I have a good LED light (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004TJ6JH6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) but am just wondering what the best camera settings are.
I know the vx1000's are inferior in low light but I am definitely not copping a vx2000 strictly for night footage, that feels so overboard.
So everytime I set the color settings on vx1, day or night, it always takes a little customization and tweaking to get the ideal look I want. As someone mentioned above, there's no perfect "right" way to set colors at night since every scene/spot is different and how bright you have your LED light can affect things too, but I'll give my go-to steps for setting vx1000 colors at night that should help:
So before you start changing your settings, I would suggest starting by having your camera on with the light attached (turned on) and have the camera pointed at the skater/spot, illuminating the scene the best you can from whatever side/angle you'll be filming the skating from.
Shutter Speed: I set my shutter speed anywhere from 180 to 90, just depending on how dark the spot is. Usually I go with 180 or 120 because I feel like keeping it at 90 adds more grain to footage than I would like. Usually I'll have my LED light full blast if it's completely dark, or a little bit less (80% amount or so) if there's lots of street lights and things like that to help light things up.
White Balance: With white balancing, just the same with daytime, I usually try to find something closest to true white that I can get close to and set a Custom White Balance for. If you didn't know about custom white balancing, basically it's the white balance option on the vx1000 that shows a blinking flower-like icon when it is selected. To set a custom white balance, keep the camera on the custom white balance option, point it at something white (while lit up with the light) and click and hold the white balance button near the bottom of the battery door. You can reset it as many times as you want until it looks right to you. If all else fails, using the daytime white balance sometimes produces really cool night footage, just looks a little yellow.
Exposure: Usually I adjust the exposure last after setting everything else, and I simply adjust it so that the skateboarder's clothes/skin/etc. are visible and clear but not blown out in overexposed light. Usually for me it's a few ticks under the highest exposure level. but again, it really depends on the spot you're at.
Custom Presets: A lot of people seem to overlook these settings or forget to set them, but I feel like they're very important for fine-tuning color settings on the vx1. If you don't know about custom presets already, here's how you access them...first, open the battery door to the vx1 and find the small "Menu" button just to the right of the battery slot. Click this, and it will bring up a menu. Use the arrow buttons underneath that same Menu button to scroll down to where it says "Custom," then, click the execute button to toggle the custom setting, and set it to "On" to bring up the custom presets settings. Using the same buttons (arrows and execute) to toggle these settings, I usually bump my sharpness up two bumps and bump the color level all the way up or just two bumps up, depending on the scene.
After these tweaks, you should be able to capture some good night footage for the next part or montage
<3Also for reference, below is a montage I made last Halloween that has some night clips in it that I filmed, you can see how difference in lighting at each spot really makes a difference in how the footage turns out. Hope this helps you out brotha!