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Shooting at night

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Shooting at night

Postby Jayell » Wed Jul 21, 2010 11:16 am

Saturday NIGHT I'm going out to the local Desert Museum (lots of animals). Any particular settings that will help shooting in low light (I have no additional equipment)? I'm not expecting great results, but I love shooting wildlife.

I'm shooting with a Canon HV40. It's fairly new, and I basically just grabbed it and started shooting, so haven't spent much time learning all the settings. I'm going to spent a lot of time with the manual in the next day or so, but any advice would be appreciated.
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Steve Grisetti » Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:00 pm

Are you shooting at NIGHT night, Jayell? If so, about the only thing that will work is Nightshot -- the night-vision setting on Sony cams. I don't know if Canons have anything like it.

Otherwise, it depends on how much light you have and where it's coming from.
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Bobby » Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:03 pm

The HV series are not known for their low-light performance. You may need some auxiliary light help, but that would affect your subjects. Well, experiment...
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Chuck Engels » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:43 pm

The Fireworks setting on the HV40 worked very well for fireworks this year, much better than I had hoped.
You can find out a lot in the manual, you can change the shutter speed and make other changes that will help night shooting. If there are no fast movements you may be fine. This will be a great chance to test some of those settings for future reference ;)

I still haven't gotten the settings right myself, although I haven't tried very much. Shot about 20 minutes of clouds and the moon one night. The moon was always too bright with the camera's night settings that I used. I think it is really important to do some manual adjustments rather than sticking with the presets.
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Jayell » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:15 pm

Thanks guys, for the input.
Steve Grisetti wrote:Are you shooting at NIGHT night, Jayell?

No, Steve, I should have clarified. It will probably be more like dusk-type lighting.
Bobby wrote:The HV series are not known for their low-light performance.

I seem to recall that. Might be better to take the old camcorder I have that does some pretty nice night shots. A couple years ago we recorded going through the Panama Canal at 1am .. and ended up with some pretty nice stuff.
Chuck Engels wrote:The Fireworks setting on the HV40 worked very well for fireworks this year, much better than I had hoped.

I remembered about the Fireworks setting right after I'd set up and started the camcorder running (out in the dark on my driveway this year) :(
Chuck Engels wrote:This will be a great chance to test some of those settings for future reference ;)

That's what this may turn out to be .. just an experiment.
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Ken Jarstad » Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:18 pm

I am the curmudgeon here, this time. I have an HV20 which I think works very well in low-light. We've had this discussion before. Poor low-light performance - compared to what? I graduated from a Sony Hi-8 cam to the HV20 and it runs circles around the old cam. So, compared to a semi-pro model it may not quite compare but relatively speaking I say the Canon HV series is no slouch.

Mind you, I rejected the "normal" exposure modes on the Canon, seeing edge-related visual artifacts I found unacceptable. Perhaps the black areas would not hold up so well in those modes, I don't know, because I never use them. I have always used the "Cine Mode" and I can tell you the consensus opinion on it is that it does something to the black areas that makes the pixels seem vanishingly small - you don't notice them. I have taken video in extreme contrast conditions and marveled at how good the pictures are.

I suggest you enjoy your new camcorder and don't worry at all about low-light performance!

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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Jayell » Wed Jul 21, 2010 10:21 pm

Thanks, Ken. I like your perspective. :-D
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby John 'twosheds' McDonald » Tue Jul 27, 2010 2:16 am

.....and if the resulting night shots are really noisy you could try the Neat Video plug in which does a great job.

http://www.neatvideo.com/
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Jayell » Tue Jul 27, 2010 9:56 am

John 'twosheds' McDonald wrote:.....and if the resulting night shots are really noisy you could try the Neat Video plug in which does a great job.

Most of them did, of course, come out quite 'noisy.' So may try out the demo version just to see.
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Ken Jarstad » Tue Jul 27, 2010 11:03 am

Have you tried Cine Mode?
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Jayell » Tue Jul 27, 2010 6:01 pm

Ken Jarstad wrote:Have you tried Cine Mode?

That's what I normally shoot in.
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Re: Shooting at night

Postby Ken Jarstad » Tue Jul 27, 2010 6:08 pm

As I mentioned before, I have shot in a total dark room, lit by a high intensity "shop light" so the contrast was about as high as it could possibly be. I was astonished at the lack of "grain" in the black areas of the picture. It seemed silky smooth to me. Of course you could turn up the brightness in the clip and expose noise but if you just leave it alone it looks gorgeous! The black areas need to remain black. ;)
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