canon xl1s as second cam to pd-150...footage interchangeable?
 

I have a possible 2nd cameraman for a shoot I'll be doing in Aug. He has a Canon XL1S. I feel that the PD150 will produce footage this is equal to what his camera will produce, thereby making the footage interchangeable in the post production process. Would you all agree?

canon xl1s as second cam to pd-150...footage interchangeable?
 

I have a possible 2nd cameraman for a shoot I'll be doing in Aug. He has a Canon XL1S. I feel that the PD150 will produce footage this is equal to what his camera will produce, thereby making the footage interchangeable in the post production process. Would you all agree?

Yes, I agree. Do a search and you'll find a thread on how to set the XL1S (S not plain XL1) to closely match the Sony look. You can get a near perfect match in post if you like, also.

The great thing about Sonys is that they all have a custom preset feature that will allow you to tweek the color, sharpness, white balance shift and so on, to match the Canon. ( I don't think the XL1 had this feature though I believe the XL1S does.)

Once the cameras are set up together, just make sure that you white balance them at the same time and under the same conditions and you shouldn't have any problems.

How do I insure the color sharpness is synced? (The white balance syncing I do understand...that's easy :)

What I do to match two cameras is pretty non-technical but it works. I set up the two cameras on tripods pointing at a planter outside the window of my office. (The flower petals and green leaves give me a nice mix of colors, highlights and shadows.) I plug both cameras into a monitor I trust and tweak the color and sharpness adjustments (they are seperate adjustments on teh PD150) until the two cameras match as closely as I can get them to match. Like I said very non-technical but it works for me.

If you don't have flowers I am sure color bars would do. ;)

You will find the color and apparent sharpness different between the two cameras. So if you both shoot the same scene, there will be a noticable difference. If you are shooting different topics and cutting the footage together, it will probably be unnoticable to the average viewer.

You can cut the sharpness of the 150 and change the color to match the Canon if you must. I think you can make it a custom setting although I've never tried.

Converesly, if you prefer the look of the PD150 you'll be able to adequately adjust the XL1s' sharpness and color to match the PD150.

Either direction you decide to go, give yourself plenty of pre-production time to experiment if possible. It may be hard to adequately match cameras on-set just before a shoot. Too much turmoil and other matters requiring attention.

Rick---maybe I am missing something but how do you do color adjustments on a PD-150. The only manual controls I can find are the standards---focus, shutter speed, AE, gain, Fstops---etc. I know that the more expensive pro camcorders have lots of neat stuff you can play with but I haven't found that to be the case on the PD-150---please educate me.

"Converesly, if you prefer the look of the PD150 you'll be able to adequately adjust the XL1s' sharpness and color to match the PD150."

Can you really manually change the sharpness and color on XL1s?

Where is the necessary switches located?

Yes, you can. The controls are in the camera's menus. If you do not own the camera you can download the manual from the Canon DV site to see for yourself.

It is in the "Custom Presets" menu which the folks at Sony have chosen to hide (in plain sight) on the PD150. Instead of being in the"menu" like on my old VX1000, it is activated by pushing the small button marked "custom preset" on the back of the handle just in front of the viewfinder. The adjustments are "color level" , "sharpness", "wb shift" and "AGC limit".

Personally I find the Sony presets too flat, so the first thing I did when I got my PD150 was tweek the color level so I had greater saturation. The custom presets allow a fairly wide range of choices.

Derek - we may want to get to the shoot a little early or hook up a week or two before hand so we can work out any kinks in this.

It sounds like it's very doable. I'm guessing we'll both need to match gain as well?

Test footage would be key I think.