shoot a high school play with xl1s with standard lens 16x on a tripod located a a distance had to use zoom almost at max had varizoom 4" lcd monitor, which still makes it hard to make a judjement call as far as brightness ect, and zebra set at 90, lighting was not optimal as it was kind of dim no spot lights were used,
gain was in auto, i think at +8 due to the poor lightning, noticed the whites had zebras on them , viewed video after the fact and definetly the whites are really blown out also the actors faces , but if i had adjusted so no zebras were apparent then video would have been really too dark, didnt want to take a chance at that, there was some apparent signal noise in the blacks to start with.(shutter at 1/60, lens oppening was 2.4)

anyone have any advice in such a situation?

better lighting to fill the shadows

George,

This probably wouldn't have helped much in this situation, but in general, you may want to change your zebra setting to 80. When I first got my camera, I had them set higher and and I was getting washed out faces.

On the TV shows I work on, we generally "shade" the cameras at between 75 and 80% on the talent's faces. Anything higher starts to bloom. Having a few zebras present @ 80 is a fair warning that you're at the limit. Faces are where you really need to be careful.

It's amazing how bad lighting really makes a difference.

Hope this helps.

Bill

Perhaps expose for the important highlights (faces) and then try pullout the shadow detail in post by adjusting gamma.

it is not adviced to use zebra stripes for light evaluation, the best way to light is to rate your camera at a certain ASA, then light your subject with a certain amount of footcandles to get an 18% grey. then choose your lighting ratio (5:1 for example) wich means that for example i have 200 footcandles as key light i would have to light the fill side with 40 footcandles to get this 5:1 ratio.