Achieving correct exposure in DV

[Malik Sajid]

Hello there....hope everyone would be in a good health.....

 

Well, the questions is quite basic here. I am a studying video production, and here in school we work on DV mostly. I have used Sony DSR 250p for my assignments and projects.

 

Well, lately, i did 2 documentary projects, both outdoor and indoor interviews etc. On both occasions, i ended up shooting uder exposed images. Though they looked fine by eye and in LCD during the shoot, but later when i captured them on my computer, they were very much underexposed.

 

What should i do to get a correct exposure? Normally i take a reference of Auto Exposure. I take a note by pressing Auto Exposure, and if i am outdoor, i will go one stop down of the Auto reading. Is it a fine approach?

 

Anyone please suggest if there is any thing that i should concider in order to take a properly lit image?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

You'd want to make sure your LCD and viewfinder are properly set up. I don't know if your camera and do color bars (i'm assuming it can) so you're want to set up the viewfinder/LCD as such:

 

http://www.videouniversity.com/articles/co...d-how-to-use-em

 

Also on video I normally expose by zebras. make sure your zebras are turned on and if you can set them yourself you should. The zebras will certainly show you what is "just about white," what I mean by that is you normally want your brightest areas of the screen just UNDER zebraing.

Now on DV you're not dealing with a whole lot of range, and on video it's better to under-expose -v- over expose, so you'll have to decrease your contrast ratio with lighting-- either putting more light on your subject or taking light away from your backgrounds to get a nicely exposed image.

It takes time and practice, but you'll get it. You also mention it's darker on your computer NLE, you'll also want to try to set up your computer monitor with color bars to approximate the image-- though computer monitors aren't ideal for looking at video.