Challenging low-light footage from HV20

[SenorKaffee]

Here are two scenes that seemed to be pretty challenging.
The settings are HDV PAL, Color+1, Brightness-1, AWB.

http://www.fullmetalpantsu.de/stuff/20070624-flackerbank-tv.jpg

A local train station with one flickering light. The flickering confused both AF-modes, so I had to switch to MF. The exposure is set pretty low to avoid burned-out lights. High gain seems to problematic with the red sign.

Cinema Mode (F1.8, 1/50, +3db) - 20070624-flackerbank-cinema.m2t (http://www.fullmetalpantsu.de/stuff/20070624-flackerbank-cinema.m2t) ca. 78MB
TV Mode (F1.8, 1/50, +15db) - 20070624-flackerbank-tv.m2t (http://www.fullmetalpantsu.de/stuff/20070624-flackerbank-tv.m2t) ca. 88MB

http://www.fullmetalpantsu.de/stuff/20070624-strasse-av.jpg

A wet street, once again it could need some manual focussing, but since I didn´t have a external monitor with me I needed to rely on IAF. The dynamic range has its limits, although the lights are already a little overexposed many background details vanish in the darkness.

AV Mode (F1.8, 1/50, +9db) - 20070624-strasse-av.m2t (http://www.fullmetalpantsu.de/stuff/20070624-strasse-av.m2t) ca. 95MB
TV Mode (F1.8, 1/50, +6db) - 20070624-strasse-tv.m2t (http://www.fullmetalpantsu.de/stuff/20070624-strasse-tv.m2t) ca. 67MB

[Ian-T]

The second set of comparisons (on the street) looked identical between Cinemode and TV mode. But on the first set there is a difference. The TV mode seemed to bring in more light than the Cinemode. You can tell by the big red sign in the background. That's interesting. Thanks for this.

[SenorKaffee]

The second set had no cinema mode. My take was useless because there was autofocus pumping I couldn´t see on the small monitor.

Notice that Cinemode used only a gain of +3 and the normal +15, that´s where all this light is coming from. I wish it would be possible to manually set gain. *sigh*

[Worley]

You can *sort of* set the gain manually. Take a look here (http://www.dvxuser.com/jason/hv20/) and here (http://hv20.com/showthread.php?t=180).

These are not ideal, but offer an acceptable solution.

[SenorKaffee]

Yes - also the mobile phone trick doesn´t really work with my 6230i, it shuts down the background light too fast. Maybe I´ll buy a small flashlight for that use.