On Thu, 21 Mar 2002 00:53:51 GMT, Federico wrote:

>I'm an aspiring cinematographer. I come from a film background but I'm going
>to shoot my first movie on DV soon. I am going to use the Sony VX2000 during
>this shoot. I was wondering if anybody knew what kind of latitude this
>camera has.

As video cameras in its group goes, it has unusually
good latitude - but not as good as the more expensive,
configurable video cameras. For comparisons with other
Mini-DV cameras, look at:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder--comparison.htm
In the daylight comparison frame-grabs, look at
the shadow and highlight areas - the 2000 retains
detail in these areas better than the others in
the comparison. Check out also the contrasts in the
low-light comparisons (where the 2000 also shows
better blacks along with the better shadow detail).
Check out the URLs referenced for comparisons with
other brands - the 2000 performs well there, too...
With the custom controls (no control over contrast,
alas...), you can set up the camera pretty much
the way you want to get the best image for the type
of shooting you are doing (AE-bias, saturation, color
bias, sharpening can be adjusted - for a "rich"
look, a "spare" look, a "warm" look, a "clean" look,
a "soft" look, or about anything you need or want...).
If you mean by "latitude" how much exposure error
is tolerable, though, the answer is almost none on
the overexposure side, and maybe somewhat over one
stop on the under exposure side (requiring filtering
during editing to restore the image to "normal").
If you do not need to match properly-exposed
footage, you might be able to save an even darker
image. Learn to trust the VX2000 AF and AE (with
appropriate bias set) - the errors are fewer than
you might expect, and the errors in the AE can
generally be corrected. Of course, if you are
shooting under controlled conditions, MF and ME
may be more appropriate...