How are you aligning your cameras?
 

What chart are you using for aligning your HD100’s? The DSC Camalign seems to be the best but cost an arm, a leg and an eye.

I'm using a Siemen's start chart I found online and printed out. It's not just that I'm cheap, but I can't see spending that much for a laminated chart. Besides, to buy it at that price would just encourage them to charge ridiculous prices on everything. Special videographers chewing gum- only $200!

I think there is a chart in your users guide/book thing???

Yes, I think it is in the Lens manual.

yep, its in that green booklet that comes with the lense.

works perfectly well for me.

Are you using a focus chart to align your cameras? I'm not talking about back focus adjustment.

Then we obviously misunderstood what you were asking. What is it you are trying to do?

Ok... I think I understand what you are trying to do. I checked it out at CineAble http://www.abelcine.com/store/produc...7&cat=0&page=1

Being new to this type of set up, that is unknown territory for me. However, Paolo and a few others have mentioned these charts with great results. I'm sure they have been used heavily while working on scene recipes.

I know what he's talking about now. To answer the question - I'm not, I haven't had a need to match to another camera and I'm using Palo's True Color 3 settings and have been very pleased!

Of course, this does bring up the answer to matching multiple cameras on a shoot. It would make color correction easier.

But then, wouldn't you also need to run a waveform and vectorscope to do any good?

My experience with many, many multicamera DV and HDV shoots is that if the menu settings are identical, then the pictures will be. I'm sure there's some cameras that are off, but I've never come across any.

The few times I've had black levels off, later investigation showed that it was operator error (somebody not being thorough enough).

My guess is that the true issues with camera setup in a modern camera are already taken care of at the factory in order for the camera's DSP to work correctly.

Do the settings that are recorded on the SD card (scene files?) have all the settings to reset the camera after they have been manipulated manually?

That is, can all settings be reset by putting an SD card into the camera, or are there certain setting that can only be reset manually.

Similarly, is there a reset button or similar that will completely reset all setting on the camera to the factory default?

You don’t align a camera only to match another camera. You align it to get the best out of it. You shouldn’t trust the factory alignment either. You should do your own and according to your shooting needs. A Siemens star is not the right tool. A great tool for that i is a DSC Labs Camalign chart (short of course of their prohibitively expensive Chroma DuMonde chart), but they are really expensive. But you need at least an accurate color chart, gray scale and resolution chart and a waveform monitor.