trouble with indoor school concert shots with video camera?

Question

I have a jvc video camera and I have trouble shooting school concerts. they turn out way too dark. What should I use as a setting on this camera. can anyone make some suggestions?

Answer 1

If the auditorium is dark you need to turn your night vision on. It will brighten everything up. Good luck. I have a handy cam mine is right above the lens. It's a switch.

Answer 2

Are there manual functions on the camera? Probably not im guessing, although if there are, set your iris (aperture) to the smallest number possible, and shutter speed to (at the slowest) 1/30 of a second. Then keep your zoom on maximum wide angle at all times unless you have to zoom in. If you dont have manual functions on your camera, then you can try finding shooting modes on your camera (most cams have this). Most cams have a spotlight mode, and some cams have a low light mode as well. If you have a low light mode, use that. If not, use the spotlight mode and see where it gets you. Also, make sure that your lcd and/or viewfinder brightness is set a medium, so you get an accurate representation of the brightness. If you absolutely have to, set it to the brightest setting and see if you get a picture (after youve adjusted your other settings for maximum low light performance as listed above), if you do get a picture, shoot like that. Later, when you edit your video, add a brightness filter (or several, or if you have a slider, use that) and adjust so you can see a picture on the screen. However, dont try to make it like it was properly lit; if you can make out the shapes of the people, thats perfect. Brightening will make the black areas of the screen appear grey. Which leads us to the next step. Then apply a contrast filter (again, apply several, if needed, to give the picture black blacks, or use a slider if there is one. This will darken the image slightly, but dont attempt to brighten the image too much, remember, the environment was supposed to be dark anyways.).
By now, you should be getting a picture out of your video. By doing all the above steps, you will increase noticeable noise as well, but it is not really that important, since it is a concert video, and it can add to that effect. However, if you want to make the grain less noticeable (not remove), add a slight gaussian blur (only if your editor has this option, if not, your out of luck), and it wont really matter because its so dark anyways, people wont see the blurriness if its only blurred by 1.1% or something like that.

Anyways, thats that. I hope some of this helped, and if not, then you need a new camera! :-)