New DVC30 Questions:

Wow, been through the book yesterday and did some play work with it and already I'm in over my head in some of the terms and concerns with this camera.. wow.

Hopefully someone will be able to point me in the right direction with some of this as a lot of it is simply all new to me.

(if someone has the Rodes Videomic with the DVC30, could you contact me for some specific questions? thanks)

(A) AUDIO: I have the Rodes VideoMic and wow, nice sounds coming out of this thing. However, the camera has setting options to set the levels. As best as I can figure this out, I adjust the levels until the level meters don't spike up into the red all the time? It mentions setting the audio level to 80% but seems that the audio meter levels spike up to the red all the time with normal noise but nothing I can hear is awfull on the end results.. though I haven't gone through the whole process of editing anything I've shot thus far.. But the tones, as far as my tone-deaf ears can tell is quite the improvement over what I had. But these settings sorta leave me baffled. (Audio Level Adjustments page 47) Is MONITOR LEVEL setting what the volume I'll be hearing from the camera's speaker or headphones? And is "Input Levels" sorta limiting how much volume of sound it's going to record?

(B) Whoo boy, this one has me in a quandry.. Because the camera is still new to me, I may have the terminology bassackwards, please bear with me..

Page 43 Shutter speed, iris and gain.. I guess I can just shoot in Auto Mode and be done with it but this vid cam has more to offer than just that. When playing with the settings and controls, I found the picture recorded is wildly sensitive to what settings I put in there.

Shutter speed I understand, the higher the value the smoother the video scene, the lower the value, choppier it gets (waving arm in scene for example). Shutter speed affects how much light makes it in, so the higher speed, more light required.. no probs. But this IRIS and GAIN is something I haven't learned to appreciate or understand properly.

Is IRIS to be looked at as the same as APERTURE in a SLR like F stops to control your DOF? So if you're shooting a fast moving scene with a lot of approaches to the camera, you'd be better with an F11 setting so that the actions stays within the DOF? At what stop does the camera shoot at in the AUTO mode? F8?

So what does GAIN do? All I could tell it does is lighten it up a lot.. but Hmm what does it do, should I bother, ??

And the 3 varied USER Buttons, I can assign various settings to these right?

A lot to learn about this camera.. I am planning on using on my next shoot tuesday night but don't want to risk pooching the first shoot with it until I know more of what I'm doing with it..

Thanks in advance.

TurtleTones2 is the best person to ask about audio. I set mine so the meters peak in the red only during the loudest passages. If you are pushing into the red too far, digital audio sounds like crap, kind of like how Adam Sandler sounded in his bit during the Too Many Stars benefit. Analog recording is much more forgiving in this regard.

You are correct in that MONITOR LEVEL is the volume of the speaker or your headphones.

Iris is the same as aperture in still photography. It regulates the amount of light reaching the sensors. Gain is the electronic boosting of the signal that is output by the chips with the iris wide open.

The user buttons are really cool because you can perform repetitive tasks easily with the push of one button, like smoothly fading to black or the zoom and focus function.

For being considered "prosumer", this camera is very flexible and full of options. In order to become proficient, you need practice A LOT. I'm still learning after owning mine for a year. Have fun!

on the input meters, you want to tickle the red. This leaves enough headroom for unexpected volume jumps. You're not in trouble until you hit the ceiling in the red which will show you a little bar. This lets you know that you clipped.

shutter speed is how many times per second the CCD's will take a snapshot. This also controls motion blur. The slower the shutter speed, the more motion blur. The higher, the less. higher shutter speeds also need more light.

Play around with the user buttons. find 3 that you will find the most use for and assign them.

Seaking,

I always shoot in manual mode so I can set the shutter speed and aperature to suit the subject matter. I mostly shoot at 1/60 shutter speed and let the aperature fall where it may based on where the zebra bars just about disappear. If I need a certain amount of depth of field then aperature gets set first then shutter speed. Of course some subjects can be so brightly lit that an ND filter can be used to get the shutter speed or aperature back closer to where you want it. The sweet spot on the DVC30 for sharpness seems to be about f5.6. Learning how to use zebra bars is also extemely important IMO. If you need to learn more about using ZB let us know.

As far as focus, I use manual and sometimes switch to auto to confirm that I have the best focus.

