bringing the best out of DVX100
 

hi all,

manage to get hold of a PAL version of this camera (In my country there is only PAL. See if I am right about the setting below to bring out the best in this camera and give me your comments.

1) Shoot in progressive model for the film look. Since the camera I can get can only shoot in 25p (maybe because its the PAL version), I will shoot in 25p.

2) Shutter speed - 1/25, as recommended. After all film is shot in 1/24.

3) Gain - 0. Anyway I can't adjust it in progrssive scan mode

4) Colour balance - 0. Will try to correct the tungsten lights on set, but then again this can be fine tune in post pro. However, can't understand why the manual tells to to set colour shutter at 1/60 when doing white balance. Can't a eyeball check do as well without changing the shutter speed? What do you guys do for white balance in prog scan mode?

5) Iris - As need to shoot in 1/25.

6) Focus - No auto focus in progressive mode, so what I will do is switch the camera to non-prog scan mode 1st, do a AF and read the focus number at a focal length i have set for my lense. Switch back to prog scan mode and make sure the focus number is the same as during AF. The reason why I am doing this is because the viewfinder,LCD screen is just too small for me to do an accurate eyeball manual focus. Any tricks you guys are using for focusing in prog scan mode?

7) Detail Level - 0 or -7. Following what i learnt in digital still photography, any sharpening shld be left to a better software than the one found in the camera. However, I dun understand what happens when this level go below 0. Does it mean the camera actually "tries" to make the image softer?

8) Chroma Level/Phase - 0. Dunno what this does so I shall leave it alone

9) COlour Temp - Fine tune in post.

10) Master Ped - How does this work?

11) Gamma - Normal. Any special effects shld be left to post for best results.

12) Skin Tone DTL - Depends on personal preference? I would prefer off to see the grains and details on people's skil

13) Matrix - Norm1 or Norm 2. I dunno if i understand this correctly but the colours suited to cinema-like shooting can be better achieve in post pro. Unless there is something special abt shooting Cine-liek matrix

14) V Detail Freq - THin. Get the details and forsake in post is better than not recording the details, and can't remake in post.

15) Syncro scan - Not needed unless shooting TV.

16) Audio - 16 bit.

17) Rec Speed - SP

18) Mic Gain 1 and 2 - -50dB? wats the difference with -60dB?

Thats is all I could understand so far after getting the camera for the 1st day. Pls see if my logic is right,or if the settings is right in the 1st place. Please also let me know if you have any other tricks that can maximize the abilities of the camera. It's a pity I can only test drive the camera for 1 day this week b4 my shoot next week.

Thanks!!!

Your shutter should not be 1/24th, it should be 1/50th. Film is typically shot with a 180-degree shutter (meaning it's exposed for 180 out of the 360 degrees of a circle) so it's exposed for half of the frame rate. So at 24fps, film's exposure is typically 1/48th. At 25fps it'd be 1/50th.

"2) Shutter speed "

See Barry's post, 1/50th would be what you'd typically use.

"7) Detail Level - 0 or -7 "

Some people who have tested it better than me have reported that -4 detail is about as soft as you can go before you start to lose information from the CCDs.

"10) Master Ped "

This essentially crushes your blacks.

"11) Gamma - Normal. Any special effects shld be left to post for best results."

You might want to seriously consider playing with cine-gamma. This isn't a special effect, it's a flat gamma curve with no roll off at the high or low end. You need to be very careful to not overexpose in this mode though since there's no roll off.