random thought on the A1
 

I just got done doing a couple of weeks of shooting. My initial thoughts on the A1 is I'm sometimes blown away and I'm sometimes really aggravated. I attributed the latter to user error. I'm still getting used to it, but I'm realizing how some very subtle adjustments can really affect the quality of the footage. In the two weeks I was on location, I didn't have a decent monitor/tv to review the footage, so now that I'm home and it's thrown up on the big screen, I'm surprised at what turned out bad and what looks good.

I don't think I'll go out on the field again without a decent monitor.

What kind of field Richard?

Richard:

In what way was your footage bad? Can you post a sample?

Although highly unlikely, you could have a problem with your camera. I had one A1 which had a problem with occasional, yellowish tint, garbage footage being captured which you couldn't see on the on camera display. The next segment after stopping and restarting capture would be back to normal.

I have to go back and review, but I noticed that it really struggled with high contrast light. I tried locking in the exposure and some other techniques I remembered from doing 33mm photography, but it seemed like a variance in lighting threw the camera off pretty good, especially if set to A.

I tried taking some b-roll. I had a lot of nice landscape to work with down in rural Oklahoma. I was pretty disappointed after having seen what a lot of people are able to accomplish with the camera. The colors seemed over saturated or the images weren't very sharp. I was taping at 24f, which I've heard can give some focus challenges. I'll try and post some good and bad. I still need to get Premier, which I'll probably have later this week. imovie doesn't seem to handle 24f very well if at all. Major audio sync issues.

Well, I just realized I had the AGC on, which probably affected things. I'm still getting used to this camera.

First thing to do is turn off all the automatic stuff. The camera comes with it all turned on, I think.

Now I'm aggravated with myself. Time to go through this manual again and do some test shots.

One of the things that makes sense now is I couldn't get certain things to focus, like a full moon shot. Thought that was odd, but I can see where the AGC may have been messing with that. The moon was just a big white blob. Any ideas what else could have caused that? I turned the camera to manual and still couldn't get it to get a clear shot. thx

Make sure you're not in "green box mode" I think this effectively disables manual focus all together