Why Camcorders in Night mode they start lagging and not smooth and stable?

Question

I've owned some panasonic, canon and jvc camcorders and they all have night mode options to increase visibility in night, but they all start to lag and I've been wondering why they can't just stay smooth and stable.

currently i have one of the new Jvc everio and does the same, why putting that in cameras if its going to lag, is useless.

can anybody explain why this happens to camcorders when switch to night mode?

Answer 1

When you switch to night mode, the shutter gets opened up as long as possible to capture light. If you want good low-light capture, you need large imaging chip(s) and large lenses to let in and capture available light - which you will not find on most consumer-grade camcorders because they are expensive.

Or... use a video light so the camcorder is not capturing in "low light:".

Or... use a Sony camcorder that has the "SuperNightShot" feature - the camcorder has a built-in infrared emitter and can see in zero light, though the image is monochromatic and a bit grainey like in "Blair Witch Project" or "Ghost Hunters".

Answer 2

To understand this you have to know a little about how lenses and cameras work. I'll explain it for film cameras first as they are easier to understand, then I'll tie it in with video cams.

The lens is a tube with glass at either end. Light goes from one end to the other. The glass bends the light to focus it on the film of your camera. However, movies are not actual moving pictures, they are just an optical illusion. When you watch a movie you are actually watching a sequence of still images flashed so fast your brain perceives them as all one piece. So what a film camera does is record a bunch of still images really fast. In front of the sensor is a "shutter" that covers it. When you take a picture, it snaps up to expose the film to light then snaps down, so forming an image. To make a sequence of still images to make a movie, it snaps up and down really fast throughout the shot. However, the film has to be exposed to the light for a certain amount of time in order to form a bright enough image. If it is dark, then since the film still needs the same amount of light, the shutter has to stay open for longer than if it is bright. When image it is recording is moving, you get a blur effect, since the film is recording a moving image onto a still image. So when you play it back you see a very blurry movie. Hope you understand so far, it's not a simple thing, and it takes experience to get used to the phenomenon and learn to get around it.

Now, unlike video cameras, film cameras always have to run the film through the camera at 24 frames per second, unless you are doing slow motion or fast motion. So you put the same number of frames per second even if it is dark, so the image stays smooth, even if it is blurry and dark. But video cameras don't have to run at 24 frames per second, they can just do, say, four frames a second and have a really slow "shutter" speed to get more light on the sensor and then digitally interpolate that into their standard frames per second, which is usually 30 or so. So if your only actually seeing 4 frames a second your brain can see the difference between the four images and sees a sequence of still images instead of a moving picture. It's like fps in games. If you have a fast video card you can run the games at 30fps or more and you don't see lag because your brain is fooled into thinking the pictures are actually just one moving picture. But if your card is slower and it can only do around 2 fps, then your brain isn't fooled and sees the difference and so you see lag in the game.

More advanced cameras allow you to control these things much more. But with consumer cams it is pretty much all automatic so you get what you get. That's why feature films use really crazy expensive cams, so they can control every single aspect of the image creation, like fps and shutter speed and stuff.

Wow this was long. Hope this helps a little bit! This is pretty complicated stuff if you've never done much photography before. I remember when I first started learning it seemed so weird to me, but now it seems like second-nature to control all these things and keep the image the way I want. Eventually if you stick with it you'll be the same! Good luck!