A picture brings back the memory.

A movie brings back the experience.

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the answer to your question, please let me know.

Frequent Questions Answered
If you don't find the information you need, please do not
hesitate to contact me so I can answer your question

LIGHTING QUALITY

Q: Home video sound is never very good. Is the quality of your sound really better?
A: There are three things that are the primary causes of noisy and low-quality sound with home video cameras: (1) a built-in camera is always going to pick up some "hum" from the camera's mechanism; (2) the quality of a built-in microphone is never equal to that of an external professional mic; (3) the distance of the camera from the subject often prevents adequate pickup of sound. None of this is a problem with my equipment. I can turn on six microphones and notice no difference in the sound signal at all.

SOUND QUALITY

Q: Will the sound of a stage play you videograph be as good as movie sound?
A: Probably not, because of the peculiarities of being on stage. The most troublesome sound problem will be ambient noise -- the collection of lights humming, people moving, actors walking. All of these would be controllable on a movie set, but not on a stage. And then there's actors' proximity to microphones. If we have to put mics at the front of the stage, actors at the back of the stage, or whose back is to the audience, will not be heard quite as clearly as those closer and facing the microphones.
     But the sound will still be very good, but those factors will prevent it from being of the very highest quality.

IMAGE QUALITY

Q: What do you mean by the picture being "broadcast quality"?
A: The quality is comparable to what you would see on your local station's news broadcast. If lighting is sufficient, colors are bright and true, and there's not the graininess or "muddiness" that is often experienced with home video.
     The quality is not equal to what you will see in the best-produced Hollywood movies. They use cameras that cost as much as a house (in places other than San Diego!), and then they process the bejeebers out of it to get that perfect picture. However, the quality of my video is equal or better than what you will see in many of the smaller independent films at the theatre.

Q: When you tape a stage play, will the picture be as good as a movie?
A: Probably not -- because of stage lighting. What looks good to the naked eye in a live-stage performance may not work well at all when photographing by any method. Both dark spots and hot spots tend to exaggerate. If dark background is used, as it often is, a camera has a very hard time figuring out what to do with the extremes in light and hues. If we could adjust for each scene, we could cure that. But in a live performance, where there is constant change, we have to rely on the camera's automatic exposure features; and as good as those are, it simply cannot always figure it out. So it's likely that there will occasionally be portions of a picture that are underexposed or overexposed or both.

                                                               Michael Thomas Tower
                                                               MTTvideo@aol.com
                                                               619-957-3396 (SAN DIEGO)

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