? about A1 and low light
 

I've had my XHA1 for about six months now, and the past weekend was the first time I had to use it in a low light situation. I have always heard that this camera worked well with low light, however, mine did not respond well at all. I'm thinking that maybe my settings were off. The lighting was not all that low which surprised me. Here were my settings:

Gain: 12db
Shutter: back and fourth between 30 and 60
Mode: Manual

Are there any other settings that affect recording in low light situations?

Iris setting and distance from subject, both affect light levels. Using shutter at 30 is a brighter factor in your shoot.

The iris was wide open. If I had set the shutter speed any lower, I would have ot that weirf blur look when panning. ANy other thoughts?

re
 

Try gam1, SHP 0, HDF M a DHV 0, NR2 L, CGN 4, gain +12dB max.

or

gam2, SHP 0, HDF M a DHV 0, NR2 0, CGN -4, gain +12dB / needs color correction.

(*you needs a right level of black too - PED and SET).

Hi Kevin,

Try this preset:

New preset : PFVISION (sample included) [Archive] - The Digital Video Information Network

Joel,

That sample does'nt really show the A1 in a low light enviroment. I'm wondering if standard definition records better than HD in low light situations (I was using HD) I was also advised that the A1 may have some kind of filter setting that may need adjusting. ANy thoughts on that?

i use the PFVISION preset in manual mode, shutter at 50 iris roughly 2.4 also use a on camera light and have no problems low light.

Danny:

When I change my shutter seting it goes from 60 straight to 30. How do I get an in between setting of 50? Like I said, this is the first time i'ved shot under these conditions.

Move to a PAL country? :)

Never, never, never, never! Search this forum and you'll get details. Above 6dB there be dragons.

yeah i forgot to mention im in PAL land.

i stick to 6db gain, 12gets grainy.

make sure you have a camera light with good spread (i use the 2010 varizoom)

The canon doesn't handle low light very well, nothing much you can do about that. Ofcourse you can use 1/25th shutter and MAX 6db gain (Tripp knows what he's talking about) and a decent videolight and don't zoom, beside that you get what you see.

Presets might be an option as well but i'm no fan of them, every one I tried produced ghosting which looked ugly in my opinion, didn't hear of the PFVISION preset, might give that a try but as I said take a close look at the ghosting in moving objects.

I compared my xh-a1 with a Sony fx1000 a while ago, if you want good low light performce in HDV, get that one, it trashed my camera when it came to low light performance. Why? We took it up to 21db gain and that still looked cleaner then the canon at 12db gain. Even next to a vx2100 which was legendary for its low light capabilities it performed equally well and with much more detail when the lens was wide when you saw the end result on dvd.
Only when you started to zoom in it became dark quickly and then there was no match against the vx2100 which still performed well in that case but produced more grain.

No, not the slightest difference Kevin. Remember that your XH-A1 is an HDV camera, and those tiny 1"/3 chips have very small sensors. If you film in SD you're still filming in HDV of course - only thing is you're doing the down-conversion between chips and tape on the fly.

So: Keep to wide-angle, max aperture, 1/30th sec if you must, and don't be afraid of gain up. Don't stop at +9dB if that's going to under-expose your footage. Correction in post is far more damaging than upping the gain on the front line.

tom.

Hi Kevin

The important thing is to try the preset. Its made an incredible difference for me.

EventVideographer.com ~ XHA1 PRESETS

I shoot at 24fps / 1/24th / and 6db at the reception with two remote control low-wattage lights on 13' stands and get great results.

The only filter setting that will darken the image iis if you inadvertently have the neutral density filter switch on.

Joel, does the PFVISION preset produce ghosting on moving objects?

Hi Noa,

No ghosting at all. The noise reduction is off.

GAM CINE1
CMX N
HDF L
Black S
Knee L
NR1 off
NR2 off
CGN 25
RGN 48
GGN 49
BGN 50
SHP 9
SET -9
COR 9

Though it doesn't really apply in this discussion I've noticed that 24f results in a much cleaner image, i.e. less noise and fewer artifacts, compared to 60i and 30p. I don't have anything other than my observations to back that up. I can't help but think its more efficiently using the bandwidth afforded by the codec because there are fewer frames.

Thanks Joel, then I will give the preset a try. If it is effective I sure wished I'd used it last weekend during a candle lit only reception I had to film :)

About 25f (or 24f which is basically the same format) producing less noise I can only say that a test I did some time ago in a very dark area exporting frames from both 50i and 25f and I saw no difference at all. Both were equally noise rich, whatever setting I used. Also what I often read here that 25f is supposedly a bit more light sensitive then 50i is something that I could not see. 50i and 25f looked exactly the same to me in very low light conditions.

Hi Noa. Definitely you should give PFVision a try. It is great for indoor shots where the lighting is a bit subdued. e.g. where normally you would start to get a noisy, desaturated image, this preset gives very natural results.

Haven't tried it in candlelight though, looking forward to hear your assessment.

Richard

I read the meassages in the link that was given in this topic about the preset and one of the users said that he had used the preset a couple of times at weddings but it had a negative effect on the automatic focussing ability of the camera. It appearantly also caused the image to appear "soft" and out of focus. Anyone more experience about this?

Increasing CORING up to 9 must produce softness in low light conditions. Try this preset.

Hi Noa. Automatic focussing is definitely affected by low light levels, but I didn't notice if this preset made it worse.

Have you tried it yet?

Richard

Hi Artur,

The slight softening caused by increasing the coring is made up for with the higher sharpening level, at least to my eyes. The effect is an image that appears sharp but with less noise. I've looked at enlarged images shot with high coring with high sharpening and low coring with standard sharpening. I prefer the high COR/high SHP setting - the images appear sharp but lose the overly defined edges and the noise in the shadows is reduced.

"[COR] Coring [–9...+9]. Adjusts appearance and level of noise on darker areas.
• Increasing will lower the level of noise, but makes a softer picture.
• Decreasing will lead to more visible noise.
It is recommended to tune this option any time you are using gain.
Can be especially helpful, when shooting densely detailed objects in low light conditions. Also
helps to eliminate "stairstepping" that can appear along diagonal lines.:"

Presets PFvision question
 

Hi . in your sample test of the PFvision preset - EventVideographer.com ~ XHA1 PRESETS
you show the PFvision preset and a sample of your settings- your setts looked better - what were they?
Thanks G

Hi Graham,


My original preset was the popular TRUCOLOR. Keep in mind that those stills of the presets I posted were done with the camera set on manual so that there was no automatic adjustment to the iris or shutter speed when I changed the preset. With the pfvision preset I feel like I'm about a stop brighter than trucolor, but I didn't stop down for the example shots. I hope that makes sense - I'm just trying to explain why pfvision may look washed out. Its overexposed.

here's a link of some candle light test footage I did a while back using PFVISION.

XHA1 PFVISION PRESET LOW LIGHT TEST on Vimeo

Settings are on the link.

hope this helps

Lights?
 

Joel - I was curious about what lights you were using.

Thanks,
Fred

Hi Fred,

These:

The Wireless Wedding Reception Video Light - HOME