Wesley Byram said:
Eh...sort of right. The shutter speed, not directly the frame rate, determines how much light is gathered. For example, a 1/30 shutter speed at 24fps will be the same brightness as a 1/30 shutter speed at 30fps. However, lower frame rates allow you to use longer shutter speeds without it looking odd. As a general rule-of-thumb, it's usually common practice to keep the shutter speed at 1/2 of the frame rate for natural looking motion, or at least as close as you can get.



On the HMC40, I don't think that it makes a significant difference. On some cameras it apparently does. The HV20, for example, apparently scans the sensor differently if you are shooting 24p than it does in 60i. The 24p mode on that camera is a bit more light sensitive. The XF300 is purportedly the opposite, with the 720p and 1080i modes being about a stop more sensitive than the 1080p modes. I've not noticed any such differences with the HMC40, though.

Now, if your final deliverable is only going to be standard def anyway, like a DVD, then you have a little more leeway with the gain. Scaling down a noisy, high gain 1080p image to 480p hides the noise to a degree. Just experimenting once I noticed that a 1080p video recorded with the gain cranked up nearly all the way to 24db (can't remember now exactly the setting, but it was up there) looked just fine on a standard def crt tv.

Edit: One other advantage to 24p is that, if the room is DARK, you can bring the shutter speed down to 1/24 as a last resort. Motion looks quite blurry, but if the camera is on a tripod, and the scene is somewhat static, then it's an option that you might be able to get away with using.
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Thank you yet again Wesley for helpful input and patience to help "somewhat beyond beginner" like me. Good thought about deliverable--the wedding family is primarily DVD so that will be main deliverable, however I will probably burn a Blu-ray or two just in case.

Only for my clarification, regarding your comment about shutter speed rule of thumb being set to 1/2 the frame rate--would that suggest at your 24 fps you could set shutter speed to 1/12 (if camera could select that speed)? Thank you again for advice/comments, Dennis
 
Denniscasey said:
Only for my clarification, regarding your comment about shutter speed rule of thumb being set to 1/2 the frame rate--would that suggest at your 24 fps you could set shutter speed to 1/12 (if camera could select that speed)? Thank you again for advice/comments, Dennis
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Apologies. I didn't word that very well. To get the 180 degree shutter at a given frame rate, you take the FPS and double that to get the denominator of the shutter speed. So for 24fps, a 180 degree shutter would be 1/48 second.
 
Wesley Byram said:
Apologies. I didn't word that very well. To get the 180 degree shutter at a given frame rate, you take the FPS and double that to get the denominator of the shutter speed. So for 24fps, a 180 degree shutter would be 1/48 second.
Click to expand...

Thank you for clarification Wesley---very helpful. Dennis
 
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