I just purchased a GL2, as most do I am sure I have read over the forums and have been doing a lot of testing trying to get some sense of the settings and how the affect the overall product, my problem is, that all my footage comes out very grainy and textured. I am manually setting the WB, I have the gain set to 0db in the manual settings with a shutter of 60 and I have been using various settings on the arpeture to try and set my exposure properly , I see so many great results both with post production and right from the camera, can anyone give me some advice please? thank you in advance

Good afternoon,

the only time I got grainy/noisey video is when my lighting was poor. Are your settings correct in your editing suite? Perhaps you have the aspect ratio incorrect and it is expanding the image, hence making it grainy.

I was concerned that it may be the NLE i was using, so as a test I imported into Vegas and then into Windows Movie Maker, I know inferior but just as a test and i had it right there available. Results were very similar, I noticed in an early posting under another topic that it was recommended to hook up to a TV and see if it is the video or import, and did that as well, same results. I do not use my GL2 to import video or review however, I have another cheaper camera I purchased only with transfering the tape in mind, could this be a problem?

James -

I owned two GL2's for a couple years. Have you checked your custom settings to see if something is out of whack? (See bottom of pg 22 of your manual) You didn't specify if you bought it new or used. If used, the previous owner may have customized the levels. I think they come from the factory straight down the middle.

I don't remember exactly, but I think on mine I tweaked the sharpness and color gain a bit, but if you get too extreme with these they can result in all kinds of problems.

I did go in to the camera menu's and all the settings seem as about stock as I would think them to be, nothing was skewed one way or the other. I am trying to understand what is understood as "Poor lighting situations" and how that would impact the camera, I brought the camera outside in bright sunlight, from about 10 feet away recorded a female subject, when zoomed in on her face, the results werent to bad, this is of course with the sun at the cameras backside shinning down on my target, however in manual, when I pull out from the face to capture a 3 quarter body shot everything gets soft if you will, I am not sure I truly understand this cameras capabilities, I was under the impression that with 3ccd's it would be able to capture quite well what you setup in view of the lens. Are there any base settings for say, indoor and outdoor that a manual user would set to start at, then tweak per the enviormental variables accordingly, I feel like a little fish lost in a big see with an appetite the size of the Titanic, thank you for your help

Have you checked for a loose filter in front of the lens? If there is any filter, remove it and see if the problem goes away.

Are you using manual or auto focus? If you are zooming in close while in manual focus then pulling out for the shot and things go "soft" then the back focus is out requireing a trip to the shop.

Don't think white balance will produce a "soft" shot but manual white balalce all sceens before shooting is a good idea anyway...get use to it.

RonE

I had a GL2 & also got pretty sharp picture out of it. Only when shooting in very low light witha low shutter (1/15) would it degrade. One thought is to try shooting in complete auto settings, and see how the footage comes out. Shoot outside too, I recall shooting inside in a house with brown wood paneling gave bad results, especially with little lighting. Also, then try shooting with the gain up a little, you may need it depending on where your shooting. Again, try outside on a nice day first.