Shooting at night with the HVX

K

Koval

New member
Could someone please tell me their experience shooting with the HVX at night? My producers are wondering if they should buy the HVX or rent a Varicam, and this issue is at the forefront of their decision.

From what I understand, the HVX tends to choke on the dark areas of a shot.

I've read that some people up the detail Coring a bit -- while others use a 1/4 Tiffen Ultra Contrast filter to keep the grain out of the blacks.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks.
 
I've shot with both cameras. First things first, the Varicam is more sensitve. So if thats the main concern, go Varicam. If noise is a big issue, then well, your a little out of luck, thats a fact of life with the DVCPRO HD codec. Ever consider Andromeda DVX? That is far better than an HVX. It has better lattitude, gives you access to RAW CCD data, shoots higher res than 720p. Might wanna take a serious look at that.

PS, if you go with either Varicam or HVX, shoot with a raised pedestal and bring it back down in post. Also, if you shoot HVX, shoot in 1080pa, far less visible compression.
 
We shot an unpretentious short only lit by streetlights last autumn. If you can get the actors close to light sources, and use +12dB gain, then it works. Though I would really recommend to use only +6 dB gain, since that's hardly noticeable. At +6 dB, the HVX is rated as ISO640 (at 0 gain it's 320)

But yeah it's grainy in the blacks anyhow. I don't have a varicam to compare, but common sense tells me that the doubling of the size of the sensors would diminish noise in the blacks very much.

If you do a comparison, we would really love to see the results :)
 
I was on a shoot in Las Vegas, shooting with my HVX while the DP was running a Varicam w/ Pro35 and a 10:1 zoom lens. In a nutshell, the Varicam kicked the crap out of the HVX for low-light. He was shooting these long shots of the vegas skyline (which is not THAT dim) but it looked fantastic. My footage was noisy and weak by comparison.
 
EXT. night HVX

EXT. night HVX

Thanks for the feedback. As exciting as the HVX is, it sounds like the laws of physics never change: better glass and bigger chips = better footage. I'm sure I can paint beautiful pictures with the HVX during the day, but I'm afraid it will all hit the crapper during EXT. night scenes.... especially since the finished product will be projected.
 
The question is, how often are you actually going to need to shoot at night. If you were considering buying an HVX as opposed to renting a varicam, I would say buy the HVX, and then rent the varicam when you need it - which probably won't be that often.

The HVX can shoot late into the evening without problems - it only goes noisy at night - mainly because you need to use gain.
 
So if you don't use gain at all, can the HVX200 produce great night images? Or is it always noisy in the dark no matter what?
 
If I were in the rent buy situation I would just rent the gear and give the rest of the money to an Production Associate... make sense :grin:
 
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