Low Light, Weird Light Macro Focus Screen Grabs
 

Working on a short web piece for my site. I quickly got some screen grabs - footage was shot is unlighted room. Light coming mostly from LCD displays, Cold Cathode (Green and Blue) and black light. Weird look, but DVX100 held up well.

All footage shot at hand held macro focus - amazed I could keep stuff in focus.

Shot 24P advanced, Cinegamma, thin, all other settings normalized.

http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com/seven24p.htm

Looks good...
 

The shots look quite good. I was messing around with the same idea last night. Didn't get the clarity you got!

Thanks - I was pleased with how the cam handles the conditions. Note I had AWB ATW off - that helps under bad lighting.

Heh. Those are cool. Now I want to try it... Too bad I left the camera at the office. But it's there with my system that has a blue cold cathode lamp in it. ;-)

I'll have to try some low light / strange light shots with it. I haven't got to do so yet since buying my DVX100.

Nice grabs...I'm even more impressed with the rig- NICE!

The rig was fun to build. Finding the aquarium side panel was a blast.

The rig is complete and the first bit of editing, sound work and motion graphics seems to work wonderfully.

Simply saying those shots look "good" is an insult... I wanted a dvx100 pretty badly before but now I'm flingin-flangin' desperate!

Can you please answer a question for me...? All dvx owners... No
B.S. please...?

These grabs show NO pixelation... NO dancing pixels what-so-ever... that is something I haven't heard anyone mention about this cam and if that's TRULY the case then that is far more noteworthy then 24p... so my question is this, and PLEASE give me an honest reply. Are there really NO dancing pixels in the underexposed areas? Does it really cut off to PURE BLACK as it appears in these grabs? Or is there "mild pixelation" that was simply "lost" in the upload?

I know everybody's got a lot of high-energy surrounding this cam, but if these grabs are as clean in reality as they are on your site then I'll do WHATEVER it takes to get a dvx100 asap... those shots aren't simply "good".... they are downright AMAZING.

If you're interested I'll PAY you (and any dvx100 owners) to send me some demo footage... you can email me through this site and let me know what's fair... just for your time and a tape I can shoot you $5 or $10 via Paypal for the shipping/tape and I'll still be thankful and regard it as a good-will gesture to a forum bud...

No, you are seeing right. Because the DVX100 uses no gain circuitry in 24P and 30P modes, and because of the cine-gamma flat response curve, what you see is in fact the truth.

The grabs on the site are low-res, the original footage is cleaner, not grainer.

With low-key lightning, you get gorgeous deep black shadows and the camera controls allow you to set how much detail you see in the shadows.

If you shoot 60i with gain turned up, you can see more detail but much more noise and reduced contrast.

Stephen,

Please excuse my redundancy... but you're telling me that if you look at the lcd on the dvx100 and you have it pointed at let's say, your front door, at night, shooting from the inside of the house out, with light on the inside and pitch black outside... under those conditions when you look at the lcd you see an exposed doorway etc. and outside you see ONLY black in the lcd or on a monitor...? You know what I mean by the tiny dancing pixels right? (I'm not trying to be a smarta$$ here, really...)

I have a trv900 and even if I manually keep the gain at ZERO there is still very faint movement within very dark areas... especially under contrasty situations... but even if I go into a room without windows and shut the door so it's "pitch" then you can see faint dancing movement in the lcd... so you get NONE of that? If that's the case all I can say is "wow"... I've read a half dozen reviews of that camera in trade publications, not to mention amatuer pubs like Videomaker... and nobody, NOBODY mentions that... when they reviewed the pdx10, the supposed "upgraded" trv900 they mention faint grain/dance but say it's less then the trv900 would have had WITH gain... so I thought, "who cares? I'll just use adequate light and keep the gain at zero..."...

But if you TRULY have no grain in a black picture that's pretty damn valuable and worth mentioning... almost all dv cams have some remnants in black areas... (cheaper ones anyway)...

Hey are you ignoring my begging for you to send me a tape? I said I'll paypal you for your time... I'm in St. Louis so you could mail it for a buck or two...? Any other dvx100 owners that would be willing to do it would make me happy also... basically I want to see what this little gem can do... a small sampling of a variety of conditions would be supreme... even your unedited "junk"...

let's see the movie
 

would love to see a short clip, as im sure matt would as well.. i'll host anything

It may be a few days before I can provide a clip etc. in the middle of moving my office...

Stephen, Panasonic should send you a kick-back on my behalf... I've read about a dozen rave reviews of the dvx100 but for some reason your low-light shots really pushed me over the top. I'm guessing most "pro-level" cams exhibit a very low level of grain even in low light and I'm adding a mental buffer to your statements just so I don't feel dissappointed when I get a dvx100 and find that you've been exaggerating (which I hope you aren't... that's why I wanted a tape)... those "grabs" are impressive and when you say that in reality they're even cleaner I think, "I'll be wiping tears of joy if they're even THAT clean..."

I should have a dvx100 within a week.

Panasonic - anyone listening?
 

Panasonic - anyone listening?

Matt:

Just to make you feel better, I quickly have posted some uncompressed files. I just grabbed a shot with mostly dark background lit by LCD. Shot wide open, macro focus, 24P at 1/24 shutter. All images are unaltered, just captured in Vegas and rendered out in AE.

uncompressed bitmap
http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com/low.BMP

32-bit photoshop
http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com/low.psd

full res-DV (Microsoft Codec)
http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com/low.avi

sweeeeet thanks for posting that, very nice

Alturo:

I'm running out of bandwidth this month. If you can host these clips and pics, that would be great.