24p sucks in low light?

J

Johnny Fever

New member
why does 24p have such a poor low-light response?
anyone?
the interlaced modes are much stronger in low light.

is there anything i can do (other than boost the gain) to get better performance
from the 24p mode in poorly lit conditions? basically I shoot doc, so adding more light isn't usually an option, and boosting the gain tends to make things pretty ugly. why shoot with such a nice camera if you're only going to produce ugly images.
 
Did you do any research before you purchased a $3000 camcorder. This camera produces beatiful images if you know what you're doing. It isn't the camera, it's the person behind the camera.
24p isn't very good in low light, that's been discussed and documented. You're recording in a progressive format. If you're shooting in low light, you are going to need to light to get great images, just like film, hence "24" frames.
If you absolutely must shoot in lowlight without any lights, you can drop the shutter; 1/24, etc. Open the iris. up the master ped. etc. If you must use the gain, then drop the master ped to compensate for the noise.

If you don't have barry's book - GET IT!
 
It's due to the very nature of progressive scanning, vs. interlaced scanning.

Read Steve Mullen's whitepaper on progressive for more details. In short, interlace combines lines from two different scans, and doing so lets it average the noise lower while adding about a stop of brightness (twice as bright). The penalty is that you're dealing with an interlaced rather than progressive frame, and it's about 30% lower resolution.
 
And maybe we shouldn't blame it on video at all. Just the shutter speed/frame rate. I choke everytime I read the ASC magazine and see what kind and how damn many lights are being used. Certainly won't be pluggin any of THAT into a household outlet. :grin:
 
Bear in mind that if you have the DVX100 you CAN'T use gain in progressive mode.

If at all possible you ALWAYS want to avoid gain. It creates too much noise in the image.

Often times when filming a live band or stand up commic, or anything in a dark venue like that, you can speak with whoever runs the house system and get them to up the lighting a little; most are friendly and will help you out; they get these type of requests all the time.
 
And for clarification, the no-gain-in-progressive is a limitation of only the original DVX100. The DVX100A and DVX100B both allow up to 12dB of gain in the progressive modes.
 
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