HPX250: Low light events and the 250

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digitalgecko

Well-known member
The problem is at most events with a featured speaker, cameras are relegated to the back of the room. As long as you're on a wide shot at 1.6 you're okay. But you got to get that closeup of the speaker and the iris ramps down to 3.2 and it gets pretty dark. I actually brought a 1K and turned it on, and it helped a little, but not that much. The good news is I shot it AVC100, and it's amazing how far you can push that codec. I shot a chamber orchestra at a very dark church last week with no additional lighting at +6db. The wide was dark and the closeup was darker. I was amazed at how far I could push the light level in Edius. Much further than I could ever push 4:2:0. Downcoverted it with TMPGenc5.0. And it turned out great with very little grain.

Yeah, you can call it a low light camera at the wide end, but not once you zoom in.

I'm going to need to experiment with the PAP 1 filter, before I'm comfortable turning it on for a paying gig.

Anyone else shot low light with this cam?
 
Our first shot was 120 feet away in a chandelier lit conference room on a shaky riser with no additional lights.

We had to shoot at full zoom, wide open with 12 GB of gain. There was some noise with that amount of gain, and focus became a big issue as well due to zoom and aperture.

The footage was surprisingly good, however.
 
I may have to start using more aggressive gain too. Neat Video is good at removing the grain, but the render times through virtual dub can take a long time on an hour and a half event.
I have been very happy with the picture quality of the 250. My old Sony Z7 seemed very soft on the wide in low light, but the 250 is sharp as a tack. I'm just going to be doing alot more
correction when shooting low light.
 
It's probably fair to mention that a Fujinon HA22x7.8BERM HD ENG zoom lens ramps from f1.8 to f2.5, so about a one-stop difference vs. the f1.6 to f3.4 of the 250. You could buy several HPX250's for the $33,000 MSRP of that Fujinon lens.
 
Has anyone shot a low light musical or ballet with PAP filter 1? I shot the Nutcracker Saturday night with standard settings and some of it was quite dark -- will be spending some time with the color corrector. Had to shoot it again on Sunday and had thought about PAP 1. As I experimented with gain on PAP2, it looked like +6db looked similar to PAP 1, so I decided to shoot PAP2 +6.
If there is visible gain I will try NEAT VIDEO on it. My question is has anyone tried PAP 1 on a darkish stage show and was there any aggressive noise reduction issues like "micro-jelly." I'm just reticent about using PAP 1 on a paying gig. I guess I will have to offer to shoot a stage show fore free and just try it out.

It would be nice to be able to use it and get that extra stop, and not have to worry about excessive gain noise in the picture, technically it should be even cleaner.
 
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