On Mon, 22 Apr 2002 02:34:34 +1200, Brian wrote:

>I own a Sony TR580E 8mm video camera and are hoping to upgrade to a
>digital video camera.
>One of the weakness of the camera is recording someone in the shade on
>a bright sunny day with bright sunlight in the background.
>The camera see's the bright background and reduces the exposure making
>the person appear darker and more difficult to see.
>I can use the backlight boost on the camera but this causes the
>background to become completely white as it now is over exposed.
>
>Do modem digital camera's have this problem ?
>Are there any camera's such as Sony that don't have this problem ?

Excess picture contrast and resultant inability to show
good shadow and especially highlight detail with overall
"normal" exposure is a characteristic of one-CCD cameras,
though some 3-CCD Mini-DV cameras also suffer this image
defect (increased contrast increases the appearance of
sharpness, useful with cameras with more limited true
resolution). Underexposure helps with the highlights
somewhat, but at the price of losing even more shadow
detail. If you can, take a look at the image of the
Sony VX2000 compared side-by-side with any one-CCD model
(and some popular 3-CCD cameras, too), and see what a
good tonal range can do for image quality... BTW, this
and 28 other video image characteristics are described
(most with examples) at:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/vid_pict_characts.htm