question on minidv recording quality.

[MASK666]

I just got my first camcorder last night(panasonic pvdv103). I read the book a few times and was playing around with it recording onto TDK minidv tapes. I did someone testing inside my house and outside at night with the LED light on and off. I played my recorded video on the tv with the AV cables then on the computer with the firewire cable. Both times my picture had a grainy look to it. I was wondering since I am very new to this if that is to be exspected and fixed somehow durring the editing of the video or some other step. So, pretty much my question is how clear should the picture be on a minidv tape and if it should not be grainy at all do you have any idea what I am doing wrong?

[bb]

Congratulations to you being a new DV cam owner, and welcome to the board.

On low-light shots you'll experience noise, or grain. This is normal and has its reason in the CCD chip, which doesn't get enough light energy. You can use a smoother like Convolution3D in the post processing to get rid of a large amount of this noise.

When shooting at daylight condition, you shouldn't get any of that noise/grain. It does not depend on the brand of tape you use, because the video is stored digitally.

bb

[MASK666]

Thanks for the reply :) What would you recommend to someone like myself who is new to this stuff and plans to do a fair amount of night projects/indoor shots? Should I invest in some lighting gear? Or does this cam just not perform well in low light and never will and I should look at a different model?

[Babeinternational]

You usually have different settings on your DV cam and some are useful for shooting in dark areas.
Try them all first on a miniDV tape and capture the tape to know what you have to use for each lighting.
But at some point you'll have to use extra lights because even with higher sensibility there won't be enough light to avoid snow.

[bb]

Originally posted by MASK666
Should I invest in some lighting gear? Or does this cam just not perform well in low light and never will and I should look at a different model?
There are differences in camcorders regarding low-light quality. Some are better, some need more light to produce a decent picture. It depends on the lenses, and maybe on the CCD quality.

But: nothing can beat good lighting. Thus I'd like to recommend to invest in a good camera light (not the small camcorder lights you can buy for cheap).

bb