settings for midday shoot in bright sun
 

Hi

Apologize if this question has been asked before, I did search and didnt find anything.

I have a shoot at midday in full sun - I anticipate very bright conditions. i will be shooting with an XL1 and a GL1. Its a wedding and I need to leave the GL1 unattended during the ceremony. I switch on the ND filter on both cameras but would prefer not to mess with external nd filters.

Playing around with the XL1 it seems I get the most "pleasing" results (richer colors) by setting gain to -3 and keeping the aperture in the middle of the range - 5.6 to 8 and cut down the light by increasing the speed to as high as 1/300. I don't have time to do real extensive testing and am wondering if there are any "gotchas" in this approach. How fast can I set the speed before its likely to create strobing or other noticeable artifacts. I don't notice anything unpleasant at 1/300.

With the GL1 I plan to follow the same plan except I can't set the gain to -3.

All comments and suggestions gratefully received. I think the white wedding dress could be a BIG problem. My plan is to stop down until I get zebra stripes showing on 40% of the dress or less. Make sense?

I would try to use normal shutter speeds. Otherwise the movement of people
may look very unnatural (since there will be no [or at least not much] motion
blur). It sounds like you really need extra external ND filters.

Why would you prefer not to "mess" with external ones (as you put it)?

It sounds like the internal ND's just aren't strong enough for what you need
(so use internal + external). The -3 db is good, as is your f-stop. Midrange
is optimum for the lens in front of the camera.

I'm just not sure about that high a shutter speed (for the kind of thing you
are shooting). If it where me I would get an extra ND filter.

Hi Rob, thanks for your response.

As regards "messing with" external ND filters - it's a wedding so I don't have the luxury of being able to stop the action while I add or remove a filter.

Anyone with experience shooting at higher shutter speeds can tell me what I should be watching out for if I go that route? For living room playback is the difference between 1/60, 1/120, 1/300 noticeable?

I recently shot a dence recital with shutter speeds up to 1/150 and saw no issues with the fluidity of the dancers motion. I've yet to use higher speeds, so can not comment in that regard.

You will need to use either an external ND filter or polarizing filter. there's really no other way. Problably a good idea to set the GL1's f-stop to f8 or f11 to get it to read a bit closer to the XL1s's -3 gain.

I don't know how you plan to shoot this event, but I fail to see whay there would be a need to remove an external filter during the event. Doing so would immediatly throw your overall color balance and exposure way out of line with the other camera. I'd simply find the best overall exposure and stick with it on both cameras.

HUGE mistake to push up the shutter... by the time it gets to DVD it will look like Saving Private Ryan. Make sure the ND filter is on (you may need another as well) and control the light with the aperture ONLY. I dont recommend taking the XL series higher than f9.5 as the image will get too soft.

If you dont plan on color correcting in post, just white balance to the dress. You will lose some of the warmth but the dress will pop....



ash =o)