Undercranking and turning off the shutter

[Mike Williamson]

I'm shooting 2nd unit for an upcoming project using an HVX, we'll be doing mainly establishing shots including a fair amount of night work. I expect we will be shooting in either 720 PN or 1080 "24P" mode, not sure yet. I'd prefer to use 1080 mode as they'll be intercutting our shots with F900 material, but I'm not sure if we'll have enough P2 cards to accomodate that. I'm wondering if it's possible to get more light out of the night scenes, either by A] turning off the shutter, or B] undercranking.

 

My instinct is that shooting a lower frame rate won't actually get me any more light, as the camera is still going to be capturing 60fps and just flag and drop a greater number of frames. I would love to be wrong about this.

 

I would expect that turning off the shutter would get me another stop. However, last time I used the camera, switching between 180 degree shutter and turning the shutter off did not seem to effect the exposure, judging from the LCD screen.

 

I'm not going to be able to do tests beforehand (leaving tomorrow morning), so any advice is appreciated, thanks!

Edited August 12, 2007 by Mike Williamson

[jeff heit]

I'm shooting 2nd unit for an upcoming project using an HVX, we'll be doing mainly establishing shots including a fair amount of night work. I expect we will be shooting in either 720 PN or 1080 "24P" mode, not sure yet. I'd prefer to use 1080 mode as they'll be intercutting our shots with F900 material, but I'm not sure if we'll have enough P2 cards to accomodate that. I'm wondering if it's possible to get more light out of the night scenes, either by A] turning off the shutter, or B] undercranking.

 

My instinct is that shooting a lower frame rate won't actually get me any more light, as the camera is still going to be capturing 60fps and just flag and drop a greater number of frames. I would love to be wrong about this.

 

I would expect that turning off the shutter would get me another stop. However, last time I used the camera, switching between 180 degree shutter and turning the shutter off did not seem to effect the exposure, judging from the LCD screen.

 

I'm not going to be able to do tests beforehand (leaving tomorrow morning), so any advice is appreciated, thanks!

 

You cannot do any undercranking in 1080i but if you shoot in 720p and use one of the native modes

(30pn or 24pn) you can undercrank and save p2 card space. If you search around dvxuser.com you can even find codes to undercrank to 2fps.