Which Rec Mode for best low light performance

B

Burners

Well-known member
I took delivery of my new HMC151e the other day and hope to start using it soon. Most of the events I shoot are at night hence low light performance is a crucial factor. With my DVX100, 50i needed less light than 25p. Am I right in assuming that 1080i will need less light than say 720 30 or 60p??

P.S I am aware I can change the shutter speed too.

Thanks
 
No... Doesn't work that way with the HMC150. All recording modes are identical in sensitivity. On the DVX it'd actually get a stop faster when you went to 60i, but with the 150 it isn't that way.

Now, you can use a slower shutter speed, but that can affect your frame rate. If you're in 720/24p or 1080/24p you can use 1/24, and that will give you significantly brighter images than 1080/60i or 720/60p's 1/60, but it'll also cause the footage to be blurrier/smearier. In 1080i you can choose 1/30 or even 1/15, but that drops your effective frame rate down to 30fps or 15fps too.

In low light you can use the DRS function, which will gain up the dark areas, but it can make it noisy, especially in DRS 3.

Keep in mind that the HMC150 is soooooooooo much cleaner than the DVX, you can easily go to 12dB of gain and be cleaner than the DVX was.
 
you can ramp the gain up to 12db and open your iris all the way with shutter at 1/24...and maybe switch to Cine-D to flatten the tones and bring out the shadows. this is probably going to give you something for low light situations...but at the same time I consider that to be careless shooting due to the strong grain that this will bring into your footage.
 
Barry is correct is saying,"All recording modes are identical in sensitivity."

However, if you are pushing the gain for low light, this will increase image sensor noise. In that case, it would be best to be recording at the highest bit rate. Noise sucks up the bandwidth, so make sure you provide that bandwidth by recording at the highest rate.


Bob Diaz
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top