Auto-exposure on the F3 - even with manual lenses

[Alister Chapman]

If you have an iPhone then the "Golden Hour" app will tell you exactly where the sun will rise and at what time.

[Peter Ford]

even better - an app called sun seeker - It does an 'augmented reality' thing, where uses the camera and built in compass, and will overlay over the cameras image eaxctly where the sun is currently, and where it will rise and set - shows you an arc through the sky with times on the line, so you can tell exactly where the sun will be at what time. You can even set the date to see where sun will go on different times of the year

Invaluable tool for planning shoots!

Used it the other day to work out exactly where i needed to be, to get the sun rise between two trees on the horizon.

Theres also a moon seeker app too, which does exactly the same thing for the moon.

Both apps need an iphone 4 and above, and you need to pay for them, to get the augmented reality bit

[Thomas Kaufman]

Speaking of time lapse, is there a risk of harming the CMOS sensor when shooting a sunset? I imagine using TLCS the sun's exposure would be comfortably within range, but what if you overexposed an image of the sun for an extended period of time?

thanks,

Tom

[Alister Chapman]

Well if you point a video camera at the sun then the light is focussed on the sensor and there is the potential for damage. I've shot countless timelapse sunrise and sun sets over the years and so far never suffered sensor damage, but it is possible. I would only shoot the sun for an extended period without ND filters when it's low on the horizon and if possible use some ND, preferably in front of the lens rather than the behind the lens ND.

[Les Wilson]

I know this is ancient history but there is scant information on TLCS for the PMW-F3. My pair of F3s have spent their life doing studio work but I recently started a series of man-on-the-street videos.

These are shot early in the morning to accommodate the tendency of the bright Florida sun to blow out the background. My twin Zylight Z90s barely raise the subject brightness.

But because I am doing the interview, I don't have an operator to ride the iris as the sun brightens. I found that the 30 minute difference between setup and finishing the interview is noticeable. So I'm looking at TLCS/AGC to adjust the gain down to compensate during the morning sun rising.

Anybody know how the F3 AGC evaluates brightness? Is it the whole frame or just the Brightness-level Display indicator in the center?