• Panasonic Cameras

  Black balance glitch in “H” model.

  Posted by Marion Laney on November 16, 2005 at 7:34 pm

  Greeting all,
  Just had a strange situation while shooting today with the “H” model.

  We have been shooting for the past 4 weeks with great results but today when I inadvertly hit the black balance on the ECU with the lens uncapped the camera went into a loop cycling through the chip colors.

  The only way to stop the cycle was to power down. The resulting image was at -10 IRE on a -10 to 100 scale even with M. Ped and Gamma cranked all the way up. (not very good for broadcast). After several trouble shooting avenues failed to render a proper black level we re-read the factory setup, this restored the proper black level, at this point I could re-read the scene setup card and we were back to our shooting setups. Also, a black balance could now be set without the loop recurring.

  Reading the setup card or powering down for several minutes had no effect on correcting the bad black levels.

  Just FYI.
  M

  Marion Laney
  Director-DP-sometimes Editor
  ideaWercs, inc.
  Atlanta, Ga. USA
  Producing in HD&35mm&SD
  Food Network series “Good Eats” and others.

  Steve Mahrer replied 20 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Steve Mahrer

  November 17, 2005 at 1:14 pm

  Hi Marion;

  What lens was on the camera when this problem occured, a Cinestyle lens or an “ENG” style? Some folks using primes or cine style lenses (neither have servos for zoom / iris) occasionally forget to close the iris on a prime, thus when they atttempt to black balance the poor camera is trying to cancel the light it’s seeing from the lens, this can lead to negative pedestal levels. When using “ENG” lenses, the black balance feature closes the iris automaticaly.

  Just a thought…..

  Steve (Panasonic Broadcast)

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