My Panasonic cameras have a SPOTlight mode that is useful for shooting dance recitals where the subjects are brightly lit and the background needs to stay darker. Does the EA50 have a similar option or should I just manually drop the Iris to keep exposure in check?

My Pannys had that mode as well. I find that Auto Exposure even with manual lenses tends to try to push the gain up due to the large dark area in a theatre. I lock gain at 21db and then use the EV control and zebras to expose the dancers/performers correctly. Assign EV to a function button and as long as the EV reading on the LCD is high lighted on the LCD you can adjust it on the fly with the thumbwheel If it's not highlighted just push the assigned button again until it is and correct exposure until zebras at 90% disappear on light fabrics. That way if lighting changes the camera will auto adjust and take your EV setting into account ..if you go manual you have to ride the iris all the time which is a pain and theatre lighting constantly changes.

I do the same when lighting wedding speeches and they are standing in front of a black curtain or dark window/wall ... the lighting then over exposes the subjects face as it's trying to compensate for the big black background behind!! EV works wonders here too!!!

Works for me!!!

Chris I saw mention of the AE assign button and love it.
So are you essentially shooting in Auto Gain/ISO during low lit environments and adjust the AE on the fly. Thus letting the camera do the work and ignoring the manual gain settings.

just finished this weekend a dance recital with the sony nex-ea50, sony hxr-nx3 and the panasonic hc-x920.

my wife filmed with the little pasonic in spotlight mode and this worked great. The lightning was changing from red to blue and was very mixed. But the result is excellent. was mostly low light

The nex-ea50 was in manual and the ae shift -1 for avoid overexposure and controlled by myself. (doesn't have spotlight function here)

the hxr-nx3 which has 20x (and 40x advanced zoom) was not in spotlight mode but also in the ae shift and manual mode. The gain was set to auto. white balance at indoor 3200k (=tungsten lights)

with spotlight I can't control the white balance. I won't recommend this setting when you zoom a lot in and out. the white balance is going crazy in these lightning. that's my experience

Hi Michael

I shoot with manual lenses so I manually set focus and aperture but leave the camera in full auto and it simply ignores the fact that it cannot control the aperture and focus! Auto gain limit is set at 21db and then I use EV for small exposure adjustments and that includes situations where I have badly backlit situations too so I would be using a positive EV correction to blow out the background to keep the subject correctly exposed. Obviously I will adjust the iris manually in brighter light on daytime shoots but I normally let the camera choose the shutter speed and then I'll close the iris until shutter is at a reasonable level but iris is not too small that it degrades the image.

It's probably not technically correct working this way but it works for me and it does give me on the fly exposure override whilst still having the exposure set automatically.

Chris

I hadn't realised auto white balance can't be switched off. Most of our video work is theatres and personally, I've just got comfy with manual everything. As most theatre lighting is done in chunks, once you know the brightest it gets in the full up scenes, this becomes your guide, and any adjustments will be quite small because the level in what appears to be a different scene will be selective in where the actors are, so they may well be lit and standing in a small pool of light, but their face level won't be much different to he full up scene, so aperture adjustments are not as bad as they seem. On those very dim scenes, you don't need to open up, because the purpose is dim and low definition. Auto iris, awb and focus for me don't do it as well as the eye. A spotlight mode can help the occasional unskilled people I might have to use, but awb is preset, and focus they have to deal with.

Thanks guys. I often use 3 or 4 cameras for recitals and people that aren't very skilled in camera adjustments. So ease of use and camera matching are pretty important to me. For instance I don't want the manual exposure levels all over the place on the different cameras and trying to match it all up in post.
The Panasonics have worked and matched pretty well with WB preset, auto focus and Iris on Spotlight mode.

Trying to figure how to accomplish adding the EA50 into the mix if needed or using the Sony AX2000 with the EA50 in place of the Panasonics.

I'm going to get out my EA50 and go through the process described by Chris to better familiarize myself with it.
I'm always trying to learn and improve on all the cameras