Hi im starting a film with the GL2. I will be filming a woods. Do any of you recemend any good setting

Nathaniel,

You can start by just using the Auto mode to see how things go but I would recommend that you check out the manual settings. Practice, practice and practice some more. You cannot say a particular set of settings will work for a particular scenario as you will be continually changing for changes in light etc.

thanks i will try it

Don't auto white balance inside the forest and use a tripod for those 20X zoomed shots. Good luck!

Don't auto white balance inside the forest and use a tripod for those 20X zoomed shots. Good luck!

Hey Colin,

I think I know the answer, but can you tell us why you cautioned against white balancing in the forest?

Thanks,

Steph

The reason you don't want to auto white balance is, because of the shifting light from the tree canopy. Do a manual balance instead, and you can even modify that with warm or cool cards.

The reason you don't want to auto white balance is, because of the shifting light from the tree canopy. Do a manual balance instead, and you can even modify that with warm or cool cards.

Keith,

AWB is a manual white balance. The other option is preset.

If you do a manual white balance under the tree canopy you could potentially lower the greens in your video, (the trees may reflect green light to your white balance card).

However, I would suggest doing a manual white balance in shade, (maybe the interior of the car?) as the color temperature of shade is cooler than that of the 5600 preset.

Or, as you suggest use the warm or cool cards.

Sincerely,

Steph

Check out this video I just did. It has some scenes that were shot in the forest.

http://www.terraform.tv/video/hellinthefirst.mov


My full manual settings were:

- Outdoor preset white balance
- 1/250 shutter speed
- F-stop 2.1
- Gain 0db

I used the high shutter speed on purpose for the look, otherwise I probably would have left it at 1/60 with the nd filter on. It was a bright sunny day, if it was cloudy the nd filter probably wouldn't have been used. In post all I did was turned down the saturation a bit and crunched the blacks and whites.

Corey -
Wow!

Great! -

I'm still not sure why I like it... or even if I should like it... but I do, I really do.
Well done indeed. I loved the singer - her smile as a counterpoint to all that gore has a really mesmeric quality.
I'm still reeling a bit and trying to get my head around the scenario, although I don't suppose I should be too concerned with that.
Technically as well, I think you did a very good job - nice to see that the old GL2 can still cut the mustard.

Robin

I just watched that video with my friend Kate, and after it was over she looked at me and said. "Wow. I want to be friends with that girl."

And I'm thinking the same way. That chick is crazy. And wicked. Absolutely wicked. But the song is great.

Couple of questions. The manual settings are simple enough, and you said all you did in post was desaturate a little and crush the black, but what about framerate and deinterlacing.

I can't tell with quicktime. The monitor is deinterlaced anyway. So was it deinterlaced in post to 30, or 24 with a pulldown. Or in-cam frame mode? I'm most curious about that.

And the depth of field is fantastic as well. What was the setup in the room with the microphone? Lights and cam distance from subject, specifically.

Maybe this question should be moved to the other thread containing this link. The one about music videos.

----

DJ Kinney

I really like the color, especially on the indoor shots. Very well lit, great stuff to show what the GL2 can do...

Thanks for the comments. DJ Kinney, the video was all shot using the gl2's framemode. Lately I've been shooting almost everything using framemode in combination with 1/250 shutter speed. It's makes the footage look amazing when viewed on a tv. It's really vivid and everything seems to just jump out of the screen, especially when fast cuts are used. Didn't do any 24p, just the regular 29.97fps.
The stuff in the room was lit with one 500watt halogen worklight duct taped to a microphone stand. It was put at about a 45 degree angle to the chair and about 5 feet away from it level with the girl's head. I was shooting at various distances from her. Anywhere from 3 to 10 feet away. The room wasn't very big, I would have liked to been at least 15 to 20 feet away to get that really shallow depth of field but we didn't have a lot of locations to choose from. Hope that helps!

Corey