SD - +12 gain
 

Ok, I know you need to feed this camera light, but to get decent SD quality i have found you need to use +6-12 gain settings when you dont have a lot of sun or light. But then you tons of noise. Kind of a bummer, i shoot skateboarding, so i cant have a light kit everywhere. It kinda makes me wanna go back to a vx2100, the SD picture is so much clearer on the VX series and DVX. unless there is something i missing, it kinda sucks..

Really? I wouldn't expect the difference to be that great, though I have never used the VX2100. Camcorderinfo.com rated the XH A1 better than the vx2100 in low light, but perhaps it was due to superior color fidelity. Perhaps you should compare the VX2100 and XH A1 in the exact same conditions (including subject, shutter speed, aperture, and gain). Remember, the VX2100 has a faster lens at all equivalent AOV.

I'm very pleased with the XH A1 performance at 12 dB; it certainly beats the *other* A1 (Sony's HVR-A1U).

Perhaps there are some changes you can make to your technique.

What noise reduction software are you using? Have you tried shooting in HD, applying noise reduction, *then* converting to SD? (Saving the resize for the last step will have more detail than if it's done before noise reduction.)

If you're shooting a low-key scene, have you tried pressing the blacks?

Are you exposing brightly enough? A high-gain video with a bright exposure will have much less noise than a dark iamge with low-gain. Blow some highlights if you have to, but don't leave the sensor without enough signal.

Narrow-spectrum lights have florescent and tungsten have worse noise than broad-spectrum lights. (Sounds like you don't have any control over that, though.)

Are you shooting at f/1.6 with the slowest shutter speed you can tolerate?

yeah, the f stop is at 1.6 and i compared it to my friends vx2000 last night and it totally blew mine out of the water, we did a whole bunch of tests. maybe ill just have to tolerate a little slower shutter speed. im gonna do more tests tonight. but i was just kinda bummed and with skating the nr1 setting even on low has a lot of ghosting. ill just have to play around with it.