Shooting in light day, how to trust zebra?

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XMaduX

New member
I just did some shootings with my dvx 100B in a beach, in cloudy days, and it has very light despite the clouds, the camera asked for ND filter1/64, and I tried to follow the zebras, to avoid a superexpose, but the final result was that it looks clouder than it was. is there any trick for those situations? should I trust only in the viewfinder and forgot about the zebra, controling all by the iris? btw I used auto iris.

thank you!
 
first up...turn off auto iris. then set ur zebras to about 90% or so....and open up the iris till u see the zebras just beginning to show, then close down the iris a bit. It depends also on what you are exposing the picture for, because more times than not you will have to compromise with an overexposed image somewhere in the frame in order to get whatever object you are exposing for. thats just the nature of video camera...limited dynamic range.

things that will help to control overexposure when shooting in the sun:

1. u can get a polorizing filter (especially for the beach) this will keep the sky blue and reduce reflection of the water.

2. graduated ND filter. this will darken the upper portion of ur picture (sky) and leave the lower part of ur picture at normal exposure. (basically it brings the whole picture within an acceptable dynamic range)
 
XMaduX said:
I just did some shootings with my dvx 100B in a beach, in cloudy days, and it has very light despite the clouds, the camera asked for ND filter1/64, and I tried to follow the zebras, to avoid a superexpose, but the final result was that it looks clouder than it was. is there any trick for those situations? should I trust only in the viewfinder and forgot about the zebra, controling all by the iris? btw I used auto iris.

thank you!
Click to expand...

From the manual, the point at wich zebras are displayed, can range from 80% to 105% of the available signal level. At 80%, and adjusting the iris to 'not have zebras', the result will be that 'white' things are a bit darker than they should be.

An 80% value would be slightly 'brighter' than say a very fair skin (I mean like really fair... like maybe even goth like fair...) If you had adjustment for 70% you could use that to get 'fair' skin 'right' no matter what else was going on in the scene. To use 80%, you'd have to close down a 1/3 stop or so.

For other 'white things', perhaps a setting of 95% would be good. Then the 'white' will be approximately 'white' in the resulting image, and give you notice that something could punch over the 100%, and result in a blown out image.

As for 'trusting' the LCD... never... The LCD should be seen for it's use in composing the shot. Perhaps 'rough' lighting issues. But on the naked DVX100, zebras are about the only 'real' indication where your lighting is, relative to what the footage will capture.
 
Well, if you put the zebras at 105, and adjusted the iris so that the brightest objects just barely quit registering zebras, then you're going to have the whitest objects you can get while protecting yourself against blowouts.
 
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