In a few days, I'll be shooting with a Sony HC7. I was wondering, does increasing the exposure also increase video noise? I know that increasing the gain is generally bad, but I'm not sure if the same applies to exposure. I always thought that increasing the exposure would allow more light in, thus reducing noise, but I may be wrong. Any suggestions (for both indoor and outdoor shots)?
Noise comes from the CCD when the light level is too low and you turn up the gain, so in theory changing the aperture shouldn't cause any increase in noise if you don't have to increase the gain to compensate for less light.
My TRV900 used to have a 'negative gain' option which would reduce the CCD reading rather than boost it, thereby cutting gain further in bright light.
So would it be better to under-expose the shots?
No, though I tended to use one stop less than the auto-exposure on that camera because otherwise it tended to wash out the skin tones. You just want to use as little gain as possible, unless you want it to look noisy.
BTW, that said, the newer Sonys seem to be able to use a bit of gain without any noticeable noise; 9db is about the point where I start to notice it on my Z1, for example.
