can someone clear this up for me?
which is better a higher lux number or a lower lux number
ie: 4lux 3lux etc.

thanks in advance for your help

Hi Felix,

lux refers to an amount of illumination, and a rating which you describe specifically the amount of illumination required for a camera to make acceptable pictures. In this case, the lower the number, the more sensitive the camera is.

Be aware there are some gotchas surrounding these ratings. What constitues an "acceptable" image? Does a camera use gain to achieve this performance, and if so how does this effect picture quality? The lux specificatation tells you something about the camera, but perhaps not which may be "better."

Cheers,

-Matt

Different manafacturers have different standards, so while you can compare Sony A to Sony B, it is useless to compare Sony A to Canon A or Panny A. Lower number means more sensitive though, within a given product line.

From what I've read, the Japanese use a different standard to calculate lux than the USA, so beware of these comparisons. I may have this wrong, so perhaps someone can correct me, but I think the issue is that all DV cameras have different f-stop ratings for the wide and telephoto ends of their zoom range. For example, when you zoom full wide your lens may go down to f1.6, but the same lens zoomed to full telephoto might be rated at f2.8.

Now (again, just from memory here) I *think* the US system calculates lux ratings based on the f-stop at the wide end of the zoom, while the Japanese system takes the average of the wide and telephoto ratings. Therefore the same camera would have a higher (eg: less sensitive) rating under the Japanse system.

Personally, I tend to just ignore the lux ratings...