Weird marker issue

Davdo

Davdo

Active member
I just noticed something weird with the marker on my 100A. I turned the camera on with the lens cover still attached and lo and behold, 2% on the marker! What?! No matter what I do, the darn thing won't read lower than 2%. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

~~Dave
 
Maybe try re-setting your black balance?
(hold the white balance button for a few seconds)
 
Nope. Also tried resetting the camera. No help.

Totally frustrated, I decided to cycle through my scene files and noticed that certain ones didn't have this problem. Through trial and error, I discovered that if the Master Ped is -6 and below, no prob. However, from -5 and up, the least possible exposure reading from the parker goes up. This sort of makes sense, I guess. I mean, lowering the MP crushes the blacks and if at 0, the exposure read 0% (black), it'd have nowhere to go as I bring the blacks down. Right? Barry?

Thanks a lot.

~~Dave
 
Yep, you did the right thing. It's long been held that -5 or -6 MP gives you true blacks. It can depend on your other settings, though, so it's best to set all of your other scene file settings, including color settings, gamma, matrix, set the amount of gain you will be using, and the white balance. Then, you can put the lens cap on, close the iris, ND it up, etc., to get it black, and fine tune the MP to get true blacks. It's usually never very far from -5 or -6, though.
 
Phew. Like I said, I hardly use the marker, but I get paranoid about these things and like to make sure that the camera is fully up to specs. I sent my other cam, a PD170 back to Sony 3 times to fix a "problem" that turned out to be a byproduct of the Mic NR function. I'm a nut.

Thanks a lot.

~~Dave
 
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