[Ted Rossi]

thanks for the info 🙂

It’s not the equipment you have that matters, it’s what you produce.

[Ted Rossi]

Sorry, I must have not understood your original reply 🙂

Sounds like you already know what to do.

It’s not the equipment you have that matters, it’s what you produce.

[Ted Rossi]

man, that was hillarious 🙂

It’s not the equipment you have that matters, it’s what you produce.

[Ted Rossi]

You may make a low budget documentary, but you can’t skip on a good camera. Otherwise your efforts are a total waste and who wants to see bad footage?

The very least you must have is an canon hv-20 and a few lapel mics or a shotgun mic (azden) and a canon wide angle lens.
You’re up to $1,200 with all the extras but at least you have a good chance to make a decent footage.

Where you go, a TAPE camcorder is a MUST, so you can have a good archive backup (tape). I’d never go anywhere with HD or card media where you’d have to download and monkey with those things in the field. Tape is the cheapest and best media. Some may argue with this, but I know how much hassle is the other methods when you’re out in the field and no access to anything…. no laptop, no download to anywhere and so on.

I’d also take along a “ZOOM H2” digital recorder. It’s a great backup for clear sound recording. I have two of them working in tandem when I know it’s an important shooting and can’t re-shoot.

Before you go and do your documentary, go out in the field and do some shooting and see how it goes. Learn all about the camera and how to shoot video. I’d say if you’re a fast learner, you need 3-4 months of learning to produce a decent video.
Then editing is another matter…. and takes even longer to learn to be a good cutter.

Well, good luck with your venture 🙂

It’s not the equipment you have that matters, it’s what you produce.

[Ted Rossi]

Man, I wanna see how yer gonna shoot ‘film’ with that camera 🙂

As for your question, am not sure why you’d want to shoot at night with those settings. If the HV30 has a “spotlight” mode than it will do just fine and get this: NO GRAIN or GAIN!

I shoot with that settings in 24P, spotlight on HV20 and love the clean images I get. One thing you must keep in mind that ‘spotlight settings’ will not going to give you images where GAIN would be necessery in any other settings…. unless you lock the exposure, but that’s another story. What you get is nice solid black colors.

Wanna see what is low light NO-GAIN videography…(not filming) do?
Check this footage: https://vimeo.com/2231289
Mind you, only two small red lights were available!
There was no need to get into higher shutter speed and all that complication to shoot in dark places. Besides the results would have been a lousy grainy footage if I did.

There are also more videos on same site to see low light shooting.

Hope this help.

It’s not the equipment you have that matters, it’s what you produce.