Shooting a stage in dim lighting

[George Socka]

DV = DVcam 100 %

[George Socka]

2 points:

put an external monitor on the camera rather than the canon EVF.

set to manual focus, but don’t even think of playing with the focus ring. Use the push-focus button frequently – but unless you have a huge depth of stage, and a wide open lens, you shouldn’t have to focus a lot. If its an xl2, then you will find noise is not that bad, some say better than anything sony makes under 10K

[P. j. Severtson]

Hi Ryan,

Those are excellent questions:

1st, why is it important to warm the camera up?

Back focus is only an issue with interchangable lenses where there is a back focus adjustment. Cameras with fixed lenses (Sony VX-2000 and PD-150) have no back focus adjustment.

The reason to let the camera warm up is so that it comes up to operating temperature and the distance between the rear lens element and the imagers reaches its normal distance and isn’t going to change. Heat expands and cold contracts. This may not be an issue with your camera with 1/3 inch imagers and greater deplth of field, but can be with larger professional cameras with 2/3 inch imagers and shallower depth of field.

2nd, What do you mean by a lens that “breath?”

Here is a nice definition from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing_(lens)

Hope this helps and good luck,

P. J.

[P. j. Severtson]

DV and DVCAM are definately not equal to each other in all aspects though they share the same standard.

Although they both record to the Rec 601 standard and have a 5:1 compression with a 4:1:1 sampling rate, DVCAM has a switchable true drop frame and non-drop frame time code where DV does not. The format is also a bit more robust and there is more professional gear to take advantage of the differences. See Sony’s DVCAM web site:

https://www.sony.ca/dvcam/support.htm

If one cares to compare the related formats further, here is a nice link to compare the differences between DV, DVCAM and DVCPRO:

https://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-tech.html#DVformats

Hope this helps.

P. J.

[George Socka]

None of these will change the low light quality or lack of it of the camera. My V1U is equally bad in low light whether I put in a DVCAM tape or miniDV. Just Sony marketing Koolaid. Sip with care.

[George Socka]

2 points to keep the original poster from running our and renting a Viper because his gear might be deemed inferior:

The XL1 that the original poster has does indeed provide a backfocus adjustment, but only with Canon tech magic.

When wide open with the stock lens, he will get as shallow a depth of field as anything else at f 1:1.6. What would make a so-called professional camera with 1/2 inch chips camera a shorter depth?

[P. j. Severtson]

When wide open with the stock lens, he will get as shallow a depth of field as anything else at f 1:1.6. What would make a so-called professional camera with 1/2 inch chips camera a shorter depth? (George)

Thanks for asking. The same question has been asked by may others.

I could be wrong, but personally, when using a video camera at an event with a 2/3″ imager, I have found that depth of field is less and focus is more difficult to maintain than with a 1/2″ imager, all other factors being equal (target size, distance from camera to target, f-stop and lighting conditions). I have made the same observation when working with a

[George Socka]

The referenced article talks at length about the not surprising difference in Dof between a 35mm film camera and a 1/3 inch SD television CCD. I suggest that the original poster not worry about the minuscule difference in Doff of his XL1 and, lets say, a 2/3 inch Varicam at 10 times the price.

If you use the calculations referred to in https://www.dof.pcraft.com/dof.cgi
and change c from say .033 to .008 (4 times larger imager area, same number of scan lines) you get even shallower depth of field for the smaller imager. I suggest this because in SD you get only 480 or so scan lines. On the larger chip, each line is simply fatter – thus a larger circle of confusion. The strange pixel shifting function of the XL1 may poke a hole in this argument however.

His XL1 will work fine.

[Kerry Brown]

[P. J. in Hollywood] “adjust the back focus using a back focus chart”
Fixed lens cameras do not have a back focus adj available to the user.

[P. J. in Hollywood] “Even DVCam is a better format than miniDV”
DV and DVCam are the same format except that DVCam has a faster tape speed and different track pitch. “MiniDV” is a tape cassette size.
[P. J. in Hollywood] “Digital Beta Cam or Beta SP”
Beta SP is analog thus has no data rate. The DV format is very, very close to the resolution
of Beta SP.

KB

[George Socka]

The XL1 that started all this is not a fixed lens camera, but it does not have a user accessible back focus adjustment.