Posted this in a Movie Maker group yesterday but no response as yet, maybe
someone here could help.

"Recently bought a Sony Mini DV camcorder. Perfect picture quality in most
respects but one. Taking video of a kids stage show it was mostly OK except
for when spotlights were at a certain part of the stage the resultant video
was overbright and "flared".
Have gone through the camera manual hoping maybe there was some setting I
could use to avoid this but couldn't find anything.
Has anyone come across this and knows a solution. It would be better if it
could be corrected at source but if not can it be corrected afterwards,
using MM or anything else?"

--

Kenny Cargill

Kenny wrote:
compensates for this to some degree. But if yours doesn't have such a
setting, you can zoom in real close the face and let the automatic
exposure adjust to bring in the skin tones, then switch the camera to
manual exposure. It'll hold that exposure. But then you're faced with a
different problem. Only those in the spotlight will be properly exposed,
all others will go very dark. So while in manual exposure mode,
depending on the features of your camera, you may be able to run the
exposure up and down depending on what you're shooting.

There's the opposite problem, such as shooting people in the shade while
their surroundings are brightly lit. The camera makes the people in the
shade almost totally black. For that, look for a "backlit" setting on
the camera. If it doesn't have it, use the technique above of zooming in
and then switching to manual exposure.

Rôgêr wrote:
I forgot to mention about attempting to repair it afterwards. There's
not much can be done to make it look like it should look like if the
video is greatly overexposed or underexposed. But look at the Tools
menu, then Video effects and you'll see brightness increase and decrease
settings. Don't expect miracles.

Thanks Roger for the replies.
I had been using a Canon Hi-8 analogue for a few years and had gotten used
to it but remember having a very similar problem shooting a fireworks
display. Didn't manage to solve it then either.
Unfortunately it got damaged and decided to go digital but it's still a bit
newfangled to me.
Will take note of your suggestions, study the settings more closely and
experiment a bit.

--

Kenny Cargill


"Rôgêr" <abuse@your.isp.com> wrote in message
news:wvednahO9JcvJqTeRVn-qg@pghconnect.com...

Kenny wrote:
prosumer camera, it tends to search for something to focus on. So I just
lock it into manual focus so it stops that infernal blurring.

Once you get used to using MiniDV, you won't ever want to go back to
Hi-8. I've shot some ads for local businesses and they sometimes want me
to insert something they've already shot on Hi-8 or even VHS. The
difference in quality between my shots and theirs is obvious even to
them. They don't ask to do that anymore.

Digging a bit deeper into the menus discovered "Program AE". Number of
options under that and "Spotlight" is one of them which states:

"This mode prevents peoples faces, for example, from appearing excessively
white when shooting subjects lit by strong light in the theatre."

There's another called "Sunset and moon" which states:

"This mode allows you to maintain atmosphere when you are recording sunsets,
general night views, fireworks displays and neon signs."

Will practice a bit using these modes and the manual method. One problem,
here anyway, is that in a professional theatre show camcorders are usually
banned. I was almost thrown out of a circus once when someone spotted the
red record LED, didn't find out until afterwards that it can be turned off!
Another thing I find is that this camera uses a touch screen LCD panel for
most of the functions and I find this a bit fiddly and difficult to see even
wearing glasses.

--

Kenny Cargill


"Rôgêr" <abuse@your.isp.com> wrote in message
news:n5KdnZy9CfwzQqTeRVn-rA@pghconnect.com...

Kenny wrote:
A tiny piece of black electrical tape can go a long way toward making
people unaware of the "recording LED" thing. On the other hand, I always
get permission to shoot before doing so. It's absolutely amazing the
number of times I have permission to shoot and then somebody somewhere
remembered that they shouldn't have allowed me in. This past weekend I
did a professional wrestling match (oh god, please don't tell anybody)
and then a dispute errupted over who had the rights to play the video
from it. Absolute pure crap, no matter how you slice it. Hell, I was
invited in, had one of the professional wrestlers help do the play by
play (Stan Lee, if you follow that sort of thing) and was treated like
royalty while there. Later they called and were screaming bloody murder
about the rights. There's some things I don't like about video work.