[Luis Luna]

Hi there,
I have bought recently Panasonic HMC150 for weddings and events shooting. I have a Canon DSLR Rebel T2I and needed to find out about ISO. I use Minolta Light Meter. I found no definitive answer online.
So, I asked a Cinematography Teacher at the Local Film School today and he suggested to figure out using a 18 % Gray Card and Minolta Light Meter.

NOTE: Gain is used to measure sensitivity from starting ISO point. So, you need to find out what is NATIVE ISO/ASA for 0 db on your particular camera. I did not find Panasonic explaining it.. The manual simply states you can assign db for each levels.

Based on my test HMC 150 Native ISO at 0db is 200 ISO

0 db Gain = 200 ISO Native (25 ASA)
6 db Gain = 400 ISO Native (27 ASA)
12 db Gain = 800 ISO Native(30 ASA) ( I found there is so much noise in low light shooting with 12 db Gain.

Here is the methodology I used. You need a 18% Grey Card and a Light Meter (I used Minolta)

1. I well-light 18 % Grey Card
2. On Panasonic: A) I set gain to 0 dB (since I need to find out the Native ISO at 0 db gain)
B) I set IRIS to Automatic
C) I set Shutter Speed 1/60 (the reason is my Minolta Light Meter does not have 1/48 or 1/50 shutter speed)
3) I pointed Panasonic HMC150 to it and it read out me in this case IRIS (Aperture) at F 2.0

4) Now I used my Minolta Reader and set my TIME (Shutter Speed) to 1/60 and kept changing ASA until I saw F-stop (Aperture/Iris) reached to F 2.0. I then looked at the corresponding ASA number (my minolta is old Light meter and uses ASA (American Standard Association as opposed to ISO (international standard association). I got 25 ASA. On Minolta itself I have a corresponding tables for ISO to ASA conversation. The table showed it was 200 ISO.

So, you can reproduce this test using Light Meter and 18 % Grey Card.

So good luck… I suggest to shoot either 0 Db (200 ISO native) or 6 db (400 ISO)… If you are shooting at 0 db Gain – makes sure you set your IRIS (Aperture) to OPEN or 1.7 F stop and add some lights if needed..

I was told by a film industry expert that typically on the film set they use: ISO – 400, F2.2 or F2.8 and shutter speed at 1/60s. Of course the amount of light will effect the exposure.

Good luck…… I need now to figure out how to set a custom ‘flat’ profile on Panasonic HMC150 as I do on my Canon T2I – 0 contrast, 0 sharpness and -2 saturation..