What is "low light" mode, and what does it do on my camcorder?
That is the ability to shoot in practically no light or almost sometimes in total darkness. The way low-light mode works is it takes the apeture, which is what controls the amount of light that to your chip, and it opens it up wide open so the lens can gather as much light as possible. Then it takes what's called the shutter, or the amount of information that's coming off the chip, and it gives you the optimal shutter speed for a low light environment. In addition, low-light mode turns the gain circuitry or the electronic amplification (the brightness level of your chip) up as high as possible. It's taking all of the factors into consideration, brightening the image as much as it possibly can for low light environments. Sometimes it's called night shot or low-light shooting mode, but it really looks at everything that's coming through the lens and says "I need as much brightness as I can" and puts it all on the chip at one point. There's one particular type of mode call "night shot," which is an infra-red emitter. Infra-red is a spectrum of light that you and I can't see but the camcorder's chip can. It bathes the room in what's called infra-red light and allows you to see an image pretty much in total darkness. The image may be green, it may look like something out of a military type application but the image is there nonetheless. So, if you need to shoot in zero light, low-light mode is the feature you want to use.
