Hi, first off, I am a point and shoot kind of guy. I used to put my old camera on Auto and just let it do its thing. I decided to buy the H20 and get away from the Auto setting and learn how to shoot the right way. We are going to Las Vegas for New Years and I will be filming some Christmas lights outside and the Strip at night and would like to know the best setting. My old camera would go in and out of focus when I tried to shoot lights like that before. I think I will need to use the low light setting and the manual focus. I hope I am on the right track but I want to make sure I don't screw it up. I have a lot to learn about it so I am trying to start out right. Thanks for the help.

Not familiar with the HV20, but just make sure to open the iris all the way, shoot in 24p with 1/48th shutter, and keep the gain as low as possible. The last thing you want to do is boost the gain up to unreasonably high levels and create a noisy, unnatural looking picture. Try practicing at night around your neighborhood with Christmas lights.

Yeah, gain is a pain (ha) with the HV20 in low light.

This thread has some good info:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=106115

I suppose it's a little late now, but I went out and shot some lighted decorations at night on Christmas Eve. I used Cine Mode to prevent gain from ruining the image. Although I had a few problems with autofocus, the image came out looking very nice for the most part.