Hello to all...
I am at my wits end on this and hope that it is something simple that I am missing. I shot some footage indoors with medium to low light with my HM700 and the canon 14x lens. yet I am very upset at the footage that came out of it. It is very grainy and I know if my client sees it he won't be happy. I have searched here but I am not able to resolve my problem. I am coming from a Sony FX1 where the shots from that came out great in the low light. But after that shoot, it crapped out on me. I will provide a link to show you what the footage came out like. I found links for both outdoor and low light but that has not made the video any better. please help me.

Thank you
Chuck

Just a follow up and please tell me if this sound correct but I did hours of more searching online and found that I had not fixed the back focus on the camera. Would this be why the camera was grainy/ had so much noise in the BG? All I know is that I adjusted that and now the shots look very good in moderate to low light. Would just love to see if I am correct.

Thank you
Chuck

The back focus can indeed muck up the footage. If it is not set correctly, the glass (remember many pieces are in a lens) aren't lined up 100% and even a slight bit off can cause degradation.
I had a JVC5000 with the 115 veiwfiner (worst I ever used) and honestly couldn't tell if the BF was set or not. I got the 116 VF and it was night and day difference. Not my stuff was in focus and looked less mucky.
Also did you inadvertaly change the gain? The switch can be moved and not even realize it.

I always check the BF before every job when using any camera with a professional lens. It only takes a minute but I'm glad you got it sorted out.

back focus should be checked everytime you use a camera professionally with a professional interchangable lens, differences in temperature with expansion and contraction and put them out. Normally you can do it by eye looking through the viewfinder when you zoom in tight, then zoom out it looks soft and you know your out. If you can't tell by that plug it into a monitor or even a tv and check it that way. There are rear focus charts you download and print rather than spend the $$ on it.
The rear focus won't make you shot noisy, unfortunately thats the camera, you'll need to buy, as do I as I still shoot with the HD251 a 3rd party software plugin to remove noise. Funny the older HD101 was reasonable with low light noise for 1/3 inch camera, they stuffed it up somewhere in the evelolution of the camera.

cheers

Adam

Adam,
What 3rd party plug-in would you recommend? I am an all apple facility. So I work between FCP 7 and Premiere. I do have FCP X as well but still letting them work out the bugs and give us back more control.

Thanks
Chuck

sorry Chuck, maybe check with the FCP forum I couldn't tell you, I was going to say neatvideo denoiser, but apparently buggy with fcp. I use Vegas and Edius
regards

Adam