Low light samples?

trassalg

trassalg

New member
Does any current HVX200 owner have any sample footage they'd be willing to post of scenes shot in low lighting conditions? That's my only concern with this camera at this point, but I'm just about sold on purchasing one. Just trying to decide how much to allocate for additional lighting for it.

Thanks in advance!
 
Unless someone took light readings you're not going to actually know how low you can go, anyway. One persons low light is another person's black.
 
When I started to use my HVX over a year ago I was appalled at the footage I was getting in unlit/low-light scenarios... it was awful. I spent some time checking out some posts here at DVX user, and began to play with the camera settings. After a while I managed to come up with a couple of (for me) good combinations, and loaded them to the Scene File Dial at the back of the camera for quick access. I really like what I can do in less than ideal lighting now, compared to my first experiences. The HVX is a camera that you have to spend time with to get the results you need. Once you really get to understand what makes it tick there's no going back. I think it gets it's bad rep from people like me in my early days with the camera... first impressions - but then you understand how much you can manipulate the camera, and you change your attitude to it.

As ProfessorU so elegantly put it "One persons low light is another person's black." So it really depends on your own criteria and situation.

Don't know where you're based, but should you live near New York, it's worth heading in to B&H. They have a pretty cool set up in there where the HVX is set up on a tripod, along with the DVX and a dozen similar cameras from Cannon, Sony and JVC. They're all in a circle around a model village with a variety of lighting conditions. You can play around with the camera's and compare and contrast. I had a look a couple of weeks ago on vacation there, and have to say that none of the HiDef cameras could handle low light like the standard def cameras... but that's a known factor anyways.
 
I consider a 2k Junior boomed a 2 feet over the talents head and a couple of 1k babies all set less than 10 feet from the talent as LOW LIGHT.

If you want to shoot with natural or home lights don't spend money on any camera over $200 because it will look just as crappy on a $10k camera as on a $200 one.

Most night shots in feature films you see have 10s of thousands of watts of light illuminating the scene.
 
Holy Harry said:
When I started to use my HVX over a year ago I was appalled at the footage I was getting in unlit/low-light scenarios... it was awful. I spent some time checking out some posts here at DVX user, and began to play with the camera settings. After a while I managed to come up with a couple of (for me) good combinations, and loaded them to the Scene File Dial at the back of the camera for quick access. I really like what I can do in less than ideal lighting now, compared to my first experiences. The HVX is a camera that you have to spend time with to get the results you need. Once you really get to understand what makes it tick there's no going back. I think it gets it's bad rep from people like me in my early days with the camera... first impressions - but then you understand how much you can manipulate the camera, and you change your attitude to it.

As ProfessorU so elegantly put it "One persons low light is another person's black." So it really depends on your own criteria and situation.

Don't know where you're based, but should you live near New York, it's worth heading in to B&H. They have a pretty cool set up in there where the HVX is set up on a tripod, along with the DVX and a dozen similar cameras from Cannon, Sony and JVC. They're all in a circle around a model village with a variety of lighting conditions. You can play around with the camera's and compare and contrast. I had a look a couple of weeks ago on vacation there, and have to say that none of the HiDef cameras could handle low light like the standard def cameras... but that's a known factor anyways.
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Man that's a great post. Says it all. I too was really horrified at how the cam looked in low light under the default settings. No I got one dialed in and YES i love the Bpress .. and crushing the master ped and all that stuff. Cam gets pretty good results in low light for sure and in adequate lighting its glorious...
 
You don't need as much light as features often use, let's face it, if you have the budget you don't want to take the chance that anything isn't perfectly lit so you overspend and overprepare.

I shot my last music video at night in the middle of the desert with a 2K, a 1.2Kw HMI, and two 1Ks on dimmers, with fire as a sort of ambient light, and that was plenty of light for what we were going for. To throw up a couple of 10Ks would be just laughably absurd and would have looked like crap.
 
I shot a night scene illuminated by candle light. Came out pretty nice. Search for a post titled "noise eliminated" by Overlook for details. I will try and send you a sample.
 
Holy Harry said:
When I started to use my HVX over a year ago I was appalled at the footage I was getting in unlit/low-light scenarios... it was awful. I spent some time checking out some posts here at DVX user, and began to play with the camera settings. After a while I managed to come up with a couple of (for me) good combinations, and loaded them to the Scene File Dial at the back of the camera for quick access.
Click to expand...

what needed playing with the most on your settings? raising the master pedestal?
 
the camera is fine in low light - it just needs light as all cameras do. People under expose and complain about low light performance. If you can get a proper exposure on at least one thing in frame, you will be suprised at how well it performs.
 
