when you are setting the aperture or shutter speed using the zebra patterns how much of the stripes do you do you try to take out? If you take them out all they way will it underexpose the other areas?

Zebra patterns I feel should only be used as a guide.
With extreme lighting conditions, there are bound to be some pattern left over, its just the way video is.
I personally don't use them much because I find them annoying when you can not see some of the picture because of the stripes.
I shoot mainly theartre where I have no say over the lighting, and so naturally some bits will be underexposed and other bits overexposed, I try and get it so that the face is never under or overexposed.

Hope this helps,

Ed Smith

Zebra patterns I feel should only be used as a guide.
With extreme lighting conditions, there are bound to be some pattern left over, its just the way video is.
I personally don't use them much because I find them annoying when you can not see some of the picture because of the stripes.
I shoot mainly theartre where I have no say over the lighting, and so naturally some bits will be underexposed and other bits overexposed, I try and get it so that the face is never under or overexposed.
So i think then that some of the pattern should remain, in the screen but not dominent.

Hope this helps,

Ed Smith

Zebra patterns I feel should only be used as a guide.
With extreme lighting conditions, there are bound to be some pattern left over, its just the way video is.
I personally don't use them much because I find them annoying when you can not see some of the picture because of the stripes.
I shoot mainly theartre where I have no say over the lighting, and so naturally some bits will be underexposed and other bits overexposed, I try and get it so that the face is never under or overexposed.
So i think then that some of the pattern should remain, in the screen but not dominent.

Hope this helps,

Ed Smith

Zebra patterns I feel should only be used as a guide.

·With extreme lighting conditions, there are bound to be some pattern left over, it’s just the way video is.

·I personally don't use them much because I find them annoying when you cannot see some of the picture because of the stripes.

·I shoot mainly theatre where I have no say over the lighting, and so naturally some bits will be underexposed and other bits overexposed, I try and get it so that the face is never under or overexposed.

·So, I think then that some of the pattern should remain, in the screen but not dominate.

Hope this helps,

Ed Smith

it really depends where you choose to set the zebras. If you set them at 100% and you want to be compliant with NTSC broadcast standards(IRE<100), then adjust exposure so absolutely no zebra is visible. I prefer to set the zebra at 90-95 to have a little headroom below the absolute IRE100 level. In practice, if the scene is properly illuminated, there should not be any zebra. At IRE100, the whites will be washed out and all detail will be lost. The XL1s is capable of recording as high as ~IRE 110, but NTSC monitors will wash out everything over IRE100. I've seen otherwise beautiful digital video ruined with this overexposure.

I was wondering about that 110 IRE on the XL1S. Is that when through the s-video ports only? Is it possible to go beyond 100 via firewire?

I've wondered about the same question you asked. I found out that most "modern" DV codecs remap the luma signal to 7.5-100 IRE anyway. If you go thru S-video and capture with MJPEG, perhaps the color mapping is kept to the full range.

From the first post, it's not obvious which camera is used -- if it's an XL-1, you can't vary the zebra setting; you're stuck at 100. For scenes over which you have no control of the lighting, go for proper exposure on the most important part, e.g. the faces mentioned above in a theater setting. I always insure that there are no zebras on the faces.

You may be wondering why there are 4 posts, which look similar?

I came across a very slow Internet connection, and because it was taking so long to load this page, and say the post was sent successfully I decided to hit the back button on the browser, which returned me to the message I was sending. Because I tried it 4 times there are now 4 replies, which look rather similar.

Sorry Guys.

Chris if you need to, please delete the first 3 replies thanks.

All the best,

Ed Smith

Ed, we just figured the needle got stuck....!