Alright I am a noob to the dvx100b. I know how to film in all the modes and what not it's just all the settings that confuse me. Like is there some settings you shouldn't change. For example should you leave all settings to 0 or should you change some? I usually always film in 24pa and was also wondering if it would be okay to film at a shutter of 1/24? I realize there may be some motion blur but the camera won't be moving at all just the subject. So I guess I'm wondering what settings I should have for just point and shoot. LIke all the different detail settings, coring, cinelike, bpress, etc...I just want some brief info on what these settings do and what the sort of standard settings which should really just be left alone are. Any help is awesome.
The dvx noob
- Thread starter kager
- Start date
J.R. Hudson
Spirit Animal
MasterP
Well-known member
Change the settings! Change them all!! (read: experiment and see how your footage looks)
Seriously, if you just want point and shoot - use the auto button and standard settings. In order to get the most out of the camera though, you really need to invest in the DVX book - There's most of the info on the forums here but digging it up will take aaaages - Trust me - I'm a natural born cheap-ass and still bought the book
Have still not regretted it
Seriously, if you just want point and shoot - use the auto button and standard settings. In order to get the most out of the camera though, you really need to invest in the DVX book - There's most of the info on the forums here but digging it up will take aaaages - Trust me - I'm a natural born cheap-ass and still bought the book
Have still not regretted it
yeah I didn't really mean point and shoot, I meant like are there any settings that should just be left alone so that you could just leave the camera alone. But just as I thought the settings are what makes the camera and should be changed for the best results. So I was wondering where might I be able to purchase a book on the dvx? I live in British Columbia,Vancouver and was wondering if a camera store like Leo's or something might have this? Also how much does it go for? Thanks again for the help.
MasterP
Well-known member
dg1
Active member
i'll try to give a brief low down on some of these things cause i'm at work and shouldn't be on here .... here we go.
DETAIL LEVEL: is your sharpness control. some people dial it down to the negative side to give a softening effect. (thought to be more "filmic") but try not to go too far either way cause if you dial down detail too much it may look too soft and possibly out of focus, and too far the other way makes it look way too "videoy" unless that's your objective.
V DETAIL: is another sharpness control, although it's not nearly as noticable as your normal detail setting (listed above) it helps sharpen the image by giving a bit of contrast. it primarily deals with sharpness vertically in the image. it will be most noticable with a higher DETAIL setting.
DETAIL CORING: with a high DETAIL setting you may experience "noise" in the picture. DETAIL CORING helps smooth it out so it's not so harsh. if you want to crank your DETAIL setting for whatever reason, be sure to also crank up your DETAIL CORING to help gloss over some of the edge sharpening.
CHROMA LEVEL: this is the amount of color present in your picture. the higher the CHROMA LEVEL the more saturated the colors in your picture will be vice versa for the opposite direction. though barry says in the book that you still can't get complete black and white with it turned all the way down. i've never tried it that way as i always go black and white in post, but it's a very powerful tool.
CHROMA PHASE: acts like your tint funtion on your tv. it pushes your picture closer towards greenish on the negative ends and purplish on the positive side. it has a rather small effect on picture to either end.
COLOR TEMP: i use it mostly to give a warm or cold "feel" to the picture. it pushes the picture from red at the negative end and blue on the positive end. you can't use it unless you're in a manual white balance mode. the preset function will not let you use COLOR TEMP.
MASTER PEDESTAL: is your master contrast level. you can increase contrast by going to the negative end ie: use it to "crush" your blacks (you will lose picture data). you can also help your dark scenes by increasing the contrast in the positive end to give you more picture information in the dark/shadow areas (dark/shadow areas will look milky).
AUTO IRIS: your camera can automatically set what it thinks is the proper exposure. this function lets you tell the camera's "auto exposure" to over expose sooner or later.
GAMMA: just like in your nle or however you color correct, gamma affects the overall brightness of your picture. since you have the "b" model you have the most choices to choose from they are as follows:
NORMAL: as it sounds. you'll have a normal brightness response. as expected from a video camera.
LOW: is like a audio compresser. it lets you boost(bring up exposure) the lows(dark picture area) while keeping your highs(bright picture area) from clipping.
