GH5S settings for rapidly changing brightness (concert lights)

Robbie wrote on 10/2/2022, 12:38 AM

Wind back a year and I ALMOST had to stand in as video shooter for a dance school run by my son and daughter in law.  I managed to avoid that when I needed to be last minute stand in on the audio desk (I’m an amateur but experienced video editor and audio engineer but have negligible shooting experience), but it looks like I’ll be drawn in to shooting this year’s concert.

Last year’s concert was shot with two cameras – Sony PXW-X70 and the GH5S - and I’ll have use of both this year. The guy who did shott last year had no experience with the GH5 and while we got plenty of usable footage from it, on a few occassions it was slow responding to changes in lighting resulting in burnouts until the camera caught up. The attached clip gives an indication of the issue (in this case coming from black to illuminated)with the left half of the clip from the Sony and the right half from the GH5.  The Sony gave a pretty good representation of what the human eye saw. I have a vague recollection that while I was scrolling through the in camera menus earlier this year I saw a slider to adjust exposure response speeds but haven’t been able to find it again or find any reference to it through internet searches.  Any suggestions from GH5 users on settings or to links to good GH5 User groups/forums would be welcome.

Cheers, Robbie

Comments

DMT3 wrote on 10/2/2022, 1:00 AM

Turn off auto exposure. Set it for manual at the optimum lighting setup.

Musicvid wrote on 10/2/2022, 8:23 AM

Go to the preshow Sound Check and ask the lighting guy to go "Full Up."

Set and lock Manual White Balance, Manual Exposure (Zebras), "maybe" Manual Focus depending.

Never touch them during performance, even when scene is colored, maybe open up exposure by 1/2 stop during dimly lit scenes. That is it.

Robbie wrote on 10/8/2022, 7:55 AM

Thanks @DMT3 and @Musicvid for your quick responses and apologies for the belated replies (lets just say this last week has been … challenging).  I’ve clicked my “Thank You” for both responses but haven’t tagged either as solution as it was both replies in combination that got me over the line with how to move forward an d the forum doesn't seem to let me mark both as the solution.  As a shooting newbie the advice seemed almost counter intuitive but quickly became an “öf course” moment. I had originally been thinking that with the rapid changes in lighting I wouldn’t be able to keep up in manual modes and therefore would need to rely more on the auto settings.

I’m still intrigued though by the in camera menu option to adjust the speed of auto exposure adjustments that I thought I saw when playing with the GH5S earlier this year after last year’s concert. Again thanks for your responses. FYI I've found a local camera store that offers some prfetty good camera trainig classes I'll be taking advantqage of in the new year and looking forward to it. Retirement isn't too far awayh so also looking forward to getting more into this stuff :-) .

Cheers Robbie.

Musicvid wrote on 10/8/2022, 12:32 PM

Auto White Balance, Auto Exposure, and Auto Focus are your worst enemies on a live stage. Lock it and leave it is the best advice.

Hint: if you mark one reply as the Solution, and then mark the other, both of us will get tagged.

vkmast wrote on 10/8/2022, 1:04 PM

Re marking two comments as the solution, please read here.

Musicvid wrote on 10/8/2022, 1:09 PM

Or, just tag @DMT3 as the solution; he said it first.