On Tue, 29 Oct 2002 14:34:00 -0500, "Michael Volow" wrote:

>Did my first theater video shoot for amateur troop with my Sony trv 330.
>They wanted full stage view, more of a record of their performance. However.
>at that distance the faces were small, but the overexposure (autoexposure of
>small bright objects on large dark background) made the faces look like
>little white discs. For the second act I tried the spotlight menu
>setting-->only slight improvement. I did a little shooting with the manual
>exposure dialed down to some visually acceptable level on the LCD-->further
>slight improvement.
>
>Outcome was in general highly unsatisfactory. Besides poor resolution, there
>seemed to be smearing/blooming of the highlights (esp foreheads), even with
>improved exposure correction.
>
>Is that the best I can do with this camera. Or are there other
>settings/techniques/filters that can lead to more acceptable pictures in
>theater photography with cheap camcorders? I assume a higher end camcorder
>would have less of this problem.

Yes - the contrast range that can be recorded with
better 3-CCD cameras is generally wider (see:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/vid_pict_characts.htm and
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder--comparison.htm
for more on this), but, as LJ says, the lighting
ratios in stage work can be very high, and beyond
the range of any camcorder without adding
"flattening" overall illumination...