I own a pd170 and am very happy with the clarity and picture quality it provides. I've owned it now for 2 months and am awaiting to use it for a wedding in May. There's only one thing I don't like about it, I use all manual settings when it comes to the iris, shutter, and gain. I think the coloring is just dead. I've seen your wedding recaps and short films, and almost everyones footage looks absolutely gorgeous. Really colorful and vibrant. Some of those were shot with sonys vx models and pd models. My question is how did you guys make it really colorful? Is it by color correction in editing software or on board camera settings?
Thanks in advance.

you might try going into Custom Presets and playing with Levels and Saturation but before you do that could you explain a bit more in detail what you mean by "dead color"-also perhaps you could give us the low down on what settings you have the camera at for general purposes IE, shutter speed, iris, gain because these things can have an affect on what the finished product looks like. Also how are you determining what the color looks like? On a computer monitor, production monitor or a TV.
A bit more info would be helpful.
Don

Oh sorry about that, this is my first time. For the last 3 weeks I've been practicing with my camcorder filming and it's been mainly outdoors with some indoor shots, I end up using these settings currently as I learn the camcorder: outside: the second stop on the ND then I do 1 of 2 things, either bring the Iris up to 11 or bring the shutter down to 10,000 the gain is always set to 0. Inside: just bring the shutter to 120 and increase the iris number depending on how much light is available. I end up using the Iris number and leaving the shutter at 60 because the deinterlacing is to strong at 10,000 which is really hard on the eyes. When I finish practicing I make a short music video with the footage and burn it to DVD for me to watch. The dead color is where the video honestly looks really unsaturated almost black and white. I leave the custom preset button off on the back of the camcorder, and again I watch it both on the computer and on the television and the colors are just if I could say fadish, it really looks unsaturated. So I'm alittle discourage for filming this upcoming wedding. The video doesn't look vibrant as I've seen other videos on this forum. That's what the problem is in detail.
Thanks

1/10,000th? WOW! I've never used a shutter that high for anything I've done.

For the most part I'll shot at 1/60th and adjust the iris as needed-outside if it's really sunny and bright I go up to 1/1000th and adjust iris as needed BUT there are many occassions that I'll lower the shutter speed and use the ND filters as specified in the viewfinder. I think if you use a slower shutter speed and use the ND filters (1 or 2) you might find the colors to be much more "colorful". Give it a try-set up on a tripod pick something colorful to shoot, flowers a billboard anything that has some nice coloration and shoot at your normal settings; 1/10,000th with the iris and ND filter set to your normal method-then lower the shutter speed to say 1/1000th and adjust the iris and NDs as needed then lower the shutter to say 1/125th or whatever it is and again adjust the iris and NDs as needed-shoot about 10 or 15 seconds at each setting write down the shooting details (shutter, iris, NDs, gain) and load it into your NLE-THEN you'll have a much more accurate look at what each process of the camera setting do to your color as well as DoF.
There is no manual in the world that will give you the real world experience of "playing" with the camera but the best time to do that is not on a paying job.
Give it a try and let us know what happens.
Just for the record, I've been using PD150s for about 5 years and the color looks wonderful and in some cases it's a much better choice than my JVC5000. So I'm thinking the problem you're experiencing is due more to camera settings than the camera itself.
Don

There's only one thing I don't like about it, I use all manual settings when it comes to the iris, shutter, and gain. I think the coloring is just dead.

"Color is dead" -is a vague statement.

The inference is that you're new so I'll point out the obvious (just in case)... when you go into manual mode you must white balance the camera.

Did you do that?

You might try using a circular polarizer outside.

Thank you everyone for your input so far. I did color balance everytime before I started to film. I did the test Don suggested and WB again as Craig suggested and I extracted stills after watching the video of what I shot, and again I feel displeased. I took all 5 shots and aligned them in my photo software and place the specs next to each one, the better looking picture was f2 shutter 2,000 as you suggested Don but the color wasn't vibrant as other videos on this forum. I use the same camcorder, but I'm not filming the exact same thing everyone else is filming so that might play a huge part here. Don can I send you the pic it's 132kb and you can tell me your suggestions? Thank you everyone again for your input. I am very new with working my pd170, it's not like my old point and shoot camcorders, which for now offer more vibrant color as well, but not under bad lighting.

Monday

Sure you can email to the email in my profile but if you can post it here and you'll get a lot more input-but feel free to send it to me.
I'm still not quite sure what you mean but I'll be happy to take a peek.

Don

It finally looks great! Thank you all for all your help. I did much trial and error, about 1hrs worth and now the video really looks much more vibrant and alive. You were right Craig about the WB, I did WB the camcorder to a white card I had, but it was white balancing to the flower that I was videoing that made the huge difference. It really looked like great footage now. Thanks also Don huge help. Now I must practice more, and work also on obtaining good audio.

Monday

here's the link of the pics side by side if any wants to see I'll leave it up for about a day

http://myspace-717.vo.llnwd.net/00589/71/74/589714717_l.jpg

Monday-

Why are you shooting at such high shutter speeds- the highest I could possibly see for what you are doing is 250th/sec...and that would be high as well.

if you do not know how to set the camera manually/properly....you'll most likely get better results shooting in "auto" mode.

if you're shooting outdoors start with this in manual- 1/60th, 0gain, problably ND1 or 2, and whatever Fstop is needed to properly expose.WB on some white/warm cards or set to daylight that should help some. stay away from the high shutter speeds......you must be getting a lot of "strobing" using them.