On Friday, January 4, 2013 8:05:35 PM UTC-7, akiley wrote:
On Friday, January 4, 2013 10:42:15 AM UTC-5, Bill D wrote:

I have no idea how it would be done but better video of instrument panels would be welcome. Most videos, most of the time, have the panel in shadow so the instruments are not readable.


The problem with panels is that they tend to be much darker than the surrounding scene. I've battled with this and find that shooting overcast or low light helps a lot as it reduces the brightness range so everything is more likely to fit into the (every) cameras limited capture range. Also with direct sun, if the sun is lighting the panel directly the shot looks good. When I edit, I often cut the scenes with backlight panel. I've also experimented in the past with graduated filters that darken the top of the image only, but it's difficult to do well. Also made a mask to brighten the panel in my video editor which works but is time consuming. A video camera that could shoot HDR would be the trick. Or video HDR in editing. It will come to the masses eventually.

Long ago I had reason to learn some motion picture matte-box tricks which might be adapted to this problem. If you positioned a neutral density gel in front of the camera lens with a cutout in the shape of the panel, brighter light from outside the cockpit would pass through the filter but the dim reflected light from the panel would not thus allowing the correct exposure for each. Gel filters are just thin plastic sheets of high optical quality available in a wide range of colors and neutral density "stops". Of course, matte-box tricks requires the camera to be securely mounted.