I shot a video of kayaking and was not happy with the video. If I shot in auto it looked under exposed you could not see the peoples faces. If I opened it up for the paddlers, the falls was all washed out. I could not find a happy medium. check it out. your thoughts


http://media.putfile.com/Ohiopyle-Trailer-2007

I have a 30 also and have run into this. Sometimes there is not enough dynamtic range to get all exposed correctly. In wedding I run into this when they have sunlight streaming in. I must blow out the light to get teh detail on the people. Not much you can do about it though. Sorry,

Jeff

Thanks Jeff

I was also using a Hoya ND4 filter to try to rreduce the range but it did not seem to help. Also had a hard time lightening the dark areas in post or bring down the highlights in post. Neither worked. I must agree with you video does not have that same dynamic range as film

ND filters don't reduce a contrast range -- unless using graduated (sp?) filter which is clear on the bottom and dark on the top, to darken bare sky without darkening lower subjects.

The primary purpose of an ND filter is to allow shooting at the camera's more comfortable settings in bright light: 1/60s field rate and wide aperture for shallower depth of field. Otherwise you may find you are shooting at f-8 (with a DoF from small cameras that goes from 4-feet to infinity) and 1/250s (creating sharp stills, but a rather staccato effect for motion as objects "blink" from position to position, rather than gliding on motion blur).

Video camera dynamic range is like /slide film/, with an exposure range of maybe 5-stops (+/- two stops from "correct subject exposure"). Negative film has a range of around 7-stops, so can go one stop in each direction further without losing detail.

Hence all the exclamations about "Light! Lots of Light"... Or, at least, some reflectors to shine sky-light into the shadowed side to reduce the contrast range, diffusers to avoid sharp shadow edges, and light blocking to keep bright light off of subjects...