Also, as far as the gain control, I never shoot in that low a light condition because the gain adds to much noise to the image for my shooting style. But for others it may add a "style" look to the video and be perfectly acceptable.

Regards,

Mark
natureflixs (http://www.natureflixs.com)

Thanks all for the advice and input.. helped fill in the blanks =)

Audio: Ok that all makes sense now.. Monitor is for what I'm to hear while shooting and playback on the camera.. Input meters for what the VideoMic is picking up. I found I have to set them VERY low to stay out of the red with talking volume noise, and shouts spike them out a lot. (we do a lot of action shoots) I'm down in around the 50% input levels with this mic but the audio is a lot richer than what I am used to with the CanonXI and the shotgun mic used on that one (DC50 I think it's called). A lot of practice with this one for sure.

As for the VideoMic, it's very sensitive, it will pick up a lot of sounds but clean sounds. It certainly picks up my 'sniffs' while shooting so I'll have to keep my noises down during shoots. Previous camera and mic wouldn't pick me up. Just mounting it directly onto the camera, it will pick up some of my hand noises gauging by the input meters but I haven't yet edited anything to see or hear it on the finished product. I think I'll be mounting it on the handle just to bring the mic that much more away from the camera. I'll let you know how it works.

Just trying to get used to the camera, the feel of it in your hands as you're moving around with it is going to take some getting used to. It's big, not too heavy in my big hands.

Video: Again thanks for the headsup on IRIS and SHUTTER speed.. it's what I had though in regards to photography. I'll have to play with it but as you all mentioned, the 3 user buttons will indeed come into play to set these up. Ideally, I'm hoping that I can set one up for 1/60 and f8 on auto focus. Though f8 might not be the suggested sharpest image, it should provide a lot of DOF to ensure the camera stays in focus. Nothing groans a shot more when you have two people facing each other, coming in and then seperating and the camera wants to focus on them and then the wall behind them.. f8 should handle that nicely. I shy from manual focus due to my eyes not being the best. What *I* think is in focus usually isn't ; )

GAIN: Again now that makes sense.. it's more of a BOOST than anything else and will impart signal noise to the video, so unless drastically required for those hard to get shots, best to keep away from it?

ZEBRA STRIPES: yep, I'm very familiar with the use of them as it's mostly what I use to set the lights for the various shoot locations we're in. However, the other camera doesn't have the levels of zebra this one does. I remember seeing 80% zebra on one of the settings. We shoot the same theme all the time but in various locations, mostly indoors. I sometimes don't have the optimal space for positioning the 2 750W quartz lights so depending on the angles and distances, zebra helps keep the hot spots down. I'm curious to see how well the DVC30 will be able to handle this one aspect as it's always been a bane to my production work in some cases.

ND Filter: I think I have one of those in a package I picked up recently, I might have to give that a try to see if it tames down the hot spots.

Image stab system: Do you turn this off when mounting the camera on a tripod? I know that DSLR lenses that have this system built need to have the gyros turned off when mounted on a tripod lest the system shake the lense, but does it matter on the DVC30?

I still find the image shaky on the DVC30 compared to the CanonXI but I'm prolly going to have to attribute that how I'm holding it to get used to it.

The Sunday shoot was postoned until tonight so now armed with all this extra info I can feel more confident with this shoot tonight. Very interesting.

NOTE: The IR mode is a lot of fun, especially with cats.. All they see is the red IR lights coming at them but don't see your foot slowly sliding towards them as you nudge them.. Nothing like watching the fur ball cat-apult into the air at something they didn't see. And this is in pitch dark.. Quite impressive. I wish I was actually filming the first time I did it cause now the cats are looking at the lights and trying to spot the foot in the dark lol.

Once again, I wish to thank all who offered their expertise to help answer some what I am sure are commonly asked questions. Much appreciated.

Cheers

It's great to hear you got it.

I haven't used the DVC30 with a tripod yet but I have never worried about wether the stabalizer was on or off with other camera's. I figure it can't hurt anything if its on, but I could be wrong (and if I am someone corect me.) The only thing is it may take more juice, giving a shorter battery life, but I don't know for certain.

