Low Light HDV vs DV?
 

Is there any advantage of shooting HDV in low-light vs DV?

Since the ultimate result was SD-DVD, I shot a play performance using DV, and the main problem with the results was that the auto-focus had trouble engaging and wouldn't correct itself. The viewfinder looked sharp. When I captured the footage it was very soft and blurred.

Would HDV give the AF a finer degree of focus?

Are the limitations of the optics consistent between HDV and DV?

Thanks!!

its all the same hdv or dv. try some of the downloadable presets they can make a big difference.

Hi


Focusing in HD is more critical than in SD as you probably already found out.
Unfortenately the small LCD on the XH-A1 makes it hard to judge focus both because the small size and also because the low resolution of the LCD. I almost never trust the autofocus especially in low light. Try to use the LCD/Magnification/Peaking to get proper focus and also read the focus distance on the LCD to get a hint if focus is correct.

'Are the limitations of the optics consistent between HDV and DV?'

A qualified guess is that there is no difference. It all depends on if the image that hits the CCD:s is in focus.

Regards,

/Bo

Just to mention, HDV converted to SD looks a lot better than just standard DV. At least to me.

Hi

I agree to 100%. The reason is that you start with a higher resolution material.


/Bo

A great deal of why HDV outperforms DV on SD DVD output is colour space. SD DVD is 4:2:0, which ends up as 4:1:0 when you feed it DV with 4:1:1 colour space. Not much chroma information at all! PAL DV doesn't have the same issue, as it uses a 4:2:0 colour space.

Yes. To my eye, the results come out much better. I don't know why, maybe it's the compression or resampling.