CANON HV20 Low Light Test. 24P

Me testing the HV20 in extremely low light situations..

IN 24P HDV

Then messing with some filters.

There are 4 shots here:

1.) Building with lots of orange and white lights. Nothing changed to the camera. Out of the box shooting.

2.) The moon. Brightness cranked all the way up and it's set on 40x zoom.

3.) Tree leaves in street lamp light. I only used "Boost mids" plug in as a Sony Vegas 7 preset.

4.) Everyone on the steps. Brightness all the way up. High contrast tweaking, to make the image look right.

The music is "Norh Country" by The Secret Machines. Originally by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Canon
• HV20
• Low
• Light
• Catonsville
• The
• Secret
• Machines
• Bob
• Dylan
• Johnny
• Cash

[SilverEvolver]

Other than the last shot, there is practically ZERO noise in this video (from what I can see)... how did you achieve that?

I usually have cinemode, 25P, f-stop at 1.8 and a 1/50 shutter speed. And I get a shit load of noise.

[Tkreft1128]

@SilverEvolver

Probably that shutter speed. I keep mine on 24p. There's a bit of a blur, you can really tell with the shot of the building at the beginning. But it lets more light come in and the image is there without noise.

[Tkreft1128]

@SilverEvolver

I guess I'm saying, don't mess with the f-stop or shutter. Just 24p cinemode alone worked fine for this test.

[crobs808]

the hv20 in low light is TERRIBLE. trust me, i have two of them as b cameras, and the hvx200 and Sony EX1 as main cameras. the EX1 blows them all out of the water, but then of course it is still HDV so not as high quality as the hvx200. the hv20 is by far a horrible low light camera. sure, this might be artistic, as a video, but go film this, then watch your footage

[Tkreft1128]

oh believe me if i could afford an EX1 or HVX200 i'd be using them, lol.

[Uhoh2012Productions]

Were those kids smoking pot?

[ribenawrath]

I found low light with this camera to be pretty awful. But me personally I wouldn't shoot in poor light.

If you wanna keep the picture quality then don't be using digital zoom EVER, and only use gain in post.

[SilverEvolver]

@Tkreft1128 so you're saying that you let the shutter speed and F stop automatically calibrate?

Do you happen to know what shutter speed you were at etc? As 24p doesn't mean a 24 shutter speed, typically it would default to 48 I'd imagine.

[KRAFTWERK2K6]

It does. But it also has a night mode which actually is nothing but a longer shutter mode, which exposures the CMOS sensor a bit longer. Like you would make a long time exposure with a standard digital camera. It creates light snakes and blurred shapes when shooting moving objects. I call it painting with light :)

[hotty198]

24p is the lowest it can go. its 24 frames in a 29.97fps wrapper.

[plasmavox]

and another proof that video just sucks.... not only when it comes to low light

[kuunami]

how do you lower the frame rate on the hv20? I thought 24p was the lowest it could go.