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Digital Camera for lighting work


peter

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As far as I can see from some Googling, the Pentax K100 uses Sony APS-C sensors with a diagonal measure of a bit over 33mm. This means that lenses will have an "effective" focal length of about 1.5 times the way they'd perform on a 35mm camera. Put another way, the 18-50mm zoom would be equivalent to about 27-75mm.

 

The good news is that, while searching for details of the sensor size, just about every reference I found to the K100 was positve.

 

Bob

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Well, I've just bought a Pentax K100D and am very impressed - takes really good pictures in low light and the ccd stabiliser function is damn good, so good I leave it on. The supplied lense doesn't have a very wide aperture - f5.6, but even set to ISO 1600, the pics are quite grain free. front of house or side stage pictures even in saturated colour work very well.

 

This is the first BR thread that has cost me money!

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Hi all

 

Finally had the time to set up my new Fuji Finepix F30 :) that Santa brought me.

 

Leggy Lynn tells me that Jessops advised Santa that, although it's a compact, there is a manual mode which allows manual setting of aperature, ISA (Down to 1600) and other 'SLR-type' features, which make it quite versatile and suitable for working in low-light situations.

 

I've got no show work on until the end of January, but I'll report back then.

 

Happy new year when it comes everyone.

 

Joe

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Just got back from working on a conference to find a nice new K100D sat on the table waiting for me. Have been messing about with it since 4pm, and have some beautiful shots, sake reduction feature is amazing, hand held indoor shots are crisp. Enough publicity...

 

It has a manual white balance setting, where you take a picture of a white piece of paper and it adjusts itself. I then took a picture of the jar of jelly beans and the colours were superb. [I'm off again, sorry]

 

My question to the floor now is, should I set the white balance in this way with the open white lanterns in a rig, then proceed to take other lighting states, regardless of their colours?

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Yes, you're likely best to manually set the WB (either using the white paper trick or compromising on the tungsten preset) and leaving it there. If you leave it in "Automatic", the camera will be trying to compensate for your carefully considered colour washes! Yes, you can adjust later, but it's worth getting as close as you can on the original.

 

As for the Tungsten preset, I have no experience of your specific camera, but usually this is setup for something around 3200-3400K. Stage lighting tends to be a bit warmer than that...2600-3000K so you MAY get slightly more accurate results balancing for your specific lanterns.

 

Bob

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Apologies if this is ot, but it seems pretty close!

What about a camcorder to film shows? Does anyone have recommendations, and/or advice on what specs to look out for?

I want one for myself but I am a complete newbie at filming so I have no idea what to look for, and it's a lot of cash to be throwing around. A video tech filmed a recent show for me, with excellent results, on a new sony hdd handycam, but it was an extremely expensive model.

Leggy

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Manual focus, proper audio inputs with separate left rights - even if this is a small external mixer, manual WB, manual exposure, digital output.

 

Biggest snag - the shows that go over 60 mins tape length - long play is poor. Firewire direct out to a laptop works very well and saves time.

 

Make sure that the zoom has variable speed - abrupt starts and stops are poor looking.

 

Virtually all camcorders do a pretty goo job in low light - but the snag is that most have real trouble with exposure - so small viewfinders make deciding exposure when on manual difficult - a big monitor works better.

 

Does this help?

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Gosh what a lot of budding togs in this forum ;)

 

As a canon-man, I must copy others suggestions about the Canon 350D; a good time to buy now as the 400D is out so you should be able to pick up a second hand one from after the 'I-must-have-a 10mpix-camera" blokes replace theirs with a 400D.

 

At 8.5Mpix it is perfect; its small, and something my 1Ds isn't, very quiet and very lightweight; the shutter release whipsers into action. If you want to double the amount of shots you take shoot at 4.2 (ish mpix) as this is also a perfectly splendid resolution for your own records and if you want to reduce even further for web use.

 

Just as important as the camera is the peice of glass on the front. Chances are, you'll be wanting to get some cracking shots of the moody, "this scene was lit by Mr Prince of Darkness #6377" so you want to allow as much of what little light there is through the lens; spend as much as you can on the best lens you can afford aiming for a f2.8 where possible.

 

Happy snapping.

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Thanks for tips folks. Had a chance to play with a stage lighting rig and white balance today. All went well, but some of the results look stunning, but the actual lighing looks no where near as good! What I am after is recording what I see as a member of the audience. A lot more time playing is required. I am very impressed with the image stabliser. Not so good is the battery consumption, but maybe that is because I am messing about with the settings so much. :)
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