HMC40 Meets Fantasy of Lights

[dan.carter]

A quick trip to Scottsdale Arizona's Fantasy of Lights Christmas light display. The HMC40 handled it easily.

http://www.vimeo.com/8006473 (http://www.vimeo.com/8006473)

[ravencr]

Looks great Dan...surprisingly little noise. 12db max gain I presume?

[dan.carter]

I shot these lights in Auto Iris, but checked once and was at 18db. I was happy to end up with mostly keeper clips.

I'm always impressed how well any camera with video handles christmas lights. In the past, when struggling to get good hand held Christmas light photos with pocket cameras, switching to video mode produced better results.

Thanks for watching, and the good words.

[ravencr]

Yeah, I wish they'd do a firmware upgrade that would offer an option to limit it to 6 db of gain, as well as 12db and 24db. 24db is way too grainy in real low light, and I'd rather just not shoot then to get bad footage in the end. 12db from what I've seen in decent low light is great and even 24db in decent low light looks pretty darn good, as well...it's when the light really gets bad that it turns out crappy, washed out, etc.

[BobDiaz]

ravencr,

It would have been nice if the firmware had given us more choices, rather than +12dB & +24dB.

Something like and auto limit of: +0dB, +6dB, +12dB, +18dB, and +24dB would have been nice.


Bob Diaz

[ravencr]

I totally agree, and usually having a manual number to allow us to input would be the ultimate, because depending on how bad the light is, sometimes 12db looks great and other times it looks like total crap, yet unless you go to full manual mode, you can't adjust it any other way than to let the camera do it's thing automatically.

Chris