This is by no means a complete fix for the poor low light performance of the ZR series- but many users here, including myself, have found the situation not to be as bad as some make it out to be. You can get good, usable video indoors with these cameras, and no one argues the superb well lit and outdoor performance. But what happens many times is someone buys the camera, out of the box the image is pretty bad, and they turn around and return it for a more expensive camera. If you can afford a better camera get it, but if you're willing to try a few setting changes before coughing up $200 more, you'll see these cameras can be quite good.

Tip 1) With any of these settings, try them out first, if you can, and see what works for you. Also, use the viewfinder to gage your lighting and brightness- it's more reliable than your LCD- on which the brightness is adjustable and can be misleading.

Tip 2) One sure way to decrease the noise in your picture is to decrease the AE exposure setting. You can adjust this to taste, but the most consistent input we have here is anywhere from
-0.5 to -1. The downside is the image gets darker as you go.

Tip 3) Shutter speed- set your camera in auto mode and change the shutter speed to 1/60. I personally feel like I get the most benefit from this setting. The image will be brighter and the grain is decreased. The downside is the image can be a bit blurry- esp with high motion, but not as blurry as the "Lowlight" mode where the shutter is around 1/30.

Tip 4) Some users have posted good results with the "Spotlight" setting, although this will darken the image dramatically. But if you've got a good source of light, for example someone sitting next to a lamp, and you're not as worried about the surroundings, this can be a good setting. Like the name suggests, this has been helpful for many users at a school play, recital, and has been recommened for fireworks displays, such as gonig to Disney.

Tip 5) White balance- at the very least set it to indoor. If you can, find a clean white area to set it manually. Maybe some high quality printer paper or even better run down to the photo store and get a card to set your white balance. Find an area of the room that seems to be most representative of the lighting and set the balance. this will help you in any video situation.

Misc) Before you totally write off these cameras, view the output in its final format you would be viewing it in. It appears that the analog output on some of these cameras may be a cheap output- some users have gotten better results using the S-Video output instead.

If you're uploading it to a PC- be careful when viewing video on your screen. For one, the DV is interlaced and your monitor is a progressive display- without getting too technical what this basically means is that you will see artifact on your PC screen that won't show up on a regular TV. Digital HDTV is another story I won't get into. Make sure you try exporting the video, to VCD, SVCD, or DVD and see what kind of quality you get on your TV when the edited video is played back- but of course this also depends on your disc making software.

Like I said earlier- everyone has a little different tweak that works best for them. For me, when indoors, I set the shutter to 1/60, the AE to -0.5, try to set the white balance manually, and by the time I upload to my PC and create a DVD I get very good, crisp looking video. I have been pleased with the results and you will find others on this board who are happy with their cams as well.

Am I leaving anything out?

One helpful thing I've discovered is that "Spotlight" mode can be used to judge how much light the camera is getting.

If spotlight mode looks fine (in a non-spotlit setting), then full-auto will generally do fine as well. If spotlight mode looks fairly dim, then 1/60 & AE-shift -1.0 will help reduce graininess. If spotlight mode is quite dim, 1/60 & AE-shift -2.0 can be used to reduce more grain at the expense of dimness, And if spotlight mode is dark, then the lowlight mode needs to be used.

Thanks for the tips! I'll play around and post some results if relevant.

NWH

I picked up a ZR60 a couple of weeks, and have adjusted the shutter, and white balance to the recommended settings posted here for low light...However, I cannot figure out how to adjust the AE exposure setting...I have looked through the manual, and still cannot find any reference to it...I feel silly for having to ask, but could anyone tell me how to go about in adjusting the AE exposure?...

In camera mode, the stop button on the right side of the VCR controls above the LCD is also labeled "AE SHIFT". Press this button and the AE shift will show up in color on the viewfinder/LCD. Use the scroll/toggle switch to move it up or down.

I used to own a ZR-50 and just bought a ZR-80.

The in-door shooting isn't that bad as people claimed, especially after you burned the footage into CD. Maybe Sony's DV gives little better result, but they always have higher price and only 10x lens.

