I shoot a lot of speakers in meeting rooms that are poorly lit, or more specifically, unevenly lit. The speaker will move from well to poorly lit areas, rather quickly sometimes, as I follow them in a medium to close shot. Auto iris on my Panasonic HPX-170 cannot compensate for the varying light levels quickly enough to not look like I'm using auto iris and although tracking it manually is somewhat better, is quite tedious and doesn't always give the results I'm looking for.

That leaves me to manage the problem while editing. I have tried "riding the gain" with the tools in Final Cut 7, but its again a tedious, manual process.

What I'm looking for is a technique or tool that will duplicate the auto iris in the camera, but do it better than what the camera (or I) can do while recording.

Thanks,
Mike.