On Mon, 4 Mar 2002 16:51:31 -0500, "Brent Wohlberg" wrote:

>I rented a canon xl1, and wanted to get the highest quality footage i could
>acquire for a cross country ski video. I shot a x-country skier in the snow
>this morning, and had my lighting situations change continually (bright sun,
>clouds). I would be able to get some definition in the snow, then the
>overall shot would be dark. I would have to adjust my f stops until the snow
>defenition was almost non existant (white) before i could get my skiier
>properly exposed. I was getting frustrated because the viewfinder didn't
>seem to be co-operating with a true reading. Luckily I brought along a
>reference monitor so i could see that i was getting some shitty footage.
>Unfortuneately, i couldn't bring the reference monitor with me onto the
>trails, so I ended up winging it, and my shots were all over the place
>exposure wise.
>
>I would have the camera set manually, so that the snow was over exposed and
>the skier looked bright in the viewfinder, then in the next shot, the
>exposure would be snaffued, as cloud cover would come in and mess things up.
>I was trying to make my adjustments on the fly . I was getting frustrated as
>well at the viewfinder because it wouldn't give me a true reading.
>
> Question1.
> How do I properly expose for Snow and Skier?
>
>Question2.
>How do i keep the lighting constant under these changing lighting
>conditions??
>
> My skiier was wearing bright blue, and yellow.... Any quick solutions????

Yes, but at the risk of raising the "XL-1 lovers'" ire yet
again...;-) The VX2000/PD150 handles the lighter tones
better (less "burn-out" due to lower contrast), handles the
subtler near-neutral colors better (instead of turning them
brown or grey), has a sharper picture, has less "outlining"
on contrasty edges (lotsa these in snow-shooting), has
better AF, and (maybe most important for you) it permits
biasing of the excellent AE in 1/2 stop increments to
compensate for things like bright averages that do not
represent correct exposure, while still enabling you to
use the advantages of AE (you can also take care of color
biases and excess/insufficient saturation - as you can
also do with the "s" version of the XL-1). These controls
are accessed with the small button at the rear base of
the handle, and are changed using the wheel at the camera
lower left rear corner. BTW, if you use the accessory
large eyecup with the VX2000/PD150 and carefully adjust
the finder brightness and color level (vx2000) while
connected to a monitor for reference, the finder serves
as a pretty good guide for exposure (it may need "zeroing
in", after a little field experience, though...). You can
also set "zebra" levels in the finder for judging
overexposure areas... For more on the VX2000/PD150, see:
http://www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/sony_dcr-vx2000.htm