I need PD170 help/tips

[Jed Shepherd]

Hey everyone.

 

Im making a short film next week and have the ability to shoot with a pd170. Im shooting at day time and have a fair idea about the techinical side of the camera. The main thing i want to know is what works best for this camera? What techniques and tricks have you found that make the image awesome? Im really wanting the image to be the best it can so post work can be carried out and enhance the image even more.(Only in terms of colour correction etc)

[Chris Keth]

In short you'll want to turn down sharpness and color saturation. If you aren't shooting for TV broadcast, I would also turn setup to 0% so you'll have better blacks. How much you turn things down is up to you. A simple lit setup shot in different configurations should tell you what you like.

[Michael Belanger]

My best advice is to check out the deleted scenes on the Bamboozed DVD. You'll see a couple of scenes as they were shot, pre-processing. What they shot is very flat compared to the final image which seems to have been largely built in post. It was shot with Sony VX-1000s (except for the stage portions which were 16mm).

[Toby Orzano]

In my opinion, one of the biggest keys to shooting good video is controlling contrast. Just because it's video and you can get exposure from most natural lighting conditions doesn't mean you can forget about lighting. Use lights to make sure everything falls within the (very limited) dynamic range of the camera. For example, when shooting day interiors, make sure you fill the room with enough light so that everything inside is properly exposed without the windows being completely blown out. Once something is blown out, there is no information there that can be corrected in post. With video there are no excuses for going out of dynamic range because you can look at what will be recorded before you shoot it. But in general, good lighting can make any format look good, even humble old 1/3" DV.

 

Other than that, just use good photography principals. Think about your focal length rather than staying on the widest focal length and moving the camera around. Longer focal lengths can help with the illusion of shallow depth of field which is always a strain with video. Additionally, closeups (at whatever focal length) always appear sharper than wide shots (but don't let this get in the way of good visual storytelling).

[Vedran Rapo]

One technical thing, PD170 can record in DVcam format, it stores a bit more information, but be careful 1 hour cassette that lasts for 40 minutes.

Be sure to control highlights and not to have to big contrast.

[David Auner aac]

One technical thing, PD170 can record in DVcam format, it stores a bit more information, but be careful 1 hour cassette that lasts for 40 minutes.

 

DVCAM doesn't really store more information, it just stores what it does store in a smarter way. The helical tracks are 15µm wide instead of 10µm. This yields a sturdier playback. But theoretically picture quality is fully equal to DV.

 

Cheers, Dave