I found the tweaks help a lot, which do improve the quality of the image.

Compared ZR50 with ZR80, I found video quality is almost same, despite the later has more pixels. It seems that ZR80 consumes more power, although it comes with one-chip processor. The biggest change may be that it got smaller. I should really go to ZR60 to save some bucks.

As for the video, I've tried DVD, SVCD and VCD. VCD quality is kind of low and not easy to improve(yeah, some commercial VCDs do deliver super quality video, don't know how they achieved that). DVD has excellent quality, but it is hard to find more than 1.5 hours home video content on a regular basis, so you leave most disk space empty. Most disks I burned are SVCD, using tmpgenc to process the footage to get almost DVD quality video. One disk contains about 30 minutes images, very convenient for home video. I tried so called mini-DVD as well, DVD file structure on a CD. which contains about 20 min DVD level video, but not all players support that.

And I do find the video quality on the disk is much better than you see on a PC.

Avoiding low light modes with the AE is great. AE is very useful with bright backgrounds where the subject will turn out dark too. Adjusting the AE gain allows the subject to become recognizable at the expense of a washed out background.

When the light doesn't become enough and Low Light or Night modes are needed, I find the following settings helpful.

Turn off Image stabilization to help prevent jitter. I find a wide angle attachment lens does more to prevent instability than does the IS mode.
Use manual focus or focus infinity mode.
Avoid movement in the picture so you don't get dizzy watching it.

Great tips - especially Spotlight Mode which I would have never thought to try.

The best way I found to experiment was to get within cable length of a big TV (CRT or plasma - not projection if possible), connect it, and adjust room lighting to match where you want to record. No need to record to tape - just look at the TV while you play with the different settings. Think of it as a really big viewfinder.

Hi,

I have a Canon ZR70MC camcorder. I tried to tape inside and outside today for the first time and I wasn't too thrilled at the results. Out of the box, the still shots are grainy/blurry, and live motion is blurry with lackluster color quality. Image quality is better outside than inside, but not as good as I had hoped. I'm so disappointed.

Unfortunately, I can't afford to buy a better camera right now, so I will try these tips and tweaks. Thank you very much for sharing this information. I hope it helps until I can get a better camcorder.

I have just purchased a ZR85 to replace my old Sharp analog and have found the tricks have been very helpful. I decided to try out the camera in several different venues.

Inside the house after dark, was pretty dark, but the quality came out just the same as it did in analog format. At first everything was grainy, but when I tried the tricks mentioned here, everything cleared up nicely.

I then tried at the pool during my daughters lessons. Much better quality then the analog did. I especially enjoyed the ability to get rid of the sound in editing on the computer.

The next day I tried it at the park on a very sunny day. Incredible. Much clearer then the old camera. So far I have no regrets in my decision to purchase this camera.

In my experience with the ZR45, it's the 1/60 shutter speed that makes the difference. Turning down the AE or turning off image stabilization didn't seem to make a difference to me. With the 1/60 shutter, the grain decreased. Still not great, but definitely better.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to set my ZR80 to get optimal results recording basketball games? I just left it on auto the first time and the players looked pretty grainy when they were on the far end of the court. It really was not much better than my old 8mm analog. I saw in one place in the manual to set the shutter speed to 1:100 for basketball games, so I'll try it tomorrow but I don't really know what effect that will cause on the game.

While a 1/100 shutter might be good for stopping the action, I've used 1/60 for indoor basketball and volleyball (gradeschool) and haven't noticed any bluring while viewing on a TV.

I just reviewed some basketball footage I shot last weekend of my 8 year old in an elementary school gym (brown carpeted floor, yellow walls w/ occasional dark pads, and flourescent lighting). At first, I tried Spotlight mode, but depending on the background, the exposure kept changing too noticeably. So I manually white-balanced on a backboard, set the shutter to 1/60 and the AE-Shift to -0.75. The footage turned out nicely (better than my old Video8, but not as good as outdoor with the ZR), with only a touch of visible "grain" noise in a couple of shots when a large chunk of the background was a dark color (this usually is because the auto-exposure kicks up the gain when the dark background makes it think the scene is dark - exposure lock would take care of this, but I don't think the ZRs have any such locking capability).

