Dark video quesiton on Pana GS250

[helper]

Hi all,

I have a panasonic PV-GS250 and shot some racing footage the other day. It came out a bit dark and I was looking as some things that might give it a little more light. One of the things I was thinking of was taking off the hood in front of the lens and putting on a uv filter, thus letting a little more light into the lens, as the hood looks like it blocks the lens a bit. The other idea I was playing around with was getting a telephoto lens that way I would not have to zoom out much and would have more light come in. Does anyone think any of these ideas will work.

Thanks for any help..

[jagabo]

No. If the hood was blocking the light you would see it in the frame. It's job is prevent light from the sides scattering within the body of the lens and screwing up the black level or casting rays across the frame. A UV filter will let less light through (although the difference should be negligible) but could help if the UV is confusing the camera's auto exposure circuitry (not likely on a decent camera). A telephoto lens will likely have a higher f-stop unless you spend a lot of money -- so you'll get less light, not more.

In any case, dark footage, if indeed it is dark, is probably not because the camera isn't getting enough light unless you are talking about shooting under very low light conditions (at night for example). It's because the auto (or manual) exposure was set wrong. How are you judging the darkness? Viewing on a computer? On a TV? Video normally looks darkish, especially the darker parts of the image, on a computer monitor because computer monitors have different gamma curves than TVs. Try using the camera's analog video outputs to send the signal directly to a TV -- does it still look dark?

[julitomg]

The UV filter should have very little effect on exposure (if any)jagabo is right, the telephoto lens won´t "give" you more light, all the contrary(and you´ll probably need to shoot from a tripod)...it´s more likely that the camcorder´s auto exposure tried to compensate for certain conditions and was "fooled" by them, for example; if you shoot against big areas of sky or the race track reflecting a strong sunlight, light bouncing off cars´shiny finishes, etc...the auto setings (iris, shutter speed, gain) will give you a darker image since it reduces the level of the strongest levels to a "safe" average. Try to use manual settings instead, record some tests. If you shoot a subject, lest´s say a person´s medium shot against a sunny sky, you´ll notice that the face is darker because the camcordes tries to bring the sky down to a certain level (and you´ll see it in a nice blue tone), but if you switch to manual, open the iris (or exposure control) until the subject´s face gets a better level (lighter) but the sky will probably look "washed"(goodbye to that great blue) but at least you´ll get the important part of the shot the way you want. Good luck

[helper]

Hello,

I am sorry for the confusion. It was a night race that came out a bit darker then I wanted. It is not the best lit track. Thank you for the ideas for shooting some day stuff as I do hit daytime car shows....

Hope to hear from you soon..

[jagabo]

The camcorder may have a night mode you can try. It may also have a manual fine tune for the auto exposure. That way you can tell it to continue using auto exposure but to always expose slightly brighter than the camera thinks is right.

Otherwise you can adjust the brightness of the video with some editing software. The results will likely be very grainy though. If you post a few seconds of the video someone will probably take a look at it.