Questions about HVR-A1U, ADAPTERS, EVERYTHING! HELP!

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willydece

New member
Aight so im very beginner at all this filming stuff, im quite young but i really want filming to be a part of my career. So i have a hvr-a1u but cant seem to get the full HD quality i want out of it. First of all I think its because I have to start with my camera before i mess with color and tones on fcs 2. Everytime i use it i always adjust exposure, white balance, ae + wb shift, etc. Though It never really seems to come out right. Does anyone have any suggestions at all on what i can do, i know its hard to not be there helping me adjust stuff on my camera and trying to tell me online but anything will help at this point. Also i hear alot about adapters, like a 30 mm adapter, what do those exactly do? Here is a self promo of me skiing that i made, its all filmed with the a1u, and if you watch it, it looks like it could have been filmed with a **** handycam
 
First of all a 35mm adapter is for depth-of-field which is nothing like color or tomes.

Many of your problems could be coming with the color settings in the camera, gamma, etc. The next is your post production. All major movies do some kind of "recoloring" (color grading/color correction) in post. So you can try that as well.

Make sure the settings of the camera are good.
Import some footage (make sure the footage is not too bright and not too dark)
Play around with your "curves" setting in FCP or Premiere or Avid or Vegas - whatever you're using.

Hope that helps
 
willydece said:
Aight so im very beginner at all this filming stuff, im quite young but i really want filming to be a part of my career. So i have a hvr-a1u but cant seem to get the full HD quality i want out of it. First of all I think its because I have to start with my camera before i mess with color and tones on fcs 2. Everytime i use it i always adjust exposure, white balance, ae + wb shift, etc. Though It never really seems to come out right. Does anyone have any suggestions at all on what i can do, i know its hard to not be there helping me adjust stuff on my camera and trying to tell me online but anything will help at this point. Also i hear alot about adapters, like a 30 mm adapter, what do those exactly do? Here is a self promo of me skiing that i made, its all filmed with the a1u, and if you watch it, it looks like it could have been filmed with a shi* handycam
Click to expand...

You didn't seem to include the URL to your clip...

A couple of questions. Which of the 3 HD formats can your camera use, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p. The wiki article on HDV indicates that 720p uses 'square pixels', whereas 1080i/p uses a 'rectangular' ratio of 1.33. Neither of these should introduce 'shi*' look, that's a technical term, to the extent that you seem to indicate.

The other issue is focusing. Auto focus may be 'wonderful', but it has its limitations, based on 'constrast of the image', 'motion', and 'what is focsed on'. For example, a really 'flat' image may induce the autofocus feature to sort of converge and diverge continuously... If the object is in motion, the autofocus may not be fast enough to keep up. Low light not enough contrast again, or something very contrasty in the 'background', which the autofocus feature 'selects' for sharp focus.

Also, you mention 'skiing'. I'm going to presume snow skiiing... The brightness of the snow could be blowing out things, and one would need 'neutral density' ND filters to bring the exposure down to what the camera is designed to capture. Some cameras have a couple of ND settings to deal with this, but snow, bright sun... the camera may need more, so one may need to put additional ND filters on the camera lense.

As for 'adaptors'... well, my advice is to learn to use the camera pretty much 'as is', then see if you need the additional 'feature' of the adapters.

For the most part the 'adapter' allow for the use of 35mm lenses to get a 'shallower' depth of field. An example would be focus on a person's eyelashes, razor sharp, and everthing else in the background is blurry.

Again my advice, take your camera and learn to use it as it is.
 
all the same. You might not like to use it. Its cool for snow but if you have allot of ND its allot better. Especially if you get your hands on a matte box and got a graduated ND and had the ND on the bottom. Getting a lil pricey there.
 
What are they doing with the auofocus issue on this camera? anything? Its terrible if we're indoors trying to record folks q/a in meetings etc.
 
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