The only issue with viewing the tape is that occasionally the auto-focus would hunt during high motion at a distance (usually due to a framing issue, like too much floor or a stray player or spectator). Since I was taping from the edge of the court and sometimes had the kids 2 feet away, I couldn't use manual focus. Last year I used a wide-angle lens and had less focus issues due to the lens' greater depth of field.

I taped some last year in a gym with mixed flourescent/mercury-vapor lights without white balancing (using artifical light WB setting, I think) and the video had a slight yellow/green tint and the purple uniforms looked a bit blue. The manual white balance this season made the video look much better and the purple looks purple (which is a difficult color for camcorders to get right).

Although I've mentioned this in the past, I wanted to add these lighting tips to the low-light "sticky":

1) a 3W on-camera video light won't blind anyone, but it also won't help at all - my 3W Sima light is a nice fill light up to 4-5 ft, but the background will still be dark and filled with grainy noise; even 10W lights won't help much; these low-watt lights are helpful in the low-light and night modes (where LED lights help).

2) a 15-30W video light (with good diffusion) will improve your low-light footage, but at the expense of making your subjects feel like they are in an episode of COPS; dark corners still may show noise.

3) the best solution I have found for my house (8-9 ft ceilings painted white) is to use a 1/60 shutter and place a 300W torchiere lamp in the room; the light bounced off the ceiling will brighten everything and won't blind anyone (the new flourescent torchieres should work too); the room will look different (you will now be able to see the dust-bunnies in the corner), but your video will look sooo much better.

With the new ZR100-300 not having an accessory shoe, on-camera lighting is now more expensive since it also requires purchasing a bracket to add a shoe.

I realize that using a torchiere isn't always possible, but when you know an event (birthday, etc.) will happen in your living room, this will help your ZR get much better video. My torchiere (from my bachelor days) is kept in the basement, but I've successfully used it in our living room, family room, basement, and foyer. It works well placed to the side, in the dark corners, and even behind the camera.

P.S. Another great tip:
If you have noisy footage or low-light strobe-like footage from your ZR, I have found that converting it to black & white (or Sepia) makes it much easer to watch and integrate with good video - more so than IR footage from a Sony (which has funky shadows, glowing eyes and other strangeness). Many who have seen my B&W footage have commented on how cool it was or asked how I made it look like old documentary or Super8 footage. Because it switches to B&W, people EXPECT the quality to be bad (whereas in color, people are appalled at how relatively bad it looks). Other post-production effects, like increasing the contrast of the B&W footage or applying an "age" filter to scratch the footage, can also hide the noise and make it look old/cool (but use sparingly and where appropriate).

P.P.S. - Much of the noisy footage I've ended up with has been the result of switching modes, such as from Program Auto and 1/60 shutter to Spotlight or Full-Auto and back to Program Auto, but forgetting that the shutter resets back to auto, not 1/60.

Peace,
Chris

These "tips" are all just common exposure techniques that any serious amateur photographer should know by memory.

There really is no "tweaking" the ZR line for better indoor low-light performance. The lenses on these things are just plain too small, and so are the sensors. At least the older ZR's had 1/4" chips....the newer ones have jokes for chips.

These cams have AWESOME outdoor abilities, as long as the light is excellent and there is enough contrast in a scene to let the AF properly function. Indoors, they are an exercize it futility in anything but extremely well lit scenarios. You can't change the chips or lens. Simple as that.

I don't use mine for indoor shoots at all. I get better footage indoors by far from my old hi-8 analog cams and of course my GL1. It gets used for outdoor only, and doubles as a Mini-DV deck for transferring data to computer for editing. About the only thing you can do with these things indoors is to turn up the gain a notch, not too far to avoid noise, and keep the shutter set at 1/60, with a wide aperture (forget about controlling DOF with these things indoors, you won't do it).

I kind of consider them throw-away DV cams, good only for outdoor or well lit shots inside, and which double as great Mini-DV VCR's if you can stand the awful noise the tape transports make.