I recently vieo taped a performanced with minimal lighting set-up on the stage. It was a small venue. Not a professional paying gig, just doing someone a favor. Even though there was not much lighting, I was able to see everything just fine thru the color View Finder. But when I watched the footage on a 52 inch TV, the picture was very dark. The settings on the TV is fine. (Don;t remember what settings I had on the camera other than shooting in 16:9 24pn.) Don;t rmember my Shutter or Gain settings. But I did judge my settings on what i saw though the VF. My question is it the VF so inaccurate on what I'm actaully getting? It seemed so drastic! Any thoughts on what might be happening? I remember reading perhaps in some ealier posts about the color VF not giving a true representation on what's being taped. But I've never noticed such a drastic differance b4.

Joe

First, make sure that your monitor or television is set up properly. Toggle the color bars on your XL2 and feed the output to your TV. The procedure for adjusting a pro monitor is described at http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/production/graff1.php but you can adapt the process to a consumer television as best you can. Once it's set up, calibrate the viewfinder on the XL2 to match it by adjusting its brightness, contrast, color and sharpness controls, as accessed in the Display Setup > EVF Setup menu in the camcorder.

Another issue that may be at work here is the matter of setup. It's been stated that the XL-2 provides a 0 IRE setup level on the analog output. Since NTSC expects a 7.5 IRE setup, the picture will indeed look darker on your TV when viewing straight from the camera. If you burn this footage to DVD and play it back, you should see some improvement because the DVD player knows to add the 7.5 IRE setup on the outgoing signal to your TV. Some cameras include a switch for 0/7.5 setup on the analog outputs. The XL-2 has no such switch.

regards,
=gb=

Yep, this is also a beef with the Sony PD-150/170, PDX-10 and (I assume) the Z1. They have a menu item to change setup to 7.5 IRE but it doesn't switch the black level of the analog output; it raises the recorded level so all your blacks become grays. Ugh... ;-)

Yep, this is also a beef with the Sony PD-150/170, PDX-10 and (I assume) the Z1. They have a menu item to change setup to 7.5 IRE but it doesn't switch the black level of the analog output; it raises the recorded level so all your blacks become grays. Ugh... ;-)

That's true of the XL-2 also, Boyd. The menu item isn't a toggle but more of an adjustable slider, which affects the recorded image. Have you ever tried to turn on the 7.5 switch and then view the recorded output directly to TV? It should make it look more 'normal' in this situation but would look gray on the computer. Just curious.

-gb-

No, after reading so many negative comments I never bothered to try :-) The dynamic range of DV is so limited to start with, I don't want to lose the ability to go all the way to black.

Thanks guys for the responses :). I'll give your suggestions a try.

Joe

Did you edit anything? I have had some projects come out dark, because of the way I adjusted my monitor. It looked good on the PC, but too dark when I watched it on TV. It comes from adjusting the monitor so you can see the bad guys/monsters hiding in the shadows :)