I am begging for some ideas and suggestions.

[capman21]

Ok guys here is the problem. I do all my shooting with my minidv cam indoors, and it produces okay to good quality. I use it on automatic mode. Problem with it is sometimes its a little too dark, but I noticed something. The other day when it was recording someone walked pretty close to the lens and when they did the minidv automatically adjusted the brightness and it was the exact look and brightness I want. It was perfect. So question is how can I "force" my minidv to adjust to this brightness all the time. Someone suggested that I may be able to take part of a old speaker front, you know the "mesh" type, and put it in front of the lens, and this will make the camera adjust to see through the mesh resulting in the brightness. I am not sure, I am just hoping there is a way. I have tried using the camera on manual, and increasing the brightness that way. It has levels 1-5 with 1 being the lowest brightness. On level 1 the brightness is good, but the vid isnt. It makes the vid quality very, very smooth in detail. What you think guys is there anything I can do either way?

[redwudz]

Probably not much you can do. Putting something over the camera lens will just result in a blurred image. What would be the best is to pay attention to your backgrounds. Don't shoot a video of someone standing in an open door with a bright background. You will surely end up with a underexposed face.

Any camera will likely have this problem. You need to look to see what the background is and realize the limitations of the camera and it's system for reading light values. Study the camera manual. It should detail how it reads the light values from a scene. If you want to tape a person, zoom in close to eliminate the brighter background.

And learn how the manual settings work for brightness. Moving picture companies spend a lot of time and energy planning and checking light levels before filming.

Sorry, there is no easy answer to all this. Experience and practice, along with knowing the limitations of your equipment is really the best solution.

If you shoot primarily indoors, look into some auxiliary lighting. A simple umbrella reflector and a single spot light will do wonders for indoor shots. Everyone will think you are a pro and it only takes a few seconds to plug in a light and set a reflector. With the proper lighting most any camcorder can output decent video Using a tripod or even a unipod for the camera will eliminate a lot of the shake of a handheld camera. Or practice holding the camera to lessen this.

This is all fairly simple. But it takes some work and planning.

[daamon]

It'd help a great deal if you said what your miniDV cam actually is...

What kind of "indoors"? House, halls, churches etc.?

Is there anyway to attach a light source to the cam? A hot shoe perhaps?

[capman21]

It is a JVC GR-D250. I just noticed something. I had "night mode" turned on when I tried to use it manually. I wonder if this is what caused the video to be to smooth in detail. Guess I will have to try it out later on in the week.