Hey everyone!

I'm new to video-ography, though I do have some experience. My question is fairly simple - what's the proper way to determine what exposure you shoot be shooting on with the XL1S to properly expose the entire image under a 'normal' circumstance? Of course you may want to adjust the exposure to make the image darker or brighter per say, but I'm not really sure as to how to find out the 'base' fstop to start at before tweaking.

I've done some digital photography with a DSLR camera, and there's always been a meter on the camera which would show me if I was over or under exposed, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing on the XL1S. I don't want to continue to randomly guess F-stops until something looks right, it'd be great to be able to understand how to off the bat know an estimated area of where I should be.

Thanks in advance!

The "exposure metre" is only displayed when the camera is set to "M" (manual).

You'll see it in the upper left corner of the EVF (page 47 of the manual).

To control exposure in Auto, Tv or Av modes, use the "AE Shift" dial on the rear face of the forward handle upright.

There is no exposure control available in Easy, Manual or Spotlight modes (page 66 of the manual).


CS

Hi! Thanks. I apologize for asking an obvious question.

Got it all figured out now.

...what's the proper way to determine what exposure you shoot be shooting on with the XL1S to properly expose the entire image under a 'normal' circumstance?
The best way is to connect the camcorder output to a decent monitor (a consumer TV may not be decent) and and adjust exposure to provide the image you desire.

The internal metering works fairly well for "average conditions," but can be fooled by unusual lighting, and may not provide what you want in terms of shadow or highlight detail.