Bar Test, CMOS Chips and Sodium Halide

[Adam Reuter]

I was at a bar tonight and figured I'd do a test with the EX1. Unfortunately my main computer came down with a virus and I'm in the middle of backing up stuff before I restore it. Hackers must die! So no footage for now.

Anyway the video inside the bar looked awesome. I tested it at 1080i60 HQ, f/2.4 and +12dB. I didn't use f/1.9 because it just looks too soft to me and I'd rather have a darker image than a soft image. Gamma was set to CINE4. All I have to say is: Bright (equal to the human eye), relatively clean and definitely better than any HD cam I've ever touched. 18dB made the footage even brighter but unrealistic and grainy.

Then I took it outside under the sodium halides. First time doing it, white balanced to the white side of a warmcard. WTF? The usual orange tint/color cast that CCD cameras see was gone and I got a beautiful yet unnatural perfect white look to my footage.

Not only that but vehicle headlights were now blue instead of orange/white. It's very cool that a camera can now white balance to the formerly un-white-balanceable sodiums but at the cost of true color. I like it but I don't. I guess I can always bump the color temperature back up to 3000K or so (it was on 2200K) but I kind of like the new look. The blue headlights are kind of a distraction though! Actually now that I think about it that makes sense that the headlights (tungsten in nature, or close to it) looked blue. Previous CCD cameras just could not white balance so low...I guess.

Anyone else have some thoughts? And yes the footage/screengrabs will be up as soon as the better cpu (the one I'm on now is a Pentium II 450 and can barely handle SD footage, sorry) is back in commission.

[Adam Reuter]

Here's the link: Footage in a Bar and City Street - The Digital Video Information Network