HD at Once

Hello fellows! I have finally bought a decent HD HDV Camera that will take me into the new vision of what's really the High Definition in 1080i. Now, I'm pretty newbie at this HD stuff, and if you may remember I posted a topic about an HD Camera I bought last year (that camera wasn't good enough for me) asking about low light level situations and this topic goes around that too.

Recording at Disney Parks makes me think in different situations and my goal is to go to WDW next year to record and make multi-angle videos of the attractions I like the most. Some include: Parades, Fireworks and 3D ones. Also I want my videos to be good, specially at night with low light level situations.

What can you all recommend me when low light level situations: Should I get some specific lens? My camera is the HVR-A1U and I'm really liking it. Also, what about auto and manual settings, which should I leave as automatic and which should I leave as manual. Some of the ones I have questions about are: Exposure level (manual or auto?), the Program AE function (auto, spotlight, portrait, landscape, etc..?), white balance (auto, indoor or outdoor?), cinematone, cinemaframe, super nightshot, nightshot light (what are these used for?) among others.

I know this is very difficult to answer, but I really don't know anything about when to use this functions, so any kind answer is really appreciated and know that when I make those videos for Mousebits.com (as my retribution of all I've received), expect something really good.
Thanks!  ;D

Probably some others have better advice than I do, but... what the hell...

Fix the focal length to infinity.  The camera can't properly track targets that are moving by while in the dark.  You must commit to not filming really up-close items like you lap or adjacent friends when you do this.

Consider an infrared filter for the lens.  A lot of rides use infrared lighting and communication systems and stuff that some cameras pick up as bright glowing sources.

A lot the special settings are specific to the camera.  That is, different products offer varying success with them.  For example, many of them just screw with the color palette to compensate for different lighting conditions, and sometimes this doesn't work so well.  You should try them out yourself and see which ones work.

Nightshot modes are for very low light, and augment the image with the infrared spectrum.  Most cameras have an on-board infrared lamp intended to illuminate dark areas with infrared.  Different modes provide varying balance between color details and low light sensitivity (ie. the darker it is, the less color the camera can get out of the recording).

Cinematone adjusts the color palette to one color to that used in movies.

Cinemaframe is a group of methods that try to achieve the effects of lower FPS progressive frames on HDV tape.  I think you should look them up on Google to best understand them.

Your camera is fairly high end, so you should have some good success with it in low light.

SirLamer said:

Probably some others have better advice than I do, but... what the hell...

Fix the focal length to infinity.  The camera can't properly track targets that are moving by while in the dark.  You must commit to not filming really up-close items like you lap or adjacent friends when you do this.

Consider an infrared filter for the lens.  A lot of rides use infrared lighting and communication systems and stuff that some cameras pick up as bright glowing sources.

A lot the special settings are specific to the camera.  That is, different products offer varying success with them.  For example, many of them just screw with the color palette to compensate for different lighting conditions, and sometimes this doesn't work so well.  You should try them out yourself and see which ones work.

Nightshot modes are for very low light, and augment the image with the infrared spectrum.  Most cameras have an on-board infrared lamp intended to illuminate dark areas with infrared.  Different modes provide varying balance between color details and low light sensitivity (ie. the darker it is, the less color the camera can get out of the recording).

Cinematone adjusts the color palette to one color to that used in movies.

Cinemaframe is a group of methods that try to achieve the effects of lower FPS progressive frames on HDV tape.  I think you should look them up on Google to best understand them.

Your camera is fairly high end, so you should have some good success with it in low light.

Click to expand...

Thank you. Some of the testing I have done with the camera is recording a mini firework show that held yesterday in my city, I will try to upload parts of it soon. Low light is definitely a setting I need to setup, but first learn how to.

when it comes to a lens... the only thing you could do is a wide angle lens or fisheye to get more light into the actual fixed lens..

but low light gain is quite limited

Hey guys, this is the video I said I was going to upload. Tell me what do you think of the camera. Note: The video is very shaky, my bad.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFh7lPdmcBU

Fireworks don't really count as "low light", since they're actually very bright burning things against a dark background.  They have their own struggles, though.

