HVX200, low-light help

P

pedge

Member
Hi everyone,

I was all set to buy the HVX200 until I read in other threads that it isn't great in low light. Now I've got cold feet. I was going to start out making money with the camera by shooting wedding videos and other events. Would you not use an on-board camera light when shooting dark parts of weddings, no matter what camera you use? When I first get the camera, I'll shoot SD using tapes until I have the money to afford P2 cards or a Firestore. Does the camera perform better in low light when shooting SD? Eventually I hope to shoot for broadcast.

The next camera I'd go for after that would be the JVC GY-HD111E, but that doesn't record broadcast standard 1080i and the batteries don't last very long.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Peter
 
the HVX is no worse in low-light than any other camera in it's price range.
yes you can buy on-camera light's (pag C6, vidled) you should be lighting your shot's anyway, lighting is very very very important.
a properly lit shot from an HVX, will always look better than a poorly lit shot from DigiBeta (and be about a quarter of the price.)

ian
 
Keep in mind that the HVX needs close to a 45 foot candle level to get proper exposure wide open, stopped down it requires even more! An on camera light is certainly going to help, but this isn't very flattering lighting for a wedding and certainly it has its limitations. You will end up with a hot foreground and a pretty dark background with an on camera source as your key.

None of the small imager HD camera's are very good in low light. The dvx or any of the 2/3" HD cameras is going to be a much better choice for low light conditions.
 
Nothing's going to convince me that the HVX is as good as the A1 in Lowlight situations. That being said, I have discovered that you can get great lowlight footage out of the HVX by simply taking the time to expirement not only with the settings, but a dispaly device other than the LCD.

There are settings in the Technical section, along with footage, that proved to me that I wasn't taking the time out to test all options. Under extreme lowlight conditions, using a shutter-speed of 1/24, I recorded outside footage with apartment lights and I could see the subjects just fine. Also, the 1/24 was nowhere NEAR as smeary as it was on the LCD, when taken to an HDTV and an SDTV with the camera outputting 480i via component

You CAN get great lowlight with the HVX. It requires getting to know the camera and having the resources to do minor tests for tweaking.
 
I completely agree with Kholi. When I first got my HVX, I played around with it in my basement using only the automatic settings, and the results were awful. Then I played around with the manual controls, and was very impressed...
 
Kholi said:
I have discovered that you can get great lowlight footage out of the HVX by simply taking the time to expirement not only with the settings, but a dispaly device other than the LCD. <<<>>>>> using a shutter-speed of 1/24, I recorded outside footage with apartment lights and I could see the subjects just fine. Also, the 1/24 was nowhere NEAR as smeary as it was on the LCD, when taken to an HDTV and an SDTV with the camera outputting 480i via component

You CAN get great lowlight with the HVX. It requires getting to know the camera and having the resources to do minor tests for tweaking.
Click to expand...


;)

shoot with a shutter speed of 1/33 for a bright, but not quite as smeary as 1/24th look.

When shooting for a film, Shoot at 210 degree shutter. it looks very nice and buys you a quarter stop over standard shutter speed. Ive heard from a couple different sources that shooting at 210~220 shutter on the Varicam, is whats used for a film out. it looks the most natural on screen.
 
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