XH A1 needs gain even with controlled light?

[Etienne Didelot-Pothier]

Hi everyone,

I had a few shoots recently, and I had to crank the gain up maybe to +3db to get a reasonable image.

Is it normal? And, in that gig, we had good lighting : 2x 650w fresnel for backlight, 2x650w fresnel for fill and 2x1kw bounced for key.

My friend with his Sony FX1 had no problem at all, and my XH A1 was having an hard time.. even with the colors, it was not so great.

I was using almost a default preset..

[Alan R. Moore]

Have you made the mistake I occasionally make and have the ND filter engaged? I need the ND filter on a bright day and often forget to switch it out when finished.

Cheers Alan.

[Hameed Aabid]

Definitely not normal. My guess would be the ND filter as well...

[Etienne Didelot-Pothier]

Yeah, would have been stupid, but nope.. it was off.

[Michael Wisniewski]

I'd also try restoring all the default settings, just so you have a baseline to work from. There's an option for this in the menus.

What mode were you shooting in? What were your aperture and shutter settings? How is your white balance being set?

[Etienne Didelot-Pothier]

I was fully manual, HDV 30F, 1/30 and around F2.4.

My partner with his FX1 had 1/30 (or 1/60 cant recall) and F3.8 i think.. and they barely matched (I was a bit underexposed with my XH A1...)

[Don Palomaki]

Not knowing the details of the venue or the scene, it does not sound normal with that amount of light for "average" conditions.

Can you read the camcorder setting off the tape?

[Alan R. Moore]

With that amount of light I usually end up with minus 3 gain at about 5.6 aperture 1/50th shutter, with the lights about 8 feet away. Something odd here , are you sure the ND switch is not engaged?

Alan.

[Etienne Didelot-Pothier]

ND was not engaged.. I just checked.

And, I was doing some pictures with my Nikon D300 photo camera, I was using settings like : 1800ISO, 1/100th and F3.6

Also, I find that anything more than 1000ISO is huuuge for that king of lighthing..

I could bring the camera to a retailer to have her checked..what do you think?

[Alan R. Moore]

Retailers are not usually very bright. Do you know anyone local you could do a side by side shoot with?

Alan

[Etienne Didelot-Pothier]

You mean, also with his XH A1 to compare?

Yeah, that would be a solution. I don't really know anyone who owns this camera..

[Sylus Harrington]

I had a similar experience last week. I was on b-roll with my xha1s, and the lead cameras were sony xdcam's. My exposure was about 3 stops under exposed in the controlled lighting setup. Don't recall the lighting specs though. f1/6, -3b, 60i, 1/60 where the xha1s settings.

I tested out my 7d in the same lighting as above, f4, 500iso, 30p, 1/60, and had great exposure. My personal experience with this camera is that it's a major light hog.

[Etienne Didelot-Pothier]

Yeah.. maybe..