Correcting Night Time Lightning Overexposure

[Stephen Levine]

I have looked over archives of discussion on new camcorders.
The Cannon HV30 seems to have the most favorable reviews, however a chief complaint seems to be the fact that at night lightning is overexposed.
Discussion centerd around doubling the shutter speed over recording mode to compensate; however the lightning still turned out overexposed.

Does anyone have success with night time lightning, especially for a camera that might be purchased at approximately $600?

 

[Tony Laubach]

I have looked over archives of discussion on new camcorders.
The Cannon HV30 seems to have the most favorable reviews, however a chief complaint seems to be the fact that at night lightning is overexposed.
Discussion centerd around doubling the shutter speed over recording mode to compensate; however the lightning still turned out overexposed.

Does anyone have success with night time lightning, especially for a camera that might be purchased at approximately $600?

Try slapping a neutral density (ND) filter on there. That may help.. never used one for nighttime lightning, so I can't speak for experience, but it may be a good place to start.

 

[Greg Campbell]

It looks like the camera has an aperture priority option. Close the lens down and increase shutter speed as needed to maintain the scene's exposure.

 

[Jason Foster]

The ND filter idea is what I do...seems to work...but I'm still using SD for lightning. I use the same technique sometimes for my SLR...which extending my exposures helps in some situations. That and the shutter option on the camera seems to be both ways to go. If you need to try it out on something...try shooting traffic at night....I find that gets me close without having to wait for a thunderstorm to experiment with.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thank you so much for your suggestions. We just, based largely on S.T. reviews ordered the Cannon HV-30 video camera over a Sanyo video cam that had excellent low light rating but was more expensive and had issues reported with wiggly pictures.

Pardon the "ignorance"; what is an SD filter? Do I assume correctly that I could buy these from a photo store?

This purchase has ended nearly 3 years of undecided searching over the video camera options.

By the way, we found this camera on line, complete with accessories including case, tripod and a 6 pack of tapes for under $450.00 today.

 

[Jason Foster]

SD= Standard Definition....as in versus HD (High Definition). Sorry for the confusion.

 

[James Langford]

Hi Neighbor.

I purchased an HV-20 last winter, and used it for quite a few lightning storms over the spring/summer. There are a lot of different presets on the camera that work well with lightning. One I found that worked well for me was the "Sports" setting, odd as it sounds. Overall I didn't get too many blown out scenes. I'm sure that better results could be achieved by playing the the settings morej.

Here's some video samples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVv9JUL97XQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK5OJWKlTYU

James

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thank you so much for your tips and assistance, gentlemen. Will let you know how things go once the camera arrives, and of course might have an additional question or two.