Most cameras have a fireworks setting.  I don't know what exactly it does but give it a shot.  A more descriptive title would be "randomly appearing bright point sources against an unresolvable background mode".

that almost looks like my first hd firework footage... I could only film the tip of large shells because it was behind a row of houses..

most fireworks settings only look good when you have a tripod because they have some sort of blur effect in them (at least panasonic and canon do) if it's a handheld hot it becomes a blurry mess 

I agree with both of you. I sure have to get a tripod as soon as I can to record this stuff (fireworks and such). The fireworks auto setting gets my exposure level really down, so I didn't liked it. Maybe I can make my own default setting for fireworks (have to find out though). Thanks so much for the advice.

Also, another question... Which kind of lens can you recommend when recording at a dark attraction, such as Peter Pan, Haunted Mansion and Snow White's...?
Thanks!

besides an uv block filter not much

all filters you put in front of your cam will degrade the low light sensitivity to some degree

and lenses that might help will distort the picture (besides the whopping expensive wide angle lenses)


so on consumer camorders thers not much you can do to improve the picture


one advice for hd .. try to control the gain .. keep it as low as possible, because in HD the grain will degrade the picture extremly

dolbyman said:

besides an uv block filter not much

all filters you put in front of your cam will degrade the low light sensitivity to some degree

and lenses that might help will distort the picture (besides the whopping expensive wide angle lenses)


so on consumer camorders thers not much you can do to improve the picture


one advice for hd .. try to control the gain .. keep it as low as possible, because in HD the grain will degrade the picture extremly

Click to expand...

How can I make that lower, well control it? The gain (grain).

it's different my gs400 could directly control the gain .. on my new hv20 I only can lock the exposure time (best for lowlight is video framerate so 1/25 on my PAL cam) and control the exposure level that brings the gain down

just check your manual .. but for a pro level cam I pretty sure you can control the gain on itself

FYI, the "gain" is synthetic post-processing enhancement of the image.  It seeks to increase the contrast of the recorded image to something that can be seen on a screen.  More specifically, the restriction is really the limited image contrast that videos screens are capable of, which is much lower than what the eye can perceive.  Naturally, it enhances signal noise, too.

If you have the camera on a tripod or are otherwise not subjecting the video to much motion, increasing exposure time reduces the amount of gain needed.  However, it exposes the video to increased and perhaps unnatural blurring effect.

Increasing the aperture size lets more light in but increases depth of field effects.

I second the UV lens filter, especially when filming outdoors and near water.  The effect is similar to when you wear polarized sunglasses, where the glare that comes off of things is not allowed to overwhelm the incoming light so that you can properly see the details in other things.  When not using the UV filter, I always keep the camera lens protected with a lens cover that is just a piece of glass.  You don't have to worry about the smaller and permanent lens becoming dirty, then.

So does the "gain" works in a somewhat similar way to image enhancing for a photo in, say, photoshop?
I've noticed there that I can take a very dark image (when the flash doesn't fire, for instance) and make it visible but get increased false color pixels (in fact, a very spotty image) - that's using the "auto photoenhance" tab in Paint Shop Pro.
Would that be a fair comparison?

These days, it's pretty similar.

The term "gain", referring to signal gain, comes from analog systems that work by directly manipulating the electrical inputs from sensors.  So, by amplifying the electrical pulses from the CCD sensor, the frames are recorded as brighter than they would otherwise be.

Modern digital systems typically use software post-processing of sensor inputs much like Photoshop does.  There are cost and quality arguments for both methods.

By the way, if you are evaluating your work and different low light recording methods, make sure you're not doing it in a television.  Most modern TVs come with magical and insanely effective methods for cleaning up the image quality.  In particular, a good Sony TV (or from a similar brand) will hide signal noise and digital compression effects very well.  If you review video on your computer, you'll probably get the raw image.

One of the biggest problems of signal noise (or grain or whatever) is that the random behavior is very punishing to video compression algorithms.  If you post a grainy video to YouTube or something, the signal noise will steal a lot of the bandwidth, which means less details to things that matter.

Disney let you bring the HVR-A1U in the park?

I know people that brought the large fx sony models to the parks.. but I'd always guessed you look more like an indie filmmaker than a casual park guest with those.. (draws attention)