HIGH: is similar to LOW, but instead of compressing the bright area of the picture it leaves them alone. you can then have more freedom with your bright areas. ie. you can under-expose and still have picture information in the dark areas.
CINE-GAMMA: this will give you more latitude in the picture. latitude meaning how much you can over or under expose and still have a usable image. this is a very good option although there is no compression to keep you from over-exposing your brights. you'll have to use your zebra markers or a proper handheld light meter.
CINELIKE-D: this option gives you an increase in it's dynamic range which is essentially the information you have before it's completely black or completely white. specifically it gives it a bit more room in the bright end, however, it'll give the picture some noise artifact.
CINELIKE-V: this one gives the picture more contrast overall. it pulls the dark areas down more and the bright areas up more. it may hurt the actual latitude, but it does give you very good dynamic range.
B.PRESS: mostly used to "crush" dark areas. barry's book informed me that it actually doesn't push the dark areas down as much as the midtones of the picture.
KNEE: this is your compressor. it keeps your bright areas from going into over-exposure. there are three different levels of "compression" or KNEE:
LOW: at 80% it begins to compress.
MID: at 90% it begins to compress.
HIGH: at 100% it begins to compress.
there is also an AUTO function and the let's the camera decide what level of KNEE to use.
SKIN TONE DETAIL: it's like your cameras own photoshop! j/k when it's set to on it helps smooth out blemishes on people's skin, or anything it thinks is a skin tone. not very noticable with a low DETAIL LEVEL.
MATRIX: let's you change how your camera percieves colors. there are four matrix settings:
NORM: pretty much your normal color response.
FLUO: saturates all colors but green. often used when shooting under fluorescent lights.
CINE-LIKE: all of the colors are highly saturated. more "film-like"
ENRICHED: boosts colors towards the red.
V DETAIL FREQ: only matters when you shoot 24p, 30p, 24pA because tv sets which are not lcd or plasma ie. CRT cannot handle the resolution. if you've ever watched a show on tv and it looks like it's flickering, this is what causes that. V DETAIL FREQ: let's you fix the flickering, at the cost of resolution. you have three different modes to choose from:
THIN: which is the most resolution you can get from your camera, but may cause footage shown on CRT televisions to flicker.
MID: is the balance between THICK and THIN. it gives you more resolution, but it still can cause flickering.
THICK: obviously is your safest choice in the battle against flicker, but it will cost you the most resolution.
i hope this helps some... this is how i try to remember these settings. if i'm wrong with any of this, someone please correct me. it really helps to buy barry's book/dvd it explains all of this in suberb detail.
click here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=52115
derek
.... here we go.DETAIL LEVEL: is your sharpness control. some people dial it down to the negative side to give a softening effect. (thought to be more "filmic") but try not to go too far either way cause if you dial down detail too much it may look too soft and possibly out of focus, and too far the other way makes it look way too "videoy" unless that's your objective.
V DETAIL: is another sharpness control, although it's not nearly as noticable as your normal detail setting (listed above) it helps sharpen the image by giving a bit of contrast. it primarily deals with sharpness vertically in the image. it will be most noticable with a higher DETAIL setting.
DETAIL CORING: with a high DETAIL setting you may experience "noise" in the picture. DETAIL CORING helps smooth it out so it's not so harsh. if you want to crank your DETAIL setting for whatever reason, be sure to also crank up your DETAIL CORING to help gloss over some of the edge sharpening.
CHROMA LEVEL: this is the amount of color present in your picture. the higher the CHROMA LEVEL the more saturated the colors in your picture will be vice versa for the opposite direction. though barry says in the book that you still can't get complete black and white with it turned all the way down. i've never tried it that way as i always go black and white in post, but it's a very powerful tool.
CHROMA PHASE: acts like your tint funtion on your tv. it pushes your picture closer towards greenish on the negative ends and purplish on the positive side. it has a rather small effect on picture to either end.
COLOR TEMP: i use it mostly to give a warm or cold "feel" to the picture. it pushes the picture from red at the negative end and blue on the positive end. you can't use it unless you're in a manual white balance mode. the preset function will not let you use COLOR TEMP.
MASTER PEDESTAL: is your master contrast level. you can increase contrast by going to the negative end ie: use it to "crush" your blacks (you will lose picture data). you can also help your dark scenes by increasing the contrast in the positive end to give you more picture information in the dark/shadow areas (dark/shadow areas will look milky).
