Camcorders have made great strides in the area of low-light shooting. Whether you're shooting candles on Junior's first birthday cake or an early evening community event, you want to capture all of the detail without all the grain.

No matter what your subject, you need to get the proper exposure when the lights are down. Of course, you could always add external lighting, either on the camera or elsewhere, but sometimes that's too obtrusive.

My skills were put to the test in a recent shoot at WaterFire Providence, a fire sculpture installation that takes place each year at the confluence of the three rivers that pass through downtown Providence, Rhode Island. Large piles of firewood are collected and placed in huge pots that float on the water's surface. Every 100 feet or so is another brazier filled with a quarter-cord of firewood. People dressed in Revolutionary War period costumes float down the river in gondolas and use torches to ignite these wood-filled vessels.

The only other illumination in the city is from the streetlights far away, windows in skyscrapers and car headlights on the adjacent road hundreds of feet to the left. Bridges span the river every 500 feet and spectators line both sides of the river that lurks 75 feet below. Thousands of people attend the lightings, which take place several times between May and October.

Exposure Possibilities
I would have been perfectly happy if they did this activity in the middle of the day, when I would be shooting at F16. Instead, organizers chose 9 p.m. in mid-July. I arrived at 7 p.m. to find a good location and collect B-roll of the crowd.

Although the low-light shooting information in this article could apply to any camera, I used the Sony HDV Z1 during my shoot. I used Bogen's 506B Fluid Video Monopod (see review in October 2006 Videography) for support because a tripod would have taken up too much space—and I needed a steady shot with the low-light conditions I was expecting.

Only about 2,000 people were lining the river and bridge, so I was able to find a good spot. By 7:30 p.m. I was shooting at F4 with a 1/60 shutter speed. I knew I would need a lot more exposure as the light faded. Here's where you have to make some decisions.

With regard to exposure, shooting HDV is no different than SD; however, your framing is wider and your focus is much more critical. I had several options to gain the exposure I needed.

Obviously, external lights were out because of the crowd, and my subjects (the fire and gondolas) were too far away. I changed the shutter speed to 1/30—any slower and the action would strobe too much. My advice: Slow your shutter speed as much as possible to allow more light in without changing the flow of action. If I were shooting people skiing at night, even 1/30 would be too slow and strobing would result.

My second suggestion is common sense: Open your iris as wide as possible. Auto exposure is unprofessional and never works in low-light conditions because the focus is almost impossible to obtain. On manual exposure, I opened fully to f/1.8. Don't use any filters because they lessen your exposure even more.

My exposure was too bright at first, but I knew it would be dark soon. With your shutter speed slow and your iris wide open, your depth of field is nonexistent (basically about two feet in extreme telephoto). From my vantage point, I could use wide angle as an establishing shot and extreme telephoto to capture the lighting of the wood. Here's a tip for Z1 users: Use the expanded focus to make sure your shot is sharp.

As a last resort, raise the gain level. Raising the gain to +9dB gives an extra stop of light. Raising it to +18dB really brightens your world. The trade-off is added grain in your image, but at +18dB, the Z1 is surprisingly palatable. Oh, the grain is still there, but not like the camcorders of old; +18dB almost makes things look like daylight in an artificial way. The dark night sky is now a muddled gray and the windows of the large building bloom with inner light.

Ride Your Iris
When the first pile of wood was lit, the LCD screen was filled with orange light. This is one time where you don't want to change your color balance. Firelight is orange—not changing the white balance left the rest of the cityscape in the background properly balanced. If I adjusted for the fire, all the other colors would be wrong.

The shutter speed remained the same throughout the shoot, but when the flames were ignited, I had to ride the iris because the exposure would change up to three stops. I purposely let the exposure underexpose two stops because it was night and it's better to have your video underexposed than overexposed. Use your eye as a guide.

Never be afraid to ride the iris; just make sure any changes are subtle. This is why it's so important to know your camera and where all of the adjustments reside. In the dark, you must operate by touch—and turning the iris knob to the left when you really wanted the right will ruin your shot.

Opening the exposure too much lightens the contrast and the blacks become gray, which makes for an unrealistic shot. It's night—it should look that way, with black blacks. Of course, lines of HMIs along the river would have been ideal for me but would have ruined the scene for the thousands in attendance.

Because I was sending all of this footage to an editor in Florida, I shot much more than I needed, giving her lots of different shots from which to choose. In HDV, the shots looked wonderful. The 16:9 aspect extreme long shots included a ribbon of fire, the multicolored lights of the traffic and the amber lights of the office buildings in the distance.

Luckily, my camcorder and I had a front row seat and others will be able to experience the footage (once edited). Even if you never have to shoot an event like this, experiment first by shooting just with candlelight and see what your camcorder can do. Memories are made at these events. Expose your shot using the natural light and your audience will relive those events in the way there were intended.