I just bought a GL2 and set the Zebra Bars. It looks like the default setting was 90. The Bars or stripes did appear in certain places as I started taping, probably in the areas where there was white. What did the Bars or stripes tell me? I am ignorant. Can someone enlighten me?

Hi Barrie,

I think the best short explanation is the one found on page 85 of the GL2 manual: "The zebra pattern is a series of diagonal stripes that appear in the viewfinder to highlight areas of overexposure. Use it as a guide to set the aperture (iris) and shutter speed. You can also select the pattern appearance level from 80, 85, 90, 95, and 100%."

Basically, when the zebra pattern appears, you know you're a bit overexposed, and you can take a number of steps to correct this overexposure: a). make the aperture smaller by increasing the f/stop number on the iris control wheel; b.) increase the shutter speed; c.) decrease the electronic gain, if any. Hope this helps,

The max legal video singal is 100 IRE, anythign above 100 is likely to cause problems in a broadcast signal (e.g., spatter into the sound space). Also, as you get close to 100 (maximum brightness) you start to lose highlight detail - it all washed out. Go a bit above 100 and the camcorder starts to clip the signal. In film terms - that portion of the image is overexposed. Bit haveing part of the image overexposed may not be all bad - if it is a part you are not especially interested in - such as a bright light source refection from a metal surface or the view from a window in an interior shot.

The zebra provides a visual indication/warning of this in the viewfinder, and the operator can adjust exposure accordingly to obtain the desire effect. Allowing diffent settings for the zebra threshold allows the shooter to match the camcorde to his/her preference.

One way to use zebra is set it to 95 and then shoot with the brightest highlight in which you want image detail on the verge of showing zebra.

Hey Barrie,

Good to see another fellow Chicagoan on DVInfo! I grew up in your neighborhood.

Welcome to the DVInfo community!

I want to thank Chris Hurd and Don Palomaki for responding to my question about zebra bars. I will reread your answers 100 times.

Does anyone know what the spatial resolution of the zebra patterns are? How many adjacent pixels have to be supraliminal (above the exposure threshold) for them to be zebra'd?

(And is the zebra resolution different for the XL1S?)

The last figure I seem to recall was a 90+% accuracy. This was for a pro B & W view finder, maybe 8 to 10 years ago. Not really extremely accurate. Thats why waveform monitors are used when you have to know about your exposure. I try to see if I have any more information on it or how it is measured.

I would think a LCD screen would have much less accuracy than a CRT also. I think that's why we are all erring on the side of caution. You can always bump your levels a little in post. but once your highlights are gone, it's all over.