A1 for weddings, Good Idea?

[Joel Peregrine]

Originally Posted by Kevin Key

I personally don't know why everyone is so excited about low light performance. I have had very few situations where I needed to use that feature and all of there were either when I forgot my light, the battery died or didn't care about quality.

For me not using on-camera lights is a big selling point. A lot of people won't hire a videographer because they specifically don't want a bright light changing the ambiance they've designed. I also like the fact that because I don't use a light no attention is on me and I don't affect what anyone is doing by making them aware of the camera. As Noa said you're also much more free to shoot when, how and what you want if your subject doesn't have to be within range of your light. There are clients that expect camera lights and those that don't want them. There is plenty of work to go around if both styles are available.

[Tom Hardwick]

You got me there Bill - brain fade this end.

Noa - the anamorphic is a cylindrical wide-angle converter as against the more common spherical wide-angle converter, so there's nothing special about it in reality. Sony added four Steady Shot settings from the FX1 onwards because of these problems Panasonic talk about, one of which is the wide converter setting. I'm pretty sure the DVX doesn't have these alternative OIS settings, which is probably why they think it safer to recommend switching it off entirely.

Auto focus is a different matter, and the differing planes of focus you get when using an anamorphic make switching that off good advice.

Kevin - low light performance is just so important for wedding videographers as there's no way you can light the typical church even if you were allowed to and had the time and equipment available. Same with the reception, and couples propensity for 'romantic' lighting means that very often you simply can't go round splashing on-camera light about and destroying their wants.

The beauty of the VX2100 was not only it's low-light supremacy but that it had a fast f/2.4 full telephoto - a good half-stop faster than the FX1 and a stop faster than the XH-A1. Of course both these cameras use 1080 chips of the same size as the VX, so they start out with a huge disadvantage light-gathering wise.

tom.

[Kevin Key]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

What do you mean with NR features? I did notice that with the low light presets you can find here as well some ghosting does appear, it works well for the first dance if they don't move that much but for fast motion it doesn't look that nice.

If you are using the NR1 feature of the A1 for moving objects, the high setting gives a ghosting of the image... I learned this one the hard way half way through shooting a school pageant... ;-)

From what I hear, the NR2 is much more friendly for moving subjects. I'd verify that info first however ;-)

[Bill Busby]

If you look closely, all of the three NR1 settings have ghosting to varying degrees.

[Kevin Key]

Originally Posted by Joel Peregrine

For me not using on-camera lights is a big selling point. A lot of people won't hire a videographer because they specifically don't want a bright light changing the ambiance they've designed. I also like the fact that because I don't use a light no attention is on me and I don't affect what anyone is doing by making them aware of the camera. As Noa said you're also much more free to shoot when, how and what you want if your subject doesn't have to be within range of your light. There are clients that expect camera lights and those that don't want them. There is plenty of work to go around if both styles are available.

I can definitely understand that point of view, but I think we must first qualify "low light". To me that mean candle lit tables... In which case, that can be tricky to shoot from a distance with any cam and no ext light... Most times, the venue has overhead lighting, especially if you are filming the wedding... Very rarely do you see a wedding with low light... For wedding receptions, that's a different story. I think you can shoot the ambience (people talking and mingling) without the light for a natural look, but when you are doing the one on one shots, lighting is a must. An example is for shooting the special words from first family (mom, dad, etc). Also, the garter, bouquet and first dance... For the fillers, it's not that important... But like you said, there's enough business to accomodate either shooting style. In the end, you have to do what works for you ;-)