You can get a little detail out of the superwhites in Vegas. I think it's the second preset in the following .veg
You have to manually save the preset, I just stuck the filter on a event.
http://www.glennchan.info/Proofs/dvinfo/color-curves.veg

It is a mistake to rely upon zebras for stage work. The hot spots fool it. For a 1/3 three chip like the PD170 using the spotlight filter in conjunction with the manual exposure combined with an accurately calibrated monitor will work well. Trust your eyes at that point and turn the zebras off.

John

Spotlight Filter?
I believe that doesn't work in manual exposure?

Not that I've ever tested it, just assumed as it alters the way auto exposure works it'd do nothing in manual.

Bob.

Would a judicious use of a locked off Grad-ND do it?

I guess I need to brush up on setting the iris and shutter. These are probably two functions that i know least about....

This is the first concert that i have shot, and my normal work is controlled environment stuff where I have full control over the lighting.

I attended the dress rehearsal of this concert and calibrated both cameras with DV Rack, but the follow spot operator didn't work the rehearsal, so by showtime, when the follow spot was in full swing, it was kinda too late to start messing with stuff.

Trust me I've been there and had the same thing happen.

Grazie's idea could almost sort of work but you'd need a spot ND and where you'd need it would shift and at time you might need more than one spot. Not really practical I'm afraid.

The only real solution is to relight the whole show for video. Even the most expensive cameras cannot cope with some stage lighting, opera can be the worst of all. I know for video they can spend a week relighting an opera.

Know this doesn't help at all in your case other than to say even the best with the best gear don't get perfect results in these extreme conditions. From my experience cameras with bigger CCDs do help a lot but they cost.

In general expose for the faces, if anything else goes to 100% black or white your audience will cope but burnt out faces, yuck.

Bob.

Thanks for the reassurance Bob. I'm pretty happy with the rest of the production and i'm sure that my client will be none the wiser... I'm just a bit of a perfectionist.........

So, where can i learn more about getting the best out of Iris and Shutter Speed. I've mentioned in another thread that i just fiddle until things look good. It'd make it a lot easier (not to mention quicker and more accurate) if i knew what the heck i was doing.

Any pointers would be gratefully received.

Cheers,

T

For future reference though, how can I overcome this during the shoot?

I've shot quite a few stage productions with my FX1, poor cousin to your Z1. Manual exposure isn't practical for stage work, because the stage manager changes the lighting presets, seemingly every second (at least they do in the stage work I photograph). Here is what I developed, after a few false starts, and it works pretty well.

Attend dress rehearsal, and get an idea for the lighting levels. Find out if you need a ND filter or not. Generally, I find I can get by without using one.

Next, set the camera to the indoor WB preset. The stage lighting is going to be using all sorts of filtered light, and you don't want the auto WB to try to track that. The indoor preset works quite well, I think.

Set the camera so you can make manual adjustments (i.e., you don't want it in full auto mode), but don't change the iris, shutter speed, or gain. Enable the spotlight mode. This is the key setting to avoid the problem you had, but it is not sufficient. Read on for the last part of the "solution."

On my FX1, I have a "Picture Profile" button. I don't know whether the Z1 has something like this or not. When you press this, you get six different presets that you can define. What I do is define six presets, each one identical to the other except for the "AE Shift" setting. This is (for me) an amazingly useful feature in that it uses the autoexposure setting, including the spotlight adjustment, and then lets you add or subtract from the automatic exposure setting. Thus, you can let the camera do most of the work, and then use this to override when necessary. I define the first preset at AE -1, the next as AE -2, and so on (in stage work, the automatic exposure is never too bright).

I then enable Zebra, set to 100+ (or 100 if you really want to avoid any blow out). When I start seeing zebra on anything, I crank down the AE until the zebra disappears. If the lighting changes, I check this setting again.

What's nice about this approach is that if things start changing quickly (lighting is changing, subject is moving, focus needs adjusting, etc.) and you can't get to the exposure adjustment right away, the AE will still adjust exposure, and at worst you'll be only slightly underexposed until you get around to removing the PPV menu adjustment.

When using this technique, in post you often have to use levels to adjust the midtones, but the result is quite satisfactory. It really is nifty to be able to see the detail in a white costume in a follow spot, while still getting good exposure on the bright green or red in some other part of the set.

I shot a concert with my Z1 on the 4th of July holiday. For WB, I went up to the front row and aimed with full zoom at a guitar player's white t-shirt and used that for manual WB adjustment. It made a world of difference. The lighting did change a bit through the show, and sometimes to a slightly greenish cast, but in all the WB on tape made the video look better than what I saw with my own eyes at the show. (In the actual show everything had a reddish cast that looked awful)