I found cinemode has great quality in low light since it doesn't crank up the gain (e.g. low noise). I wonder, is there a way to control gain with other programs? I found most modes overexpose in low-light for some reason except cinemode.

I haven't seen anything in the menus but maybe there's a trick?

exposure will drop your gain and far down enough it will turn gain off completely.

It's all situational.. But, in a really dark area cover up your lens so it opens the iris all the way up. While your hand is covering the lens lock your exposure by going to exposure control and push up on the joystick. Bringing it down to -6 will take your gain down to 0. But, of course it will make the picture darker.

You can learn everything you want to know and more at:
http://www.dvxuser.com/jason/hv20/

exposure will drop your gain and far down enough it will turn gain off completely.

It's all situational.. But, in a really dark area cover up your lens so it opens the iris all the way up. While your hand is covering the lens lock your exposure by going to exposure control and push up on the joystick. Bringing it down to -6 will take your gain down to 0. But, of course it will make the picture darker.

You can learn everything you want to know and more at:
http://www.dvxuser.com/jason/hv20/

Many thanks, makes sense:-). I wish there would be a program mode that automatically does this.
So perhaps night mode but I'm guessing it's the opposite what I want: probably max gain, shutter 1/30.

I'll probably just have to play with all the modes. Is there a program where I can view the gain/exposure/shutter the recording? I know mini-dv can but not sure about such a MPEG-2 stream.

UPDATE: never mind I found the answer to the last question on your web site. I wonder if that info can also be extracted on PC but HV20 is good enough (too bad though it's not showing the gain even though there are some tricks).