Low Light Footage from HMC40

I'm hoping some of my video footage today will help determining low light type questions for the HMC40. I'd say on a scale of 1-10, 10 being a fully sunny day, today was a 7, cloudy but mostly sunny. I determined that I could easily have it on a shutter speed of 1/1000 with no gain, and 75% of the time on 1/2000 with no gain depending on the cloud coverage. I'll be posting videos here later today and tomorrow under my hmc40videos youtube account.

Chris
 
ravencr,

Thanks for performing these tests. Are you more inpressed or less impressed with its low-light ability than you expected?

Kind Regards,
Dan
 
I'm trying something a little bit different with these videos. I've outputted them at full 21 mbps, instead of 6 mbps, so they're taking a lot longer to process and upload. I'm pretty impressed, although low light as everyone has said isn't it's forte. What I didn't realize is that because the camera comes defaulted at 24 db gain as the maximum, all of the stuff I uploaded on the 15th was at 24 db of gain, which I couldn't tell, because on AGC, it doesn't tell you what it is. That's one thing I'd like changed, for sure.

I'm hoping today's footage will help everyone...I watched it on the computer and plugged into a low def tv, and it came out pretty nice. The tests are obviously "tests," so definitely hard to compare to actual footage. I'll comment more on each video as I get them posted.

Chris
 
Hey guys,

Here's some more footage from today where we finally had some decent, non-rainy weather with no fog. :)

This was shot using the Panasonic HMC40 on 1/2000 shutter speed at PH720/60P, starting at 0db gain and going up to 12db of gain. And, slow motion, as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JQHQZMbRLs

Chris
 
13th Judas said:
that is such a weird shutter speed. and why would you want to use gain on a bright sunny outdoor?
Click to expand...
I guess the point of all this was to show people what each respective shutter speed, f-stop, and gain level looked like, so they could compare to a similarly lighted area to the cameras their already using. I found that I could run as high of 1/2000 shutter speed and still be at no gain, unless the clouds rolled in at which point the auto gain control would move it up to as high as 12 db. Obviously, when I lowered the shutter to 1/1000, that wasn't an issue. I hope that makes sense...

Chris
 
I'm also going to upload all the raw, un youtube'd files here available for download. They're not raw .mts files, but full resolution adobe premier outputted files in .mp4 format: http://www.utvreport.com/videos/hmc40tests They're in the process of uploading, so it will be a bit before you can download them...they're big, because I uploaded these at full 21 mbps.

Chris
 
Ian Slessor said:
How does the 40 compare to the DVX100b in regards to low light performance?
Click to expand...
The DVX, in progressive mode, is ISO 640. The HMC40 is ISO 64. That means the DVX spanks the HMC40 in low light, handily. You would need about 3.25 stops more light with the HMC40, than you would with the DVX.

Of course, in interlaced mode the DVX's advantage grows by another stop, the DVX is 1280 ISO in 60i mode.

The HMC40 does many things absolutely brilliantly, but low light performance is its major weak spot.
 
This HMC40 low-light issue seems like such a relative thing. I'm looking at the HMC40 to replace my Sony SR11 and would be happy with several stops better low-light performance. However, some one using an HMC150 would be disappointed with its several stops less low-light performance.

The Panasonic TM300 camcorder gets great low-light scores when compared to other consumer camcorders, but who know if the HMC40 is comparabile.

So many questions, so few video clips or reviews for the HMC40 yet.
 
Barry_Green said:
The DVX, in progressive mode, is ISO 640. The HMC40 is ISO 64. That means the DVX spanks the HMC40 in low light, handily. You would need about 3.25 stops more light with the HMC40, than you would with the DVX.

Of course, in interlaced mode the DVX's advantage grows by another stop, the DVX is 1280 ISO in 60i mode.

The HMC40 does many things absolutely brilliantly, but low light performance is its major weak spot.
Click to expand...


wouldn't you be getting more light in progressive mode than inerlaced mode? that's what i found
 
Chips that can actually scan in interlaced mode gain a 6dB boost in sensitivity by employing row-pair summation. Progressive chips can't do that.

If your chip is progressive-only (and therefore its interlaced footage is made from splitting up progressive frames) then no sensitivity boost is possible. But if the chip can actually scan interlaced and progressive (like the DVX can) then you can gain a full stop when using interlaced mode.
 
Barry, for comparative purposes. What is the ISO of the HMC150?

Actually for both cameras, what are the ISO of 24p, 30p and 60P?

Thanks
 
Barry_Green said:
50 to 64. It doesn't get better in interlaced, it's a progressive-only sensor.
Click to expand...

Barry, sensitivity vs. recording format is an important question. The Handbook of the HMC 40 states (p. 120):

PH Mode:
1080/60i
1080/30p (over 60i)
1080/24p (native recording)
720/60p
720/30p (over 60p)
720/24p (native recording)

HA, HG HE modes (like SD100):
1080/60i

so there may be other factors like pixel size and the overhead in pixel numbers.

Erich

on SD100, still looking oput for better
 
Here's a few more videos:

This was shot using 1/250 shutter speed, testing from F11 - 0 db open:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd8J8Oxp0I0

This was shot in auto mode, but manually adjusting the iris dial, which was weird. I believe the dial corrects/adjusts a lot faster than the display is able to tell you what's going on. It was hard to tell if I was adjusting the gain only or the f-stop, as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5zM7RZUV4w

And, this was shot to try to determine up to what shutter speed I could effectively keep the gain at 0 db. I was flipping between agc and mgc to see if the camera would display the level of gain in manual gain control after running it in auto gain control. I'm still not quite sure, but I think it does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-otdIu_L1U

Chris
 
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