Canon should offer an additional mode on their cameras that allows manually setting the shutter speed and the aperture at the same time. The assumption that the environment lighting is fixed doesn’t apply to filmmaking. Sometimes I set the camera to get the depth blur and motion blur characteristics I want, and then light the scene to get a good exposure. Sometimes I want to overexpose a shot and blow out the sky if I plan to do sky replacement in post.
Another problem with the “automagical” exposure settings is that the camera’s attempt to set the exposure will mess up the blur characteristics in the shot. For example, consider an outdoor scene that I want to be overexposed, nearly white, and dreamy. if I choose aperture priority and open the aperture to allow overexposure, the camera will move to a high speed shutter, causing a sharper staccato “sports” look to the video. This is exactly what I don’t want: a sharp perfectly exposed image.
The HF10 has a so-called “manual” exposure adjustment that shows up on the LCD and is controlled by the joystick. It’s not really “manual”. It is an exposure bias. You can tell the camera that you want the scene either lighter or darker than normal, and it will add this preference into the aperture or shutter priority decision-making. This bias control adds some creative flexibility into the HF10. It’s not perfect. And it’s not straightforward to use like setting the shutter speed and aperture would be. But it does compensate somewhat for the lack of manual control.
You can lock the exposure with the joystick using the [SET] option. Being able to lock the exposure is absolutely critical for a professional looking shot. The shot that changes exposure and gets suddenly lighter or darker as the camera pans is a sure sign of amateur video. Also, you can create an environment that gives you the settings in the camera you want, lock them, and then set up the “real” shot. This is kind of backwards – tricking the camera into the setting you want – but it's an option because of the lock feature.
In summary, the manual exposure controls are complicated. They do a decent job of controlling the exposure for an ideal case, and there is some flexibility available because of locking and exposure bias controls. However, more than other cameras, I would plan to shoot with a “normal” exposure most of the time and handle “looks” in post rather than trying to get in-camera effects.
Natural Light Performance
The following images were taken with the Canon VIXIA HF10 and the Panasonic HVX200 only minutes apart. These are un-retouched photos without color correction. As you can see, the HF10 has good detail, good cinematic coloring and decent cinema gamma. The manual white balance, manual focus, and manual exposure worked well. It would take very little color correction to match the HF10 to the HVX200 in this bright sunlit shot. The colors are amazingly similar between the two images.
Billy Blackwell and Casey Miracle in “Mountain Mafia” by JustUsLeague Films.
Here is what I see in the above images. The color in the HF10 image is less saturated. The camera is providing the “Canon-Film Look” the same look that the GL2, the XL1s, and the XH-A1 provide. You could certainly use this shot in a movie. No problem. It’s got nice depth to it, good skin and hair detail, and the overall coloring is film-like.
Indoor Light Performance
Here is an indoor shot, lit primarily with tungsten. As you can tell, the exposure and color saturation under artificial light differs much more between the two than the outdoor sunlit shot. Here you can really see the different saturation and skin tones, and the overall warmer tone of the HVX200 image. The HF10 image is still very good, perhaps a bit cooler with its colors and less saturated than I’d prefer, but certainly usable for filmmaking.
Tom Menendez in “Mountain Mafia”, courtesy of JustUsLeague Films. If I wanted to match the shot with the HVX200, I would need to bump up the contrast a bit, deepen the blues, warm up the shadows, and add some yellow into the flesh tones. Skin just seems to be rendered more pinkish on the Canon and more yellow-orange on the Panasonic. But these are minor tweaks and it would be fairly easy to correct the HF10 to the HVX image or the HVX to the HF10.
