I have recently purchased a GL2 and am having a great time exploring all the great features of this camera. I shot a friend's CD release concert at a church last weekend and was experimenting with an indoor shoot with poor lighting in manual mode. I found that I constantly had to ajust shutter and aperture everytime I panned to a different part of the stage. Many times, these adjustments were not very smooth (my fault), but ended up with the transition portions of the tape being under or over exposed. My question is: is it possible (or practical) to shoot in manual mode in these circumstances, and if so, does more practice help to smooth out these transitions so they are not too noticable on the tape. This was an informal shoot so no damage to lost footage.

Thank you!

Rodd

Rodd,

A quick reply as I am out to a shoot soon.

In essence changing scenes light to dark etc will require you to open the iris up/close down as necessary. As far as I can see you will get the step as the exposure control is "notched". However saying that I am getting better transitions the more I practice with the XM2 (GL2). This was one of my pet hates but then got told by a colleage that only the high end Cams can give a smooth exposure change :(

Keep practicing even if it is in your front room at night with different lighting changes/shadows, it does get better.

I have a worse nightmare, wedding at big castle in UK today and it is really tipping it down so looks like I have missed a great opportunity to get some cool outdoor shots. Now I am annoyed.

Rodd,
As Alan says, these cheaper cameras will only allow the exposure to be adjusted manually in increments of a 1/4 stop, which are quite visible unfortunately. Better lenses will have an aperture ring which can be infinitely adjusted.
What I often do, if the exposure difference isn't massive, is to leave as it is, then in editing I make a cut in the middle of the exposure change, adjust the level of the worse one and then create a dissolve between the two parts. If it's done properly you won't see the change. It'll be much better than what you can achieve manually.

Robin.

Alan and Robin,

Thank you for your resposnses and suggestions. It sounds as though practice is a good place to start. I have plenty of work cut out for me. Good luck with the shoot Alan.

Rodd