Mini DV instead of Digital 8

[fluggo99]

I use regular halogen worklights at my place... 'Course that's under "controlled" conditions.

[Keith Wiebe]

According to my photo light meter normal room level light varies from around 40 lux to around 350 lux. Don't look at camera lux ratings as giving any significance. When one gets around 4 lux it's in real dim candlelight. Most cameras can give 50ire(not sure of this) at round 10lux and that hasn't improved at all in the last 10 yrs or so. Wht you need to look at is the performance in normal room lighing. My TR7000 (same camera and optics) give bright enough images but lack good color and exhibits some color fringing in dimmer lighting. If one notices this one can switch to black and white mode and even switch on the night shot! Some of the problems of indoor lights are that the light comes from overhead too much and that leads to dark eyesockets, etc. As the previous poster suggested a small camera light will help tremendously but I don't own one. When purchasing the camera just be sure and get one that can be returned if not satisfied. I just shot some outdoor snow scenes with the TR7000 and used a circular polarizer(linear one gave the dreaded color fringing) and the results look fantastic. The digital 8 has no noise in the picture, etc.
For indoor interview type shots I have used a 100 watt bulb in a parabolic socket and set it about 5 ft from the subject and they were lit beautiful although when playing back the tape it said I was still in 6db gain up mode but no noise was visible on the picture (if one is in gain up mode not enough light has entered the lens to allow the diaphragm to control the light and the light that is available gets boosted which will result in more noise-in dimmer lighting it will go to 18db which starts to look real grainy although 10-12 isn't too bad)

[dchip]

Thanks. I decided earlier to forget about light and "focus" on the overall ability of the camera to put excellent images on tape. Its more than I wanted to spend, but, today I did commit to the Sony TRV 10. Small size, more pixels and the ability to take single frame decent quality jpegs sold me. The TRV 900 was a possibility too, but I could not justify the budgetary impact. Deep down I still have the nagging feeling that one of the D8's would have been just as good as the TRV 10 but I am going to forget about that too and enjoy Mini DV. It's something I can grow into. Particularly when I get into digital editing. Thanks to all for sharing you expertise and experience.

[Grigory]

One addition that probably works for all Sony camcorders:

If you shoot in low light conditions, turn ON moonlight Program AE mode. This mode limits the gain to 12 DB and significanlty reduce the noise and graininess of your footage.
Low light condition starts from normal indoor daytime and lower light. Try this and see the difference.

Grigory.

[dchip]

Thanks Grigory and all others who replied. This camera buy has been very tough for me. Even had a late entrant into the running (sony DCR-PC3)...Anybody know anything about that little guy?