V1u Questions
 

I'm new to the V1u, but I've been working with it for a few days now and I've got some questions. We're shooting 1080i 24P with Picture Profile 2.

First, it seems rather light hungry. Yes, even with the ND off. Does this camera generally need a lot of light? For the indoor B-roll I've had to bring in a 500W light with a Chimera just to get some decent levels when I thought I should be able to shoot with available light. How much gain is too much? I've used +3 a couple times. Does it get super grainy if you go much higher? Unfortunately this is sort of a run n' gun shoot so I don't have a decent monitor to check on. Does the PP (picture profile) setting have some thing to do with this? I love the look otherwise.

Second, what is up with the focus ring? I've turned off auto-focus of course. I was trying to shoot a rack focus shot and was spinning and spinning the focus ring and nothing was happening. Suddenly the numbers started going up very fast from 1 to infinity. Other times it just seems very fluid. You turn it and it sort of picks up speed, and then slows down slowly. Very weird.

Also, how does the focus assist setting work, and does it work?

I'm going to be shooting some stuff in the woods, probably at night in the next few days and I'm wondering if the camera can handle it. I'll also be shooting some walk and talk stuff and I want that to be in focus too.

Due to the 1/4" CMOS sensors it is not a great camera for available lighting indoors. I feel that +6 is reasonable for run and gun. It has nothing to do with the Profile settings.
you have to be sure it is on manual (hand with an "F" in the viewfinder). It's a servo focus so it hard to make fine adjustments. I sometimes toggle between auto focus and manual or use the viewfinder peaking if there is enough light. You can also use the viewfinder magnification.

Without lighting you won't be successful without increasing gain and noise.

Used to be a V1PAL SHOOTING oversea and events. This cam do need a lot of lights. Day shooting great picture ever seen on CMOS clip. Another subject you need to look out for "Rolling Shutter" on CMOS with photographer flash. There are many user V1 on this forum, do search and hope you can get more info about the setting.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-hvr-...ter-other.html

Brian,

I don't use focus assist very much, but it seems to work as a manual override to auto-focus - that is, you can make some manual corrections while in auto focus mode.

I generally use full manual focus (with help from Push Focus on the camera or Lanc controller at times), so I don't have a lot of experience with focus assist.

If you mean the assisted focus, it's one of the cooler things since sliced bread - the focus ring still works "manual", which is helpful if you want to ease into focus or whatnot, but the auto is still active as well, so it's more or less a blended approach to the focus - you have manual control, but the auto will always be attempting seek out the sharpest focus. I find it quite handy myself, used with peaking, helps quite a bit.

Can you set the focus for manual, but leave the assisted focus on so that you can do the main focusing, but it will fine tune it for you (I think that's how the EX-1 works)? Or do you have to set it for auto focus, and then manually tune it?

I've been trolling around the forum for information on shooting in low light and other stuff. There's some great information here. Thanks! Please keep the answers coming though!

We set the cameras for Picture Profile 2 which I think has the cinegama setting that everyone says to turn off for night shooting. I don't want my shots to look like plain old video though. It don't think it will cut well with the PP2 stuff. Is there another PP setting I can use at night that's close? I don't have the camera in front of me. How do I get in and change the settings for chroma and gama and all that?

Yes, you can use AUTO FOCUS temporarily while focusing manually. When you focus on the subject rotating the focus ring, press and hold the PUSH AUTO FOCUS button. The automatic focus will restore until after you release the button. You can also use this button to shift the focus on one subject to another – the scenes will shift smoothly, says the V1U Manual on page 32.

More contrast and saturated look of the CINEMATONE GAMMA setting is the direct consequence of the gamma compressing. Since the contrast is the first derivation of the gamma function, the steeper the gamma the higher the contrast of the picture. In low light when you switch the CINEMATONE GAMMA off you can compensate for it by increasing the COLOR LEVEL from zero (default) to +2 or even +4.

Brian, I set my limit at +6db of gain or its just gets to grainy. Hyper gain at +36db seems useless... I also use the sunset pp setting add some color level & white balance shift for outdoors and save it as a new picture profile.

Thank you all for your help. The shoot went a lot more smoothly with your help and the info' about night time settings. I'm very impressed with the picture this camera produces!

To bad the focus is such a pain. I might consider a HVRZ7U for my next camera because it has a real focus ring.