Richtee Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 I have not been real satisfied with the reproduction of shells taken with my camera. Now, it's not a big buck cam, so I don't think I'm expecting too much here...but.. I wonder... I notice when I take a vid of a shell at dusk the colors come out more like *I* see them, as opposed to in pitch black. Just a little ambient light seems to help the camera reproduce the colors and brightness better. Anyone got any input on this phenomina? I don't know a helluva lot about the image processing, etc. going on here... so if this seems elementary, don't fry me TOO badly ;{) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tentacles Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 Rich, what's happening at dark is your camera is raising the ISO level a shit ton to gather enough light to make a picture - so those stars are too bright for it and it sees them washed out towards white. Some of the Canon cameras do very well taking fireworks videos. Ultimately it's just a big crapshoot, though. Depends on how quickly and sensitively your camera will change it's settings. At dusk, of course, the camera isn't trying so hard to get light, so the stars don't come out so overexposed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oskarchem Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 What about lowering the ISO? It can be set manually or automatically.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richtee Posted November 13, 2008 Author Share Posted November 13, 2008 What about lowering the ISO? It can be set manually or automatically.. Oh Christ... now I gotta find the flippin' manual! It DOES have a setting for still pix specifically for fireworks... I dunno about the video function of it tho...Hmm.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tentacles Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 Oskar: The ISO is too low already- that's why it's getting overexposed and washing out the color.. Most cameras have an automatic ISO setting for movies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mormanman Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 You want the ISO to be about 800 to 400 and just for fun I like 200 for my stuff. The manual should be a button that says AV/+ or something like that. I think that that is the ISO or you have to go into settings and find it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
optimus Posted November 14, 2008 Share Posted November 14, 2008 Tentacles is on the money with this. Your camera is exposing for the average brightness of the scene, so if you have a pitch black background with a few very small balls of light it's going to favour the darkness and expose accordingly. Hence the stars get way over exposed. At dusk the difference in brightness is less so the overexposure is less pronounced. If you can find the manual controls you should set it to underexpose when shooting in darkness. Generally it's best to use the lowest ISO possible. Fireworks are bright enough and don't need a high sensetivity to suck in more light. Unless you're filming dim stuff ofcourse - use the lowest ISO possible for Mg-fuelled stars and go higher if it's a charcoal effect. And somewhere in between for glitters etc... Enjoy reading the manual Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrankRizzo Posted November 14, 2008 Share Posted November 14, 2008 Yep, as Tentacles said, there aren't many point-and-shoot cameras that will even give you the option of choosing the sensitivity (ISO) when in movie mode. White balance is also very difficult for the camera to gauge when the metering is done against a black sky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miech Posted November 14, 2008 Share Posted November 14, 2008 I found it helps a lot to use multi spot light monitoring (or what else it is called). The camera will take the average brightness of the received image, and ajust the (virtual) ISO level to it. Setting it manually is preferred however, as you always will choose a better value than your camera will ever be able to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richtee Posted November 14, 2008 Author Share Posted November 14, 2008 Thanks for all that guys... Never really being into photography, that helped! And I have acertained in movie mode I'm stuck with what I got. I can mess with settings in still mode only. Now, we have a decent vidcam here somewhere, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax to get into .mov or whatever. Sheesh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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