Have you considered the camera setup? Tint = green to red, color saturation, black level, sharpness, color matrix, etc. are adjustable for each of the camera's six scene files. The best way to set these up are shoot a subject under controlled lighting (I did this with 3200K incandescant bulbs in my basement at night, so daylight didn't mix with electric light). With the camera on and your subject exposed to taste, connect the video out to a properly calibrated monitor or TV. (You can calibrate it using the color bars on the DVC80.) Then play with the scene file settings to create your own preferred look(s). For example, I have scene files for factory defaults, filmic, soft edges, boosted contrast, boosted color saturation, and office/fluorescent lighting, all named accordingly.

As for lighting, try diffusing the light with diffusion paper. You can also use tracing/tissue paper (far from the lamps to avoid a fire!), or white bed sheets witha low thread-count white.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. I found a way to get the picture perfect actually. I just use two of those halogen worklights and attach them on the left and right side of the subject, about 3 feet or so in front of him and point them straight up and slightly away from the subject. The ceiling is white so I guess it reflects the light down or whatever. Then, I found a button on the side of the camera near the autofocus button that says "AUTO" When I push it, it saturates the picture better and everything looks perfect. Not only that, but the video looks good on both the computer monitor as well as the TV screen. So I'm not going to mess with it anymore, wish I had this quality of picture on some of the other videos I shot, as some of them looked washed out (I shoot against a black background)

So for anyone reading this with similar problems, if you can shoot your video in a say, 12'x12' room or so, and shoot halogen lights directly up and a white ceiling, it will look good, don't forget to use that AUTO button too!

As far as diffusing light goes, I tried that using those flexible plastic cutting boards, they diffuse light well, but it's really not necessary if you have a white ceiling in a small enough room so that the halogens fill the room with light.

Well... reflected light is the most diffuse light you can get. Pointing some 800 or 1000 Watt tungsten light to the ceiling or the corner of a ceiling is probably the most used quick and dirty lighting technique in the tv business. The downside is the light is boring because it's just soft and nice and it's the same everywhere.

As for the white balance issues - try holding a 1/4 CTB (color temperature blue) gel in front of the lens when white balancing - the pictures will be a few hundred Kelvin warmer and look great. However, DV camcorders other than pro shoulder mounts often white balance in steps - that means balancing with or without the 1/4 CTB will just look the same (even the DVX 100A doesn't seem to make a difference between 1/4 CTB and no CTB.
If that's the case with your camcorder as well (it doesn't balance exactly in 100K steps) then you could always just use 1/4 CTO (color temperature orange) gels in front of your lights after white balancing - same effect, only it won't affect light sources which are not gelled.

Another gel I sometimes like for skin tones is called "cosmetic rouge" from Lee filters. It's some reddish skin tone with a little diffusion (however not much diffusion). Though I only like it for the keylight - as soon as it hits a white wall or something the color looks a little odd.

DVC80 for 1,100 dollars( US) |Worth the Price?
 

I'v just bought a second hand DVC80 with 391 hours on the taphead. My question, Is it worth the price?

Frankly, you are the only one who can answer that question. If it does the job for you, i guess it's worth it no ?

It's not a bad price.


Have fun

Philippe

Thanks Phillippe, Yes it does the job for me. But what I mean is it worth the price the fact that it is a 2003 model and it' was face-out for a long time, and second the hours meter on the tapehead.

Again thank you.

Jade

I had mine and sold it with 390 hrs on head for $900 on ebay as nobody wanted a SD camera at the time it was a year ago. I'd say it's a good deal. You'll get it between $900-$1100.

DVC80 Chroma Level/phase
 

It's my first time to use a prof. camcorder. I have a GS500 in which I learn some basic manual settings. Now that I owned a DVC80 there are some features that I'm not sure what it will do to the image if i play around it. There are two features that i want your input how to use it and when to use it. It's the chroma level and chroma phase. Please help the new babe in the field of videography.

Chroma level is the amount of color in the picture. You can adjust how much intensity the colors will have. Chroma phase is adjusting the color spectrum. So you can make the overall picture more blue or more red. These are definitely cool things to work with, but remember that whatever you set it to is what is recorded on the tape. Usually it is better to do any kind of color correction in your editing program. That way you can tweak it and change it more easily. If for some reason you don't plan on editing and just putting it out to another media for distribution, then that is where you might want to adjust at the camera. Another reason would to use it as a test bed to make sure the lighting or clothing, etc. will look the way that you want with that particular color look. But it would be better to do the actual recording in standard mode and then tweak in post. Hope this helps.

Thanks David. I think what you say is right. It's better to do color correction in post. Now, I know what Chroma Level and Phase mean. Thanks, this is such a woderful forum where the experts help the newbabes.

DVC80 motor noise
 

I found out that the motor noise of the DVC80 is quite loud. Is this normal? Or something is wrong with my camcorder. How about those who are using the DVX100/a/b is the motor noise loud? I can hear it especially if i do recording in a quiet room. Feedback please...... My GS500 doesn't have this problem.

I haven't really noticed anything out of ordinary when it comes to motor noise. Again I usually shoot in loud places. The question would be does your microphones pick it up?

If I use an external Mic it does not pick up the noise. However, if the internal Mic is used it does pick up the noise. I'm not happy of the noise and it's one of the reasons why I did not choose the HV20/30 because of the motor noise issue. The GS500 which I use as my B cam doesn't have the kind of noise I'm hearing from the DVC80.

DVC80 Service support
 

I'm using an NTSC DVC80 camcorder. I'm a little bit worried if in the future there will be some problems that need fixing. Here in Thailand they used PAL and panasonic service centers are PAL. Especially that the hour meter on the head is 415 hrs. I'm sure that niot long from now my camcorder wil need professional servicing. Is this some sort of a big problem?

DVC80 settings
 

I read from DVFIlm the suggested settings if you want to shoot 24p with DVX. The settings are
detail (-3)
chroma level 0
chroma phase 0
master pedestal (-6)
Iris - (-1)
I;m not going to mention the other settings which is 24p related since my camcorder is a DVC80 which they said is a DVX without 24p. My question is, is it Ok to use these settings when shooting 60i for events? Have anyone tried using these settings in 60i. I'm sure someone out there with a DVX has tried these settings in 60i. What will happen if the iris is adjusted to minus 1? I can't see any changes in the image by changing the Iris settings.