Advice on shooting a Guitar

[Michael Thames]

Originally Posted by Sean Finnegan

Haha, I lol'd at this. Anyway, don't ever shoot anything in automatic mode. It looks awful. And I don't want to be rude, but the quality of the video you linked is pretty poor. And that's not necessarily your fault, because you shot in automatic mode. Well, I guess its your fault for choosing to shoot in automatic mode but that's besides the point. When it comes to shooting with the XH-A1, the most stunning images are produced when you're using manual mode with all the auto settings turned off. Make sure you turn off auto-white balance (AWB) and auto-gain control (AGC) because both of them will throw off your image quality, especially auto-gain control. It has a huge tendency to make images from the XH-A1 extremely grainy even if you have sufficient light.

Oh I just saw this post! I thought the thread was over, Ha Ha! Thanks for the advice Sean. I think I had both the auto gain, and white balance turned off. I did use the auto focus, many I shouldn't? Could my problem be just poor lighting? Since the video, I bought a soft box. I haven't had time to shoot a new video yet perhaps this weekend.

I used 24p, but was told by Canon that the quality of my videos ( for the web) would improve if I shot in 30p. So I will try this next time.