HD100 - Low Light Sensitivity

[Tim Dashwood]

Originally Posted by Barry Green

Because Tim is the bomb. Back in the early days of DVXUser he was one of the more frequent contributors, and his posts were always well-written, spot-on, and spoken from experience, level-headed and valuable. I'm glad to see he's back posting more on these forums!

Thanks for the compliment Barry.
Yeah those were the days! Back when my first son was born and I stayed up late everynight waiting for him to wake up and try to climb out of his crib. What better time to write into the newsgroups?
Since my second son was born, the forums have fallen lower on the priority list and now I get as much sleep as possible.

I just finished a couple big shows, and I'm on a short hiatus for the next few weeks so I'll try to spew as much information as I can collect on the HD100 before I start shooting my next few projects in October.

I should probably catch up on my accounting too!

[Shawn Alyasiri]

Thought I'd shoot a quick update.

I shot some additional footage today and tonight. I placed a varilight on the cam and ran the light at approx 20w, 50w and 100w, with the shutter at 1/60 & 1/30 and with 0, 3 & 6db gain . The footage looked much better tonight, and everything picked up at 1/30. Still lower light, but not what I was initially running into. I also boosted the color gain a bit to 3 or 4.

The footage seemed night and day compared to yesterday and last night. I do expect you're going to have to tweak it a bit to get your images in low light, but if you anticipate it and have a decent light and a solid power brick I think you're still in business. I had a similar test last night though, and it just seemed like I wasn't getting the same action as tonight. 1/30th definitely helped though.

Unfortunately I did see some of the half-screen issue again in the footage. It was not as pronounced, but it's a vertical line, dead in the middle, and the right hand footage seems to have a little more of a magenta haze. I had to look - but I saw it there. Perhaps it's a combination of me being new to the sensitivity, and possibly having a bum unit. Hope not - cause I really do like this camera and would miss it if it was away. I have another one that's on the way, so I'll compare soon enough. Maybe it's just there on dark images with gain (?).

BTW, the footage with the mini35 looks great. I goofed with some canon lenses today in a very ambient outdoor setting. Very nice.

I'll bet again that this is going to be a solid platform once everything is tweaked out. Looking forward to the word on the big brother JVC coming out next year as well.

[Stephen L. Noe]

Originally Posted by Shawn Alyasiri

Thought I'd shoot a quick update.

I shot some additional footage today and tonight. I placed a varilight on the cam and ran the light at approx 20w, 50w and 100w, with the shutter at 1/60 & 1/30 and with 0, 3 & 6db gain . The footage looked much better tonight, and everything picked up at 1/30. Still lower light, but not what I was initially running into. I also boosted the color gain a bit to 3 or 4.

The footage seemed night and day compared to yesterday and last night. I do expect you're going to have to tweak it a bit to get your images in low light, but if you anticipate it and have a decent light and a solid power brick I think you're still in business. I had a similar test last night though, and it just seemed like I wasn't getting the same action as tonight. 1/30th definitely helped though.

Unfortunately I did see some of the half-screen issue again in the footage. It was not as pronounced, but it's a vertical line, dead in the middle, and the right hand footage seems to have a little more of a magenta haze. I had to look - but I saw it there. Perhaps it's a combination of me being new to the sensitivity, and possibly having a bum unit. Hope not - cause I really do like this camera and would miss it if it was away. I have another one that's on the way, so I'll compare soon enough. Maybe it's just there on dark images with gain (?).

BTW, the footage with the mini35 looks great. I goofed with some canon lenses today in a very ambient outdoor setting. Very nice.

I'll bet again that this is going to be a solid platform once everything is tweaked out. Looking forward to the word on the big brother JVC coming out next year as well.

Very good. As I mention above, you can get away with slower shutter as long as your pushing in or pulling out on the z axis. Motion across the frame (x axis) may look studdery and big camera moves will show unsmooth motion.

What was the gain level when you were getting the split screen effect?

What canon lens' were you checking out?

[Shawn Alyasiri]

In the latest tests, I didn't use more than 6db of gain - so I had to hunt for the 'split', but I still saw it there. It was less subtle in the footage from the evening before, and I believe I saw it at 3 or 6db and then it seemed like it went away at 12. It was a quick fly-by test - but it was the first time I saw the anomally. I have not seen it in any footage that is well illuminated/outside, etc.

As far as the Canons, I have a number of EF/SLR lenses: 16-35 2.8, 24-70 2.8, 70-200 2.8, prime 50 1.4, 85 1.2, 85 1.8, 135 2.0, a fisheye 2.8, and various others. I thought they did quite well with the mini, and it was convenient not to have to run out and buy a zeiss set - at least not immediately. I may still hunt for one, but I dropped a good sum last week, so it's not manditory money spent yet. I appreciate that they offer the Canon/Nikkor mounts - very considerate and functional of them.

[Stephen L. Noe]

I had heard that the mini would bring the light requirement up. You could confirm that with Charles Pappert who ran a test with that very setup. Just for grins, under the same conditions does the stock lens handle low light better at the same settings you've been using or did you bypass the stock lens altogether?

[Shawn Alyasiri]

All of my tests that I mentioned were with the stock lens. Yes, the mini35 is going to eat another stop or stop.5, so it would be really dark in a low light scenario. Come to think of it - I don't think I've tried the mini35 with 1/30th shutter - going to have to try that.

I will be taking this little guy around to a number of places, and shooting in various settings (with the stock lens). I think I've got a basic workaround so far for low light: 1/30th shutter, some gain, and some color bump - all with a decent light. My only concern was the split screen issue, which I had to hunt for, but I still found traces of. I may return this particular one, or certainly compare it to the next one coming.

Either way - nice rig, certainly in design. The more people that get this thing, the more solutions there will be. I think it's going to be a hit and a heck of a value once everything is all ironed out (and that's coming from a guy that might have a bum unit).

[Diogo Athouguia]

Originally Posted by Shawn Alyasiri

There's only so much experimentation you can do in a day, but I'm used to the JVC DV500 & DV550's, and I have been able to get good pictures out of the PD150 with 3-6db gain.[/url]

Were you shooting in DV or HDV mode? I noticed that the HD100 is much more light sensible in SD than in HD.