What Shutter Speed

M

mandj

New member
I use my XH-A1 mainly for shooting Dancers, I have learned the hard way to record in manual. I have always shoot in HDV 60i with the knee point in the CP set to low. I use the shutter speed and f-stop to adjust for overexposures. I have on several times had the shutter speed set at 1/75th or higher
I have never noticed any problems with the footage but after reading a post on shutter speeds in this forum I am now woundering if I am doing thing wrong. I always try to get my f-stop set to at least 4.0 or higher to get a better depth of field as ther are some times several rows of dancers and then use my shutter speed to get the least amount of overexpousers.
I edit in Edius 4.5
Help if I am doing this process wrong

Jeff
 
Most people can't tell the difference in minor shutterspeed changes . I use my A1 to shoot dance concert regularly and I mainly use the iris to adjust exposure. DOF isn't a problem because the camera has a pretty deep DOF as it.
 
I sometimes run into a stage that will be very high temp lights where any iris setting is still to overexpoused, so I have used shutter speed to adjust what I am concerned about is if I am using say 75, 90 or even 120 for shutter speed is that going to have an inpact on my video. I have found that I use gain set to "0" in these conditions also I don't believe I have tried a -3 in the gain and white balance is always set to custom.
 
Here's what you do: Set the shutter to 1/60 and shoot 30f. Keep the shutter always the same. Now, adjust the iris and if the image is still too bright, use the built in ND filter on the camera. Also, if you want to increase the depth of field, move further away from the subject and zoom in. The Canon lens allows you to increase the depth of field quite a bit, since it is 20x. If that's still not enough, get an adaptor, such as Letus.
 
OTTOEMEZZO said:
Also, if you want to increase the depth of field, move further away from the subject and zoom in. The Canon lens allows you to increase the depth of field quite a bit, since it is 20x. If that's still not enough, get an adaptor, such as Letus.
Click to expand...

You mean decrease the depth of field :)

I say it backwards all the time, too!
 
jade8472 said:
I use my A1 to shoot dance concert regularly and I mainly use the iris to adjust exposure. DOF isn't a problem because the camera has a pretty deep DOF as it.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The sensor is so small that there isn't much background blur, especially when shooting wide. The narrower your field of view (the more zoomed in), the less depth of field you have. This is when adjusting your aperture would yield more change in your depth of field.
 
Set the gain to -3db so it'll go darker and give you a slightly cleaner image. I see why you're using the shutter now; go ahead and do it because the average person isn't going to notice and it gives you a finer degree of control than the ND filter. It's interesting that overexposure is a problem, with me the stage is always badly underexposed to the point where I'm going 6db with iris wide open for a barely usable image.
 
i also find the stage under exposed. Sometime i shoot 1/30 with gain at 6. I have my camera set @ -3, 6, 12. Go ahead use the shutter speed but don't go under 1/30 or you will get blur.
 
You really shouldnt be adjusting your shutter speed for exposure thats the job of the iris. Shutter speed should be used to compliment the look you are going for,

Having your iris as open as possible will keep the DOF more shallow as will using a lot of zoom, so use the ND until you can get a good mix which shouldnt be too hard at all.
 
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