don't know if this is the right place to post this so I apologize if it isn't.

I went skiing last weekend with my wife and decided to take a quick video of her on a learning slope (because I just taught her how to ski). It was an extremely bright day so it terribly corrupted the footage.

Check out a quick glance at the film here:
http://s45.photobucket.com/albums/f...t=Whiteout1.flv

What should I have done with the camera to make it look better? Is there a setting that I forgot to turn on like the back light or something? The thing that gets me is that while filming, the video on the LCD looked perfect so I didn't even know that the camera was actually filming garbage. Even now when I play back the film on the camera, it displays nice and crisp on the LCD.

My camera is a Sony Handycam DCR TRV-350 and I was filming using a Hi8 Tape.

Any advice for the terribly novice videographer will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

1. Are you absolutely sure you did not accidently turn on "NightShot"? Seems people in the past have done it while in the snow and that's what their video looks like.

2. Shooting in the snow presents some exposure problems. Does your camcorder have a "Snow" or similar setting?

3. Your white balance could be off.

4. Obviously your exposure is off, but the background, the landscape seems better exposed. Can you compensate your exposure.

5. Issue that all of a sudden came up but never happened in the past.

6. Is your wife wearing white?



Rich

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Thanks for the response. I am going to have to go over the camera later and examine the settings you suggested. Are you saying that I can adjust the exposure after I've already filmed? I guess I could have hit the night shot because I was wearing my thick ski gloves but I guess we'll never know now. If I shoot a normal indoor video and it looks fine, that means the white balance must be fine too right?

It is possible to adjust exposure aftwards in editing but only to a certain degree. Your's probably not, it is too washed out, overexposed too much and the detail is gone.

"If I shoot a normal indoor video and it looks fine, that means the white balance must be fine too right?" No, not really. White balance needs to be set for each environment as the color of light can be different. But I don't think that is your major problem.




Rich

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The white balance looks okay to me. The picture is a bit overexposed, in my opinion. And if your wife was wearing white it didn't help with the snow background.

I just checked out the settings. The exposure was turned all the way up and in addition to that, the LCD brightness was turned very low so between the two, the video looked great until I uploaded it to the computer. I brightened the LCD considerably and lowered the exposure. Hopefully I don't have to wait until next year to test it again . When I do get another chance to film in the snow, I will try multiple exposures to find the best one.

Thanks for all your help