[Don Greening]

Well, let’s start with the down side of using AV mode first. We’ll keep to something I know you’re familiar with. Let’s say you’re shooting a painting and want to keep the exposure constant while you pan and zoom. Let’s also assume you don’t have a lot of available light to work with. In AV mode you get the exposure the way you want it and start recording. As you zoom in the light hitting the CCD’s gets less and less and your GL2 compensates by decreasing the shutter speed and all of a sudden the smooth motion you were getting is now stuttering because the camera has gone from 60fps to 30fps in order to keep the exposure the same. This means that you have to start with actually more than enough light to give the shutter speed room to drop without going to less than 60fps amd ruining your smooth pan shot. You could dial in some picture gain beforehand but that always leads to a certain amount of picture “noise” in the darker areas of the frame, which I’m sure you’ll want to avoid. AV mode will probably increase the picture gain automatically as well if it’s not getting enough light. Something else you want to avoid like the plague. Always make sure you’ve got more available light to start with than you think you need.

TV mode allows you to keep a constant exposure while shooting at lower than 60 fps if you want to do a special effect such as making your footage stutter or look jerky. Emulating a person talking on a video phone with super low frame rates would be a good example. The footage would also look blurry or ‘ghostly-like’ in the areas of rapid movement. TV mode is also for keeping fast action sharp and in focus by selecting a much higher shutter speed. Sports and fast flowing white water shots come to mind. So to sum up, TV mode keeps the exposure constant while allowing you to capture fast action cleanly or to purposefully create a blurry or stuttering shot.

I don’t know offhand of any web pages or books I can point you to for this topic, although I’m sure there’s a wealth of info out there. Someone else will have to jump in here. All I can suggest is that you do a lot of practicing with your GL2 and determine what picture “look” and method is best for the type of shooting you’re doing. Record some tape and look at it on a monitor. Trust your judgment and your trained eye. Chances are, if it looks good to you then it most likely looks good to everyone else. Remember, you’re a heck of a lot smarter than your GL2.

– Don

[Don Greening]

AV mode (aperture priority) means that you can tell the camera to keep the iris at a preset opening of your choosing and the shutter speed will change automatically as needed to keep the light constant. AV stands for Aperture Value.

Conversely, you can put the camera into TV (shutter priority) mode which stands for Time Value. This will keep the shutter speed at a preset value and the camera will change the aperture to compensate for any changes in light. The faster the shutter speed the less time there is for light to hit the CCD’s, so it’s another way to control the light coming in (among other things).

– Don

[Don Greening]

I keep falling off my high heels whenever I try to do it backwards. But perhaps it’s because my mini skirt’s too tight. So I’m going to give up on it. My wife says I look really stupid anyway.

*Macintosh and Final Cut Pro* Once you go mac you never go back. My .02

– Don

[Don Greening]

You might want to check out the TFT monitor at VariZoom. We have one of them and it’s got a 5 and a half inch screen you can mount onto the camera’s shoe. The downside is that you’re tied to a wall outlet unless you go for the battery, but even then the battery’s only good for about 1 and a half to 2 hours. You can, however, buy more than one battery and stack them between the monitor and the shoe mount for double the run time. It gets expensive to do the battery thing, though. Just ask me. And no, apparently no one else makes a battery that will work with this monitor without ruining it with the wrong power. I checked.

https://www.varizoom.com/pages/tft.php

– Don

[Don Greening]

Nancy,

There are two kinds of DV tapes that use either wet or dry lubricant. The trouble starts when you start mixing these two tape types together in the same camera, so choose one or the other and stick with that brand. You can choose to buy any brand you want but if it was me, I’d buy the best tapes I could afford because the cheaper tapes have more glitches and dropouts than the better ones. I’ve always been told that all tapes from a particular supplier are manufactured the same way. However, during their quailty control process the ones with the least amount of problems are priced higher than the tapes with more glitches.

I use Panasonic “Master” series 83 min. DV tapes and have had great success with them but this is just a personal preference. I’ve also been told that the Sony MiniDV “Master” series are equally as good. Using a 60 minute tape is better than a longer one because the tape is slightly thicker and stronger with less chance of it stretching, etc. and causing problems that way. I use the 83 min. ones because I shoot in long segments. You may not have the same issue.

Always use your camera’s SP recording mode rather than the LP mode. There are issues with downloading to your computer in the LP mode and SP gives you a better quality picture anyway. The faster the tape runs the better the picture. That’s why a 60 min. Sony DVCAM tape only lasts 40 min. if you switch to DVCAM recording mode. They must be on to something 😉

Keep a DV cleaning cassette in your camera bag but only use it in extreme emergencies such as having tiling problems in the middle of an important shoot. Follow the instructions on the cleaning cassette to the letter. Cleaning cassettes are VERY abrasive and will wear out your expensive recording heads far sooner than normal.

When you put a new DV tape in your GL2 you should choose to fast forward the tape to the very end and then rewind before you start recording anything on it. This will accomplish two things:

1. The fast forward-rewind thing will pre-tention the tape against the recording drum and keep it tentioned properly for the length of the tape.

2. The fast forward-rewind process also helps to throw out any microscopic tape particles and dust that can sometimes lodge in the tiny grooves of the recording drum and cause problems.

MiniDV tapes are not all that robust and are more prone to dirt-causing problems than most other tape formats. Consider that the audio part of the tape is about as wide as a pencil line and you’ll get the idea.

Take your camera to an authorized repair facility for regular cleaning and maintenance. How often? Well it depends on how much you use it and how well you practice the methods I’ve just described. I send my cameras in once a year. Not to the Canon factory but to a local authorized dealer.

Remember, that cleaning cassette should only be used in dire emergencies.

– Don