Low Light Footage from HMC40

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
Okay, folks, read this first: this ain't good. This is handheld, autofocus, auto-exposure, handheld tourist stuff, okay? This is not professional footage. This is -- hey, let's go down to the RiverFest and see what the pirate ship thing is all about, and ... oh, hey, I'll bring along the HMC40 too.

So this is handheld, autofocus, auto-exposure. It was shot at dusk to dark, and the gain was pretty much pegged at +12dB the entire time. Heck, there's plenty of shots where the dang camera's not even level. No tripod, no monopod, no professionalism whatsoever. This is tourist camcorder stuff.

Shot 1080/24p mode. But, everyone's asking what the low light performance is like, so ... I say it's not great, but here's some footage so you can see what you think.

The lights that you see on the boats, is pretty much all the light that there was there.

By the way, the frame glitch on the kids is something that Premiere did to me, and I didn't see it until I rendered and uploaded the whole file, and ... bah, too much work to fix it. But that is NOT in the original footage, it's a premiere glitch. Native editing in Premiere is close, but it's not perfect.

Okay, enough disclaimers: here's some footage from Wilmington North Carolina's "RiverFest 2009" sidewalk fair.

[moviehd]4c96d0b01b1de5c5c3[/moviehd]
 
Last edited:
No point shooting in full auto. The cam goes into slow shutter mode, which is unusable unless one really wants having it as an effect.

I take it, if it looks so shakycam from you, a pro, then the cam is really too light to hold steady, right? The 150 should have been better?
 
I don't think it's so bad.

Would be nice if someone who has experience of a Canon XH-A1 or a Canon HV20/30/40 could tell how big difference there is between the Canons and the HMC40. I don't mean in figures, I mean in real life.

Regards,

/Bo
 
Cranky said:
No point shooting in full auto. The cam goes into slow shutter mode, which is unusable unless one really wants having it as an effect.
Click to expand...
No it doesn't. The HMC40 has no provision for automatic shutter control, it's always at all times manually controlled.

I take it, if it looks so shakycam from you, a pro, then the cam is really too light to hold steady, right? The 150 should have been better?
Click to expand...
The 150 would have been better in all ways except sharpness.

And, remember, I wasn't really trying -- I was just consumering.
 
Barry:

What would you suggest a shoulder mount equivalent for the cam to steady it better and not break the bank and excluding tripods? Monopod?

Because I think this footage is really nice, all things considered, especially is you hold gain to 12.


While you can get some decent handheld footage from the cam, like all light cams, you have to stage the shot a little bit.
 
*****-slap me with a monkey wrench, you are right. Barry, I am sorry for being so obnoxious. I thought I saw some slow-looking footage, but now when I watched it again, it looks fine. The manual has nothing about auto slow shutter mode. I stand corrected and ashamed.

It does not look bad indeed. Those scenes on the pier, under the trees, did it look darker in real life? Did the camera raise gain a bit too much?

Why is it so pink? Is it autoWB?

I too think that it looks quite good. Would be great to take a look at native clips. Could you upload a couple of short clips somewhere? I shot a wedding with the Sony HC1, at the eveing gain was maxed at 18dB, and it look horribly noisy, but downscaled to standard def it looked ok, the noise was downscaled too :-)
 
What would you suggest a shoulder mount equivalent for the cam to steady it better and not break the bank and excluding tripods?
Click to expand...
Jack had something that we used for the GH1, a "spider brace", that really made a huge difference when hand-holding a tiny SLR, I'm sure it'd be equally effective with the HMC40. http://www.spiderbrace.com/
 
Last edited:
Cranky said:
It does not look bad indeed. Those scenes on the pier, under the trees, did it look darker in real life?
Click to expand...
The opposite -- everything looked a little darker in the LCD than it did in real life.

Did the camera raise gain a bit too much?
Click to expand...
For my taste, yes. I had it limited to 12dB, and I saw some noise that I considered objectionable, especially like on the hulls of the boats. But then again... it would have been really, really dark without the gain.

Overall I love the HMC40 in daylight, I think it's just excellent. And maybe up to 6dB of gain is okay, but I wish I could limit it to six.

(well, of course, I *can* limit it to six, if I just use fully manual exposure... heh.)

Why is it so pink? Is it autoWB?
Click to expand...
Yep, all auto-everything, including WB.

I too think that it looks quite good. Would be great to take a look at native clips. Could you upload a couple of short clips somewhere? I shot a wedding with the Sony HC1, at the eveing gain was maxed at 18dB, and it look horribly noisy, but downscaled to standard def it looked ok, the noise was downscaled too :-)
Click to expand...
Point out which clip you want and I'll see if I can post it somewhere. Some of the clips are pretty long so the native clips would be too huge to post, but some of 'em might be short enough that it's not a problem to upload 'em somewhere.
 
Barry_Green said:
The opposite -- everything looked a little darker in the LCD than it did in real life.
Click to expand...
No, not on the LCD. I meant, did the real scene look darker in the real life than we see it in the video?

Barry_Green said:
I had it limited to 12dB, and I saw some noise that I considered objectionable, especially like on the hulls of the boats.
I meant, did that the camera try to brighten up the scene too much? This is basically the same question as above.

Point out which clip you want and I'll see if I can post it somewhere. Some of the clips are pretty long so the native clips would be too huge to post, but some of 'em might be short enough that it's not a problem to upload 'em somewhere.
Click to expand...
0:29-0:36 (on the pier, under the trees)
0:44-0:47 (spectators watching the ship)
0:54-1:03 (pirates)

Thanks!
 
Barry_Green said:
The HMC40 has no provision for automatic shutter control, it's always at all times manually controlled.
Click to expand...
Hmmm.... I don't think that is true.

When the switch is in Auto -- the shutter cannot be controlled manually -- it does not even show up on the Func Navi menu (only AF shows). That is confirmed on page 34 of the manual in the "Shooting in Auto Mode" section.

While in Auto Mode the shutter speed disappears from the display so its not clear what the shutter speed is. When you switch back into manual then the shutter shows (I assume that the shutter it shows is what it was using in Auto mode, but I am not sure there is anyway to confirm that).
 
Er, yep -- sorry, I'm referring to when the switch is in manual. Pretty much forgot that the auto/manual switch is even there. I was in manual mode, but with all the functions on auto.

Could it be improved? Certainly -- my "techniques" here were as bargain-basement as it gets. :)
 
Barry_Green said:
Er, yep -- sorry, I'm referring to when the switch is in manual. Pretty much forgot that the auto/manual switch is even there. I was in manual mode, but with all the functions on auto.
Click to expand...
So, the cam stayed at 1/48 shutter all the time?
 
By the way, the frame glitch on the kids is something that Premiere did to me, and I didn't see it until I rendered and uploaded the whole file, and ... bah, too much work to fix it.
Click to expand...

Even if it's too much work, I'd love to know how to get rid of this random glitching that Premiere causes sometimes with my rendered HMC150 projects. Do you know of a solution?
 
Compared with what my HFS-10 produces....your footage looked pretty good. Make no mistake, the HFS-10 is a very sharp cam in decent light, but not quite as nice as the '40 in low light. I shot some similar footage while in China on a river boat cruise, and used the Canon for that. Wish the HMC40 had been out in July, but it wasn't so I got the HFS-10.

I still think that from what I have seen, the HMC40 is the champ in its class/price range.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top