low light, high gain in SD
 

a few nights ago i was shooting a concert at a venue i've worked at several times with my XL2, this time on an H1, i was shooting 30F 16x9 SD which is what i had done previously with the same band and the same lighting, both nights i used +12db gain so that i could pull shutter speeds of 1/250th for certain songs...

looking at the footage back to back on the same Samsung 26" hdtv there is absolutely no question that the H1 is right on par in low light performance, better it seems, and the signal noise produced at +12db is FAR less, almost non existant.

last week i was shooting at a bird sanctuary well before sunrise in 1080i @ -3db using 1/30th shutter and i couldn't believe how deep into the dark the camera could dig even at -3db, i can say for sure that the H1 is a better low light camera than the XL2, how exactly this is possible i do not know but it's the case, some time in a week or so i'll send some still frame comparisons of xl2 vs. h1 @ +12db, 30P/F, 1/30th of a second and show what i'm talking about if chris wants to host them.

-Jon

Does anyone have an actual light sensitivity rating on the H1 (ie: f10 @ 2000lux, etc)?

I have one and I agree, it does well in low light, all things considered. There's quite a drop off at full tele - but that's posted in the specs.

Pretty amazing for a 1/3" HD cam...

That's because most of the noise in the resample.