AUTO IRIS: your camera can automatically set what it thinks is the proper exposure. this function lets you tell the camera's "auto exposure" to over expose sooner or later.
GAMMA: just like in your nle or however you color correct, gamma affects the overall brightness of your picture. since you have the "b" model you have the most choices to choose from they are as follows:
NORMAL: as it sounds. you'll have a normal brightness response. as expected from a video camera.
LOW: is like a audio compresser. it lets you boost(bring up exposure) the lows(dark picture area) while keeping your highs(bright picture area) from clipping.
HIGH: is similar to LOW, but instead of compressing the bright area of the picture it leaves them alone. you can then have more freedom with your bright areas. ie. you can under-expose and still have picture information in the dark areas.
CINE-GAMMA: this will give you more latitude in the picture. latitude meaning how much you can over or under expose and still have a usable image. this is a very good option although there is no compression to keep you from over-exposing your brights. you'll have to use your zebra markers or a proper handheld light meter.
CINELIKE-D: this option gives you an increase in it's dynamic range which is essentially the information you have before it's completely black or completely white. specifically it gives it a bit more room in the bright end, however, it'll give the picture some noise artifact.
CINELIKE-V: this one gives the picture more contrast overall. it pulls the dark areas down more and the bright areas up more. it may hurt the actual latitude, but it does give you very good dynamic range.
B.PRESS: mostly used to "crush" dark areas. barry's book informed me that it actually doesn't push the dark areas down as much as the midtones of the picture.
KNEE: this is your compressor. it keeps your bright areas from going into over-exposure. there are three different levels of "compression" or KNEE:
LOW: at 80% it begins to compress.
MID: at 90% it begins to compress.
HIGH: at 100% it begins to compress.
there is also an AUTO function and the let's the camera decide what level of KNEE to use.
SKIN TONE DETAIL: it's like your cameras own photoshop! j/k when it's set to on it helps smooth out blemishes on people's skin, or anything it thinks is a skin tone. not very noticable with a low DETAIL LEVEL.
MATRIX: let's you change how your camera percieves colors. there are four matrix settings:
NORM: pretty much your normal color response.
FLUO: saturates all colors but green. often used when shooting under fluorescent lights.
CINE-LIKE: all of the colors are highly saturated. more "film-like"
ENRICHED: boosts colors towards the red.
V DETAIL FREQ: only matters when you shoot 24p, 30p, 24pA because tv sets which are not lcd or plasma ie. CRT cannot handle the resolution. if you've ever watched a show on tv and it looks like it's flickering, this is what causes that. V DETAIL FREQ: let's you fix the flickering, at the cost of resolution. you have three different modes to choose from:
THIN: which is the most resolution you can get from your camera, but may cause footage shown on CRT televisions to flicker.
MID: is the balance between THICK and THIN. it gives you more resolution, but it still can cause flickering.
THICK: obviously is your safest choice in the battle against flicker, but it will cost you the most resolution.
i hope this helps some... this is how i try to remember these settings. if i'm wrong with any of this, someone please correct me. it really helps to buy barry's book/dvd it explains all of this in suberb detail.
click here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=52115
derek
Hey thanks, this has helped me out quite a bit. My only trouble is I find I'm working blind when setting these settings because well I don't have a monitor just the little lcd screen. So yeah I know everyone's settings are different for specific shots; however, are there some settings while shooting 24padvance that could be left alone? Like, for example, is there ranges that should be chosen for each setting? Or is it all up to you? For me, some of the settings don't seem to make a difference when I change them so I tend to just leave them alone. So, I was just wondering if you could post your usual settings if there is such a thing. Like just the most obvious settings you should have for say filming at 24padvance and outside. Anyways, thanks for any help again.
dg1
Active member
it truly depends on the "look" you are trying to achieve. all of these settings are for the most part independent. you are free to come up with whatever look you want. the best thing to do is have a basic understanding of what these settings do, and then set yourself up a mock scene with lights and a model and try different settings. bring them into your nle and see which suits your fancy. here is a few topics on in camera looks and settings you may find useful.
http://dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=101419
http://dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=6721
http://dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=101419
http://dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=6721