I thought the HVX200 was doing quite well in low light, but I would overlight it just slightly. I mean if you search the Web EVERYONE will say how "low budget cameras are terrible in low light," I am not sure what they mean, they aren't terrible. They don't perform perfectly if you have no light, sure, but if you are using the HVX200 and have no professional lighting at all and no daylight I'm not really sure why you bought a $5,000+ camera instead of like a used XL-1 on ebay for $800, lol.

We had a few interior shots in our last shoot where they ended up just a tiny bit underexposed compared to what we thought, and we had calibrated the reference monitor properly and everything, but they ended up looking a bit darker than we thought. Not that it was a bad thing, I mean they worked fine, but if the DP had it to do over I am sure he would have lit it just a bit more since we had the equipment to do so.

You can't expect a camera like the HVX200 to handle low light situations as well as something like the RED One or a 35mm camera with low light stock, but you are still getting a pretty killer camera for a reasonable price. I thought the blacks held up extremely well on our project, I was quite impressed honestly. Even though I have two RED One's coming early next year, I'm actually half-way in love with the HVX200 for what it does on a smaller budget.
 
Nathan Beaman said:
low light sample
There are various shots in the short I just DP that were filmed in almost totall darness and many with low light
http://www.urbanrhinovisual.com/presents/fisher/regret.html
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Nathan,
Absolutely breathtaking imagery in your work above, very well done.

As I'm sure others will want to know also... could you elaborate on what adapter/lenses you were using, along with how you monitored exposure control? And maybe give some advice on how you handled the low-light situations to ensure you had exposure where you wanted it and where you didn't.
 
That looks very good....great set design, lighting, composition...those are good disractions from noise heh(: I actually didn't detect alot of noise, but it's hard to tell over the web. Great work though I'd love to hear some more details on this shoot.
 
i tend to go pretty even with the settings - in fact if theres no adapter on the lens I go 0 on the full board with master ped at -5
when i use the redrock, I go +3 on detail, detail coring and vdetail - in order to compensate for the softness of the adapter.

I almost always use cinev for the gamma - i know others preach B press - but v seems to be the richest and produces the silkiest darks to me - another benefit is that unless you are doing stylized color corrections, to me , v provides the best straight image in the end. Like it or not, adjusting colors/luminance in post magnifies noise as well

for example

http://www.urbanrhinovisual.com/viewer.html

all these images are straight from the hvx, cine v, no color correction (with the exception of 1 shot of a car)
 
nice nathan.

so you mean to tell me that one shot in there with the pink sky (i attached a snapshot of it) about halfway through your reel was not color corrected also? was it a sky replacement done in AE?

if thas the case then i am going to definitely play around more with the camera settings because i normally shoot everything at 0 and color correct in post.

also that shot of the old guy in the hospital was that done with a dolly and a crane or just a dolly?
 

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Hi all. I'm going to be filming a traditional cereomony in a dimly lit banquet hall with just available light this weekend, any suggestions on what settings will give me the brightest picture with the least noise. I tried to convice one of the parties to allow me set up some lights, but with their ceromony setup ... it's just not practical becoz they will be running all around the hall making it very difficult. I'm in panick mode right now as far as the picture will turnout. Last weekend I did my first wedding with just available light in a church and it came out very noisy. I don't want to repeat the same mistake, I shoot mostly 24pn. If I need to change that too please let me know.
Many thanks in advance!!
 
You should be in a panic, because it's not going to turn out well. Any camera needs adequate light. Asking an HVX to shoot a ceremony in a dimly lit banquet hall is like hiring Lance Armstrong to race for you, and then flattening both his tires before he starts. You gotta give it the tools it needs.

If they won't let you have adequate light, tell 'em that you cannot guarantee the video quality. If they don't want to hear that, too bad. You are not going to fix this problem with settings, any more than you could fix structural problems in a building by using masking tape.

With all that said, get a good powerful on-camera light and use it, and when they whine, too bad. If they make you turn it off, you can at least point that out to them when they start complaining about how the video turned out.

And get paid up front, because this isn't going to turn out well.
 
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