What am I doing wrong?

D

DruBoogie

New member
I picked up the D90 after finding out about it on this board.
(this board is great and so is the D90)
I'm an amateur videographer. I bought the D90 to do lo-budget music videos, so I have a lot to learn.

I've been doing some lighting tests and im getting weird results.
I've read all about the limitations and how to overcome them and what kind of settings to use, (dealing with ISO, AE Lock and such...) but the general video quality is not coming looking like the nice ones Ive seen filmed with this camera. (im aware of the jello in the first part of the vid, I was just testing settings)

In this vid, I filmed a young lady outside in the bright bright sun. The second part of the vid I filmed a friend of mine inside, with softboxes on him.
The outside vid seems to come out much cleaner than the inside video with the softboxes.
I did minor CC with a lil sharpness put on both sections of the vid, but the second part does not seem as sharp, and that was the best focus I could get. I know there are other things to do that make the videos lok great, but the second part of my video with softboxes is nowhere near that. Im stumped!
My lens is a 50mm f/1.4d af nikkor. What am I doing wrong?

http://vimeo.com/3202949
 
the indoor stuff is quite a bit overexposed, otherwise it looks sharp enough? it's also much much lower in contrast which always reduces the perceived sharpness quite a bit. one technical thing to consider is that nikkor lenses (as well as most) are a bit soft wide open so if you're shooting at f/1.4 it's never going to be as sharp as for example f/4, which seems to be the sweet spot.

/matt
 
Car3o said:
the second video is considerably darker making your camera push the iso way up. that's why it's not looking so good.
Click to expand...
a softbox should be enough though, but since it's also overexposed i tend to agree. locking the camera to a brighter part of the frame will push the iso down to a normal range.

/matt
 
You know I think I forgot to lock the camera to a brighter spot for the second part first, and I made the mistake of shooting against a white wall with the lights pointing pretty much on the wall. That definitely messed up my ISO. It looked fine in LV. I had to pull down the white in the CC because FCP kept telling me they were too white.

Car3o the first part was shot in ridiculously bright sunlight, so I had to down the exposure. Also the first part was more close ups. I let the ISo do its thing just to see how it would act. For the second, I let the ISO do its thing again. I dont remember what I had the F stop at, Ill try for F/4 next time.

Do I have to hold the AE button for the whole shot to lock it, or just press it once? I have alot of practice to do with checking the ISO and locking it.

Ill also have to do more research to be able to tell when a shot is overexposed. I did some searching and found out that white spots in peoples faces are generally bad, as well as shooting against white backgrounds. I know how to trick the ISO in the camera, but im not sure what Im looking for when its right. Over-exposure messes up sharpness, Ill have to mess with the ISO again to see what that does.

Thank you Matt and Car30 btw.

Hey Matt, I did use your d90 enhancer plug in to take care of the stair stepping, which worked, but the quicktime compression put it back in i think. If I exported this with full quality I think the stair stepping wouldnt have been there.
 
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