Good luck,
MDC

The thing you'll notice with the stabilizer on and on a tripod is that you'll be fighting it. if you do slow pans or tilts, the OIS will try and catch the movement and then it'll release it. The result will look a little jerky. I find that I get a much smoother pan without the OIS. You can see the result of this in my first short I did "The Wrong Turn" in the begining i'm doing a slow dolly up the bed and the OIS was thinking it was shake and trying to correct for it. I couldn't figure out why my dolly move was smooth as glass but the video had little jerky moments. I tried it again after I was done and found that it was OIS that was causing it.

I couldn't figure out why my dolly move was smooth as glass but the video had little jerky moments. I tried it again after I was done and found that it was OIS that was causing it.

Well I did my first shoot with the DVC30 last night and Hmm not bad. I haven't edited the video but the review on the LCD showed better quality than the CanonXI I had used previously for 2.5 years. Talk about a lot to get used to. Audio input levels had to be brought down to about 45% to keep it from spiking into the red using the Rode VideoMic mounted high above the carrying handle to avoid handling noises. The sounds were clear and the tone was nice and deep, not tinny or empty box sounding.

The lighting was the trickier part. Since the models and I could only shoot for a set period of time it was basically shoot and adjust as you go kinda thing. With everything set on Manual, the first thing I noticed was that using the two tri quartz 750W lighting system I normally use, set 45' behind/beside me reflecting bounce from brollies, the skin tones were a lot truer, at least not making everyone look pasty white without tans.

With Zebra set at the default 80% I was very concious to bright spots on arms and cheeks and whites. But on playback these were not as apparent. I think this 80% feature works well for my needs. The ability of the 3CCD / lens? to capture light worked nicely when I'm shooting side-on to where the lights were. With the other camera, what ever was shadowed from the lights would be quite dark but this DVC30 handled the lighting differential quite nicely as the lit side of the person was spot on and the dark side of the person was shadowed but you can still see everything.. instead of being very dark, I would say it was half lit. The only time I had a problem with too much Zebra showing is that they were sitting apart on a black leather sofa and the black would start to cause their arms or white clothing to show a lot of Zebra. This was easily rectified simply by angling the camera so that there was a bit more person than sofa in the scene. Nicely done.

Focusing was excellent.. we usually have scenes where to people are facing each other with 2 arm lengths between them and when trying to capture such a scene, the old camera would tend to want to focus on the back wall between the people. But the DVC30 was able to hold the focus on what there was more of, the people, not the wall behind them. Focusing is fast on this camera I found. Instead of zooming in and out from a fixed point, my practice is to always do the 'ninja walk' in and out of the scene which lends a certain look to the video while being very steady. (Kinda silly to be seen doing this walk but the steadyness is well worth it to me). Walking in and out of the scene instead of zoom, the camera was able to pick up the focus quite nicely and wasn't trying to decide where to focus. It picked up where I wanted it to. If I wanted to do a front person to back person focusing effect, I guess I'd be working the manual focus. (Can this be set on and off while recording?)

The OIS worked well, better at 'unzoomed' than it would be at zoomed.

The weight and size of the camera took some getting used to. With the previous camera it was simple enough to take one hand off the camera to give off scene hand directions but with the DVC30 I found my camera hand had trouble holding it up without noticable wavering and shake. But the extra weight made the camera steadier when handling it with two hands.

Of course no shoot session is without it's funny moments, one of our scenes required me to be behind the model as she's reading a paper and I needed to from behind to up behind her left shoulder to show what she was reading. Ok, so the VideoMic bumped her in the back of the head with a noticable bump in sound and video. Oh well, good for the blooper reel. "Is that a mic on your camera or are you just happy to see me"?

Over all? VERY impressed with the DVC30, in Auto mode I found it quite adaptable and forgiving for lighting though I find I will need to work on my lighting to get it better. Using 1 of the 3 bulbs at max gives a whiter colour while 3 bulbs at less than half gives the same amount of light but more yellow/amber. I'm not sure if I should be aiming at setting the lights for more even light and then custom white balance the camera, or play with the lights until I get what I need... Practice.

Tonight or tomorrow I'll be having a look at the video when I go to edit it and see how much of a difference it has over the old camera.

Though I took the Canon with me just in case I wasn't confident with the DVC30, the Canon now sits on the "spare shelf" with the other cameras as backup in case I need it.

Fun, interesting, something new to learn everyday with this camera..

Thanks for the pointers, advice and/or comments you may have.