i was shooting some test shots with the DVX tonight, and suddenly the compression demon decided to show its face. I was shooting a dress rehearsal of a dance production with full stage lighting, including a full stage scrim at the rear of the stage. I was actually overall very happy with the results, both in color and light sensitivity. I recorded a few fade outs and the dancers were very clear right down to near black. The problem arose with the flat colors being projected on the scrim. Naturally, a scrim lit from top and bottom is going to have some color disparity as light reaches the middle of the cloth, and a very subtle gradient is produced. When tape is played back however, there winds up being three defined areas of color on the scrim as opposed to a smooth gradient, and the compression is blatent.

So the question becomes, are there any adjustments i can make to the cam to alleviate this to a degree? Obviously I cant avoid the pitfalls of compression, 4:1:1 is 4:1:1. And also obviously, flat colors like this arent too often encountered. It's more a curiosity of how this could be improved upon.

well, you could shoot with the cine-gamma off. If you keep the gamma more linear, the banding will be less noticable--but then it might just look like one solid color rather than a gradient. You could also try adjusting the exposure (and if you have control of the lighting, there are other exposure related thing you could do). Or, if you can throw a lighting texture on the cyc (via gobo or breakup flag), that would help. But generally, yeah, you're screwed. Pro/sumer cameras have their limits.

best luck

This message has been edited. Last edited by: joren,

thanks joren, i am probably shooting with the dvx under the same conditions again tommorow night, so i'll try turning the cine-gamma off (it was on now that i think about it). Curious now what kind of difference it makes. Hopefully it wont flatten the color out too much - when other color were projected the gradients came out very nice and rich, no banding. Just the reds did it. I'll try adjusting the exposure with the cine-gamma on too to see if that works maybe.

By the way joren, how did i know you would be the one responding to this question? Shoulda just PM'ed ya