Travis,

Using a circular polizer you make the effect lighter and lose about one stop. It cuts glare but it also warms the color and presses the blacks as mentioned. I pretty much leave it on all the time, unless you have a real light problem, and then there is not much helping that other than lighting.

I always shoot 1/60 in frame 16:9 and adjust aperature to suit for almost everything from event video and outdoor wildlife.

the xm2/gl2 is a terrrific camera!!! that is why it is still so useful and not having been rreplaced.

I'll have to run some tests here at home and maybe try that out for an indoor ceremony.

How are you liking shooting in 16x9? I currently shoot 4x3 (with the 16x9 guides on) and just use a mask from photoshop to simulate a 16x9 view. I've heard that shooting in 16x9 on the GL2 reduces resolution. Your experience?

Travis,

You loose pixels by not using the entire chip, so instead of 1.7 megabytes you get proportionally less. that doesn't change the resolution of the actual picture, only the size of it.

If I am wrong about that someone please enlighten me.

The xl2 has 16:9 chips, so it has less when you use 4:3, but that does not make the picture grainer/noisier.
Try out shooting a subject in 4:3, then in wide screen, print them up and have a look, or play them on a wide screen tv.

I recently bought a 50 inch plasma and ran wide with gl2 and xl2 footage, both used the entire screen, my friends setting and watching did not really notice any difference, though I could tell cause i was looking for detail, etc.

the more i shoot with my gl2 the more I love it.

I just finished a skating video (in 4:3 as that is what the skating club wanted) and one section of it is shot with the lights out and skaters with lights on their feet, really quite amazing look. I'd be glad to post it if anyone wanted to see it.

Graham, would you mind telling me which polarizer you use?

A link or precise model name / number would be extremely helpful.

You have email. - g

I'd love to see it.

Me Too!!!!


.. . please?

Graham, thanks so much! Unfortunately I had my old email address registered, but it's now been updated. If you could shoot me a mail again, this time I'll pick it up :)

Thanks again!

Same here. Would have posted last night but the forums were moving like a snail . . .

dark skate
 

Here is the clip,

I had to reduce it down to a few seconds with no audio. the entire session was 4 minutes 28 seconds sanf took 50 mega bytes.
Of course it is in half resolution as well, but I think you will get the picture.

Excellent Dale! - I bet the club was pleased? That in even MORE slomo and set to music, used as background behind credits or whatever, is fabulous material indeed. And that with our 'umble XM2 - huh?

Thanks for sharing - g

Nice! Do you remember what settings you were using for the shoot?

Travis,

I white balanced to the ambient light, I then went to manual setting the shutter at 1/30 so I would get more blur in the lighted skates, I adjusted until I liked the darkness level. I have red up a notch or two in the preset.

I liked the footage right out of the camera. However, in Post I dropped brightness to -20 and made contrast 150. I then applied a gausian blur to the clip to make the light streak better. The full 4 minutes at full resolution looks really nice. Definitely one of my better pieces of event type footage.

Thanks for the info.