Wysiwyg...... Not!

I

indigo

Well-known member
I'm currently travelling around India with my HVX and Mac Laptop.

I've captured some GREAT footage (watch this space) BUT I'm increasingly seeing cases where what I'm seeing through the viewfinder is not what ends up being recorded. I'd like to give some examples but I'm sat in a tiny 5 terminal Cybercafe under some stairs in Mumbai on what appears to be a very slow dial-up connection.

Anyway..... the problem I'm encountering is that the picture through the viewfinder is light with a good range of detail BUT when its off loaded and viewed on my Macbook (with FCP) it becomes very dark losing lots of detail.

I've got one scene of a sunset (sun out of shot) behind a beach food stall and through the viewfinder I can see the colour of the sand and bushes in the background yet when output theses show as completely black. Annoyingly I've got 2 cards worth of footage from Crawford Meat Market (adnittedly it was quite gloomy) thats almost unusably dark :(

Any advise would be greatly appreciated! :)

Indy.... in India!
 
First of all, make sure your quicktime player is set up to play high-quality footage.

Second, are you checking exposure with your zebras? If you haven't calibrated your LCD or you haven't bothered to check & set zebras, then it's possible you may be recording your footage too dark. If so, that's operator error and you need to correct that as soon as possible.

Third, it's possible that your mac laptop is just playing the footage too dark. Have you checked your clips in the waveform monitor to see if they have an adequate distribution across the brightness spectrum?
 
*This solution only works for the NTSC model as I don't think the PAL model has split field bars*

Having a calibrated CRT and waveform monitor is still the best way to judge your exposure but in those situations where that isn't available, I have gotten in the habit of switching over to Bars and tilting the flip out lcd slightly to adjust my perception of the blacks much the same way I would calibrate backs on a CRT. As I tilt the LCD from a fixed point of view, the blacks will increase or decrease slightly. Look for the left most chip to just barely turn the same shade of black as the middle chip. This will ensure that you are seeing 0 ire and 7.5 ire equaly and will help you to consistantly judge your blacks from a known refference. You will still need to adjust your eye based on experience, but at least this way you know you are coming from a constant starting point. I wouldn't trust the Macbook's screen much more than the HVX's LCD.

Hope that helps,
filmstox
 
Is your Macbook screen a "glossy" version? If so, that may be a problem as they seem to emphasize the blacks.
 
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