It’s the wide angle shots in low light that are the HV20’s downfall. Especially if there is a lot of untextured background. My apartment with it’s plain sheetrock walls and 100 watt bulbs does not look good on video. You either have to bring in more light are choose your shots very carefully.

In terms of video cameras, I would gladly pay, say, $1500 for a camcorder similar to an HV30, but with a larger sensor (or 3 larger sensors), more pro-level manual controls (like gain, for example), and possibly a few other upgrades like a real focus ring, etc. The problem, is there is not yet such a middle ground, like there now is with digital SLRs. To take the next step up from the HV20/30, you have to spend thousands more and be burdened with a physically much larger camera.

I wonder if we will see a market transformation in video similar to what DSLR’s have done in photography. Until there is, we’ll be stuck with high low-light noise and having to use “tricks” to set gain.

It’s not documented, per se, but from the various descriptions on the web, it seemed clear that people had figured out that’s what’s happening - that the gain gets locked when you use the trick.

What would have been nicer (and would avoid the kludgey trick) would be for Canon to simply include a setting to not allow automatic gaining up - similar to the setting they already have for not allowing automatic slow shutter.

Of course, if they put in every possible setting anybody could want, we would have 27 levels of menus

But underexposing because you specifically *want* the scene dark is fine.

Consumer camcorders gain-up because Joe Sixpack wants to be able to shoot video in his living room with no lighting other than his 60-watt table lamp. The problem is that gaining up makes the room in the video look brighter than it looks in reality, as well as being noisy. That’s where I think there is value underexposing (however you might choose to do it) - I might want a dark room to actually *look* dark in my film.

When you use one of the two methods I suggest, you might end up with a bit of noise. But noise can be removed on post using a plugin like this one, or simply using color grading. My video did have some noise originally, but most of it was removed when graded (except in 1-2 scenes). Look at the scene at 1:27, the second method was specifically used.

If I had under-exposed using the cellphone trick, my video would not have had as much visual information to work with. The editor plugins would have had a hard time locking in to the visual information, as it would mostly be a blob of black stuff on screen.

The point remains: if you need a camera that doesn’t have much noise, get an $8000 camera. The HV20’s sensor can do only what it can do, no matter what tricks you do with it. Which is why is best to have a bit of noise on dark scenes (in order to secure visual information), and then remove it on post.

1- shoot a “better exposed” image WITH NOISE
or
2- shoot an underexposed image WITHOUT NOISE.

I prefer the last option and I understand that the cellphone trick helps you MAKE SURE that the HV20 won’t crank up the gain (and with the trick you even have more than 10 different EV values to choose from).

I don’t think the method is stupid at all.