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#1 |
New Boot
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Cornwall England
Posts: 14
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My XL2 Footage looks poor!
Hi all,
Firstly let me just point out that I've only been playing around with my XL2 for a couple of weeks. I got it after a couple of weeks research into a camcorder that would suit my needs, being recoding wildlife. I'm a zoology undergrad and got the camera because I wanted to record what I was observing in the field, rather than looking through binoculars or just taking stills with my DSLR. My problem is: Everything I record looks like it was recorded on an 80's vhs recorder. There doesn't seem to be any real detail, it almost looks too digital, as if the rocks are made of pixels (which technically they are). I'm obviously doing a fair few things wrong, but it's just disappointing when, like just now, I've come back from an afternoon birdwatching and I managed to spot a hen harrier over the downs hunting. I tracked it really well and kept in centred from about 200m away, but on watching the footage back (just plugged into the tv) it looks awful. I've used the 20x lens that comes with it and also a couple of 35mm (with the glassless adapter recommended to me) 200mm. Any ideas, tips or links to a suitable site to help me improve would be greatly, greatly appreciated. P.s. I kept white balancing and kept the arrow in the centre in the top left corner (the light sensor?) Dan |
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#2 |
Inner Circle
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: San Mateo, CA
Posts: 3,840
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What are you watching the footage on? Some HD tv's do a terrible job displaying SD footage.
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#3 | |
Inner Circle
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Er, Daniel............
Quote:
Now, whilst wading through some of that Himalayan scale mountain of information, via judicious use of the "Search" bar at the bottom of every page just to keep the hit rate up, is an exceedingly good thing to do, and will, indeed, impart a great deal of knowledge about your weapon of choice, you can possibly get ahead of the game by listing every single setting you have set on the camera during your shoots and let the panel give you a blow by blow about why most of them are not a good idea (or otherwise). As we all know the XL2 is capable of exceptional SD in the right hands, I suspect this may be a case of a poor workman blaming his tools. In your defence, going from Whoa to Gooo! with an XL2 is a pretty daunting endeavour, especially if you come from a stills background, 'cos they just ain't the same thing at all. Give us the info, we'll see what we can do. CS |
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#4 |
Regular Crew
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Knoxville, TN
Posts: 47
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Can you start off by posting a screen cap or a short clip of what you're currently getting?
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#5 |
New Boot
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Cornwall England
Posts: 14
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#6 | |
New Boot
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Cornwall England
Posts: 14
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Quote:
I'll have a browse through and try and get what I need from there, then if I'm still left wanting I'll be back :) |
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#7 |
New Boot
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Cornwall England
Posts: 14
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Yes, I'll capture some later and post it asap. After watching it on the old tv downstairs rather than the hd ready tv it's looking better. But still I need to do something else to try and get good footage to work with in vegas.
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#8 |
Major Player
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Nowra, Australia
Posts: 440
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Hi Dan, poor compared to what? You might be setting your sights too high. XL2 footage generally does look poor compared to 1080 HD footage at full resolution. But it's not a fair comparison. Where it gets fair is if you convert the HD footage to SD resolution, which is probably what's going to happen anyway, DVDs still being what we are mainly distributing on. If you've got a HD source, convert it to SD, shoot some identical XL2 footage, blow up a few stills and do a comparison. I think you'll get noticeably more detail from the XL2, particularly if you are using Vegas to downconvert.
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#9 |
Trustee
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Worldwide
Posts: 1,589
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Danny, I suggest that you look through the XL2 Presets lists shown on this forum. Straight out of the box, the XL2 tends to be a bit washed-out, but just a simple adjustment of the presets can change it into an entirely different camera.
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#10 | |
Wrangler
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Northern VA
Posts: 4,487
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Quote:
__________________
dpalomaki@dspalomaki.com |
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#11 | |
Regular Crew
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Silicon Valley
Posts: 61
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Quote:
Happy trekking!
__________________
----------------------------------- XL2: power to go, quality to impress |
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