Shooting city, suburban and fields at night

[SLavictoire]

This morning, I've got an idea to shoot things at night this summer with my DVX100A, I was wandering what kind of settings I could use to maximize my images. At least the basic would be to open my iris at it's full opening and I intend to shot with the white balance preset at 3200K since at night it's artificial lightning and different color temperature. I want to keep these different color temp.

If you got suggestion of settings for the night, I'm open! But please, do not just say "try yourself before shooting for different settings". Thanks.

 

[Razz16mm]

I suggest you change your WB to daylight preset for the camera is as that is the native color temp of silicon sensors and you will get more usable range of low light response with all colors at equal sensitivity.
At 3200K tungsten there is about a 2 stop difference between the blue and red channels. The tungsten setting reduces your overall sensitivity by at least a stop for comparable noise levels to compensate.

 

[SLavictoire]

Ah? Never thougt of that. With the 5600K preset, I can have a wider difference between color, less noise and more response to low light then the 3200K preset? That is something I must try!

 

[Alex H.]

But please, do not just say "try yourself before shooting for different settings". Thanks.

Except for the fact that this is really the best way to make sure you get what you want. If you take a suggested setting from here and then go out and shoot immediately for your project, you may not like what you get. Rather, take the suggestions here and then go out and try yourself... before you shoot for your project.

You're working with a camera that has okay - not great, but okay - low-light performance due to smaller chips. Thus, the last thing you want to have to do is crank up the gain (adds noise). Get the iris open all the way. Depending on what you're shooting, you might want to use the "Slow Shutter" button... this will bring in more light, but at the cost of motion characteristics. Again, play with the setting and see what you get. Other than open iris and potentially the slow shutter, don't push the gain past 6dB unless you absolutely have to.