How do I obtain best results when video taping in low light?

Question

My friends and I enjoy recording ourselves when we go salsa dancing at clubs. Generaly there isn't much light and using a spot light for the camera would be distracting to other dancers. Is there a way to improve quality and clarity without using an extra light?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Most consumer camcorders do not record well in low light.

Camcorders do have a "night mode" or "night setting" but it will give you grainy or blurry looking video.

However, here are some tips that may work for you:
1. Try to dance in an area that may have brighter lights that are not flashing so that the lights illuminate the dancers more so than elsewhere.
Here is a little diagram: Light > Recorder > Dancer. What I am trying to show here is to have the light behind the recorder facing the dancers.

2. Try not to record "looking into" a brighter light. If there is a light behind the people dancing, your camcorder will pick up the light, adjust for it, and make everyone else darker/harder to see.

3. Keep your camcorder steady. More movement (than what is already happening) will just make it more difficult on the camcorder to adjust and focus.

4. Try recording from close distance as well as further away. I am guessing a closer shot will record better, but there are many factors, so play around to see which works best.

Good luck!

Answer 2

First of all, use manual mode if you have one. If you do, open up the aperture as much as possible. Lower the shutter speed, to 1/30 if you have it. If not, go to 1/60 (the lowest for most cams). Or if you have the option, you can create a "crazy music video" effect and improve the clarity by setting the shutter to 1/8 or 1/15. However the effect also depends on other factors as well, so it might look kinda cheesy in some shots, and in other shots it will have a cool effect. The low-light mode on an auto cam does the same thing as that. If you absolutely have no other way of brightening the picture in the camera, you can do it on your computer, but it will sacrifice the picture quality for clarity. Adjust the brightness and contrast for each shot until you get an exposure you are happy with. Ignore the grain, but try to increase brightness and contrast as little as possible to retain the best possible quality. Now you should have a good shot (or at least one where you can actually see people instead of being totally dark), but it should be really grainy. Apply a gaussian blur (or just some kind of blur, as long as it does the job), and adjust the pixel blur to something around 2 or 2.5 pixels, or even better, adjust and watch the picture until it softens the grains, but doesnt make the picture look too out of focus (since it's dark, you can get away with higher pixel settings, and still have it look okay). Hope this helps!

Answer 3

You pretty much need to start with a camcorder that has good low light performance. Try researching at camcorderinfo.com.

Also, many camcorder have low light modes that slow down the shutter speed - this works OK for static scenes, but for scenes with any action (especially salsa dancing) most of motion would be blurred on the video. Try experimenting with your camcorder.

Other than that, I would suggest that you video tape your dancing in the part of the club that has the best lighting.