Muddy Footage GY HM600

Christopher Young · April 30th, 2013, 12:28 PM

Hi ~

Experienced it quite often. You can see it visually and on a waveform monitor. I pointed you to Alister's site because he explains it as well as anyone else.

We shoot a lot of network TV football where the lighting can range from intense sunlight to pitch dark shadows in a lot of the stadiums, especially late in the day. Exposures can range from about f16, virtually closed iris, in the direct sunlight to about f2.8 in the heaviest stadium shadow areas. Sometimes we will run - 3dB to keep the exposures from going right down to f16 in the sunlight. Staying on 0dB we can risk over exposure in the sunlight even at f16 so would have to swing in ND filters on the cameras to avoid that. Switching ND filters in and out on a fast moving game is not a good look for the viewing audience. We know there is a trade off but basically it means we can cover the whole exposure range without filter swinging. Another thing is lens diffraction, loss of resolution at the higher numerical f stops. Running negative gain helps us to keep closer to the sweet f stop range on the lenses of f4 to f11. You win some you lose some :)

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

April 30th, 2013, 12:28 PM	#16
Christopher Young Trustee Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Sydney Australia Posts: 1,568	Re: Muddy Footage GY HM600 Hi ~ Experienced it quite often. You can see it visually and on a waveform monitor. I pointed you to Alister's site because he explains it as well as anyone else. We shoot a lot of network TV football where the lighting can range from intense sunlight to pitch dark shadows in a lot of the stadiums, especially late in the day. Exposures can range from about f16, virtually closed iris, in the direct sunlight to about f2.8 in the heaviest stadium shadow areas. Sometimes we will run - 3dB to keep the exposures from going right down to f16 in the sunlight. Staying on 0dB we can risk over exposure in the sunlight even at f16 so would have to swing in ND filters on the cameras to avoid that. Switching ND filters in and out on a fast moving game is not a good look for the viewing audience. We know there is a trade off but basically it means we can cover the whole exposure range without filter swinging. Another thing is lens diffraction, loss of resolution at the higher numerical f stops. Running negative gain helps us to keep closer to the sweet f stop range on the lenses of f4 to f11. You win some you lose some :) Chris Young CYV Productions Sydney