I recently taped a variety show. It was only my second outing with the PD-150.

Because the lighting changed quite often, I relied heavily on setting exposure by using the fold out viewscreen.

I also used the Zebra stripe set at 70%.

Much of my resulting footage was too dark. Since it was not all too dark, I am wondering if someone in this group could help me get a better grasp on what I should be doing to get better exposure.

Later today, I will use the camera, a fairly reliable monitor and the viewscreen to recalibrate the brightness of the viewscreen. That should help.

Then I will do tests using the same set up to see what effect the 70% and the 100% Zebra Strip settings have.

Any other pointers will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Unfortunately, I don't believe you can use the LCD screen to accurately set exposure levels. The monochrome viewfinder is a bit better for this, but, being a LCD itself, is not as good as a conventional viewfinder or monitor.

The zebra stripe at 70% will allow you to set exposure fairly accurately if you have the 'right' type of scene. Caucasian faces (so why don't they have a selection for other skin tones?), green grass and blue sky are all good 70% points.

Faces are always the most important in any scene. So if you have a Caucasian face in the image, you should, coming from the underexposed direction, adjust the aperature/shutterspeed/gain until there is just a bit of zebra in the highlights of the face. Nose, forehead, etc. That should do it.

Green grass and blue sky should also register abut 70%.

I have simultaneously used the zebra pattern and a waveform monitor to observe an image and find the zebra pattern to be most useful and accurate. Not as good as the waveform monitor but OK.