in nicholas newell's review, he found "burn out" producing colored artifacts from bright reflecting windows in an outdoor shot. i am considering this camcorder for web published product shots of highly spectral, chrome plated, hand tools. would amature studio lighting, filters, or another choice in camcorders solve the problem? i like the versatility of the 1 megapixl still/video pc100.

-- Stan Clarkson (Spinchamp@ao.com), January 02, 2000

Answers

In general, video cameras seem to have a narrower dynamic range than digital still cameras do. The issue of the colored artifacts applies to many still digicams as well though, since there's a well-known "purple haze" problem that affects many of the 2 megapixel digicams when dealing with strong highlights.

That said, the whole key to shooting objects such as you describe is to *avoid* strong highlights, and more importantly deep shadows. You're going to need to invest in one or more "softboxes" to provide a very diffuse light source. Basically, you want to surround the chrome object with white reflecting surfaces, since it's going to reflect whatever is around it. If you use just a normal 2- or 3-light setup, you're going to end up with a lot of the object looking black, since it's reflecting the studio surroundings, and only a tiny percentage of that area will be the lights themselves.

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), January 03, 2000.