Try setting at 100 on zebras, then backing off till all but most highlighted areas, disappear.

Sorry my explanation assumed to much, I guess.

Read out of settings that are adjusted is the missing piece. In TV and AV modes we know we can set shutter speed or aperature and lock one of them in. We also know that by toggling on exposure with the joy stick, we can adjust the remaining non locked factors by manipulating the exposure plus or minus. The problem is, there is no read out as to what is being adjusted.

Again as example: First I select TV mode. When I do that, up in the display it says TV and then has current shutter speed bracketed on top and bottom with up and down arrows. I use the toggle to select the speed of shutter I want. Then I depress the toggle. the toggle screen appears. At this point the camera is automatically adjusting light input still. As I navigate to exposure and select it, the automatic action stops. Now, by manipulating joy stick, I can go plus or minus on exposure. I presume the camera is adjusting available things like: aperature, gain, and if there is anything on board, ND filters. The shutter speed remains untouched. With the adjustment of exposure completed, I can now toggle out of the exposure joystick menu, and shoot with camera completely locked in the current exposure.

There are similar approaches in the other modes in the Pmenu.

As the original OP, I still have questions - I come from a still camera background, using film (you remember film) cameras, w/ no auto settings. I'm wanting to know how close I can get to having full exposure control w/ the HV20:
- shutter speed
- aperture
- gain (aka asa/iso in filmspeak)
in other words, can I lock in a particular exposure (EV) without having the camera "adjust" the exposure for me?

p.s. - Thanks to all who have responded - you've been very helpful - I just need more info.

Phil,

I think many of us are in the same boat. Here is a link http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=92431 to a rather long thread trying to answer that very question. Pay attention to Barry Green's posts. Right about where he uses a cell phone to set the exposure baseline it gets good. Hopefully all the information between these two forums will get streamlined and consolidated. However, NAB is this week and most of the people who were making the most headway seem to be busy in Las Vegas.

Phil:

The post I made just above does just that. In either AV or TV, you select one or the, adjust your exposure further as you want it with the toggle joystick, and you are locked in. There is no other way to say it. You point out a window at that point, and it will zebra out, you point it into a dark closet, and it will be dark....

Phil - you can come pretty darn close. You can definitely lock your shutter and apeture. However, I'm still in the dark (pun intended :-))as to how you can also lock gain or ND's. [Note: for the following explanation the camera was set in Tv mode with a 1/48th shutter] The way the "EXP" setting seems to work is it depends on where you are when you set it (thus Barry's white cel phone screen trick). For instance, if you are in a dark closet and go from auto to "EXP" it looks like all you can control is the gain function since I assume the apeture is already wide open. A limited range of adjustment is available e.g., 0>>+9 in increments of 1 (starting in a normally lit room you'll get -11>>0>>+11 range of adjustment) It appears all or most of that adjustment is adding gain (due to noise visible in LCD screen). Likewise, if you start in auto with the camera pointed out a bright window switch over to manual EXP adjustment, you get a range of adjustment (sometimes a full +/-11, sometimes less apparently) but since you started with a bright exposure, even at +11 it will be too dark to expose a normally lit room. So in the second case it looks like you're controlling the ND filters and perhaps some apeture.

So the short answer is, yes you can definitely lock the overall exposure of the camera in either shutter (Tv mode) or apeture (Av). Then depending on where you started, you can manually adjust (through a sometimes limited range), some combination of gain, ND filters and either SS (if you're in Av mode) or apeture (if you're in Tv mode). Of course it would have been so much easier if Canon included separate gain and ND switches and an apeture/ss ring, but you'll need an A1 to get that.

Thanks Chris/Peter. And for that link Jay, good read. I was an early adopter of HDV with the JVC HD10 and have had to jump through similar hoops in the past trying to figure out how that cam reacts to different settings. I had to use a variable ND filter(s) to control that cams exposure as you could not lock both shutter and exposure, but you could disable auto gain though.
What is the opinion of the Spotlight setting locking gain? Is this option available in a situation where the shutter is locked, and the exposure adjusted so as to be set?