Hmmm, let's see. I have a brand new Panasonic PV-GS14 and a brand new JVC GRD33 miniDV camcorder. And neither of them get the low light results of my piece of crap old Sharp Viewcam analog camcorder that is 6 years old. What's up with that?

I'm thinking: newer smaller CCDs are less light efficient and new camcorders have smaller cheaper lenses which also capture and concentrate less light.

The trade off is usually smaller cam size, smaller tapes, and more pixels in the image for better resolution.

Interesting... And this, for a camcorder (GS14) that this very website calls the best sub-$600 camcorder out there? So basically this camera is useless since I mainly intended on using it indoors in low lighting. Please tell me I didn't just waste all that money.

Very few, if any, camcorders do well in low light. Even expensive professional machines use extra lights to get good results.

Look at the lens on the front of the gs14; it's pretty small and at f3.4 on maximum zoom you aren't getting very much light in. It also has a 1/6" CCD considerably smaller than older generation chips. So it's very possible for your old camcorder to preform better in low light.

The review here says it doesn't perform well in low light and that most camcorders in the gs14 category don't either.

Proving once again, newer isn't always better.

Don,

I recently read a thread where you and someone else kept going back and forth on the GS120 and HC85 cams, mainly regarding low light and video quality. This hit home when I read this as you had noted the larger the CCD the more light that is allowed to come in. The more CCD's the better the color. Somehow the GS120 does a fairly good job at both even with smaller CCD's. How is it that a camera such as the GS120 with 3 CCDS at 1/6 can perform that well in low light whereas another brand with 1/6 CCD's cannot? Just lens quality?

Also from reading that thread, it sounded like you had not yet decided on a DV cam to buy. Have you decided yet, or are you waiting until after the 05 models are released to the public? Please share your thoughts.

Thanks.

One reason is that the GS120 has a low pixel count on the same sized CCD, and thus larger pixels. Larger pixels gather more light. Most of the new cams jam a gazillion pixels on a CCD so that they can function as megapixel digital still cameras also. In the process, they give worse low light video, while still not taking good stills. But marketing depts feel consumers want something that will do double duty and most won't know that they're ending up with poor quality.

The GS200 has more pixels, higher resolution stills, and does worse in low light.

I believe having three CCDs also helps, although I can't give a scientific explanation as to why.