can you offer any names - brands - models that will afford the same and allow for attachment of lighting, etc.?

thanks in advance

Actually the best low-light camcorders under $500 are analog not digital DV. If you must use DV, try and find a DV camera with largest CCD’s you can. This was the first thing I noticed when I bought my first DV camera, the low light wasn’t even close to what my analog camcorder could do. I was very disappointed. Perhaps a Hi8 camera would be a better choice if low light is a high priority and $500 is all you have to spend.

~jr

If low-light is truly mandatory (i.e., you will be shooting in circumstances that won't allow for supplemental lighting), you're just going to have to spend more money than $500. You might try buying a used 3-chip camcorder.

The best low-light cameras are the Sony VX-2000 and VX-2100 and their professional counterparts, the PD-150 and PD-170.

I use a JVC JY-VS200U as I am just now getting to where I can afford a 3ccd dv camera. You have to start somewhere and with something and this, along with 2 other JVC consumer cameras helped me to start out. I purchased all 3 off ebay at different times on money made from shooting weddings. Once I started getting better at them I could raise my prices and once I was able to afford Vegas and learn it half way decently, I was able to raise my rates more due to better products and now I am at the point where I can afford better equipment to aide in low light situations. Click on my name as I asked the same question that you did and there are some good recommendations there on one of the threads that is similar to yours.
Hoped this helped.

Panasonic's PV-GS line rings a bell.
Try looking at Panasonic PV-GS120 or PV-GS150! They are both 3CCD, I read some good reviews about them. The 120 can be had for less than $500, and you may be lucky to get the 150 (the newer model, maybe better than the 120), for about $500.

I have to be honest with you; just like the other guys here say, you won't be able to get really good performance out of camcorders that cost less than $1,500, unless you use sufficient lighting.
If $500 is all you have in the budget, the two cameras I mentioned are a good starting point. Get one of those two, and check them out in your typical environments!

If your friend is serious about making money from wedding videos, he should later on get either Sony DCR-VX2000 or DCR-VX2100. They cost anywhere from at least $1,500 (tell me if you find one!), and up to $3,000. You can get the 2100 at Good Guys for about $2,500 regular price.
( PSST! If you tell them that you are a serious customer, try to get it for $2,000. I usually ask for a 5-year warranty (additional $500), and they are willing to drop it that low, at least when they had it at $3,000. They are ALWAYS willing to drop it by at least a $100, and up to $300)
The 2100 is an updated version of 2000, with a bit lower light requirement, transflective LCD (reflects external light, so you can view it without problems even under bright sunlight), and I would say a more accurate color capturing, but you would have to pay a few hundred dollars more.
Either one of these two will give you the best low light performance of the consumer type camcorders.
And if he is even more serious, the Sony PD-150 or PD-170 are the professional versions of the VX2000 and VX2100. The difference between them being that the professional versions allow more manual adjustments, have professional sound inputs with better quality, and, I heard but can't confirm, also a little bit better video quality. The downside is that they cost about about few hundred to one thousand dollars more, sometimes not worth the difference.

To be truly honest (just my opinion, OK) no it isn't possible, even the rather expensive VX2100/PD170 isn't that good at the very low light levels you can strike in many wedding situations. A $50K camera with 2/3" CCDs will do a marginal job if your friend is a good cameraman but I doubt he'd be asking if he was that experienced.

Sure there are cameras that perform better in low light, but are they good enough, I really don't think so, certainly no where near as good as the specs and marketing hype would suggest. Yes they'll give you what looks like an exceptable image but look very closely and you'll see quite a bit of noise, try adding some color correction and the noise can get a lot worse. Noise might be OK in DV but once you start making DVDs from that footage things can turn ugly. I've seen so many DVDs with noise that freeze for several frames because the encoder ran out of bandwidth.
But even worse the auto focus can start to hunt in low light and trying to manually focus in those shooting conditions can also be difficult and you don't get a second chance.
The answer as others suggested in an on camera light, the Lightpanels LED arrays are very good but pretty pricey, Frezzi and others are bringing out smaller, cheaper units that would do nicely. You don't have to blind your subjects, avoid those blinding halogen lights and / or add plenty of diffusion.
And what is your friend doing for audio, noisy video is one thing, not being able to hear the "I do" is quite another.
Bob.

farss...HIS CURR. CAMERA AND I SUSPECT HIS NEW CAMERA WILL NOT HAVE A PLACE FOR EXTERNAL AUDIO. WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST TO COMBAT THAT PROBLEM.

I bought my VX2000 on eBay from a UC Berkeley film school student for $1,750 two years ago. It's a great camera. I've read that video performance of the more-expensive PD150 is identical, but with a couple minor tweaks. The newer VX2100/PD170s are about one stop more sensitive; otherwise about the same.

I can't vouch for pro camera light sensitivity, but I know that the VX2000 can see in the dark better than my own eyes. I've seen some websites that have pictures of the Orion nebula taken with a VX2000!

My camera uses stereo miniplug audio inputs. The PD series cameras use the more-rugged XLR audio connections, and have a slightly improved audio section. But for my needs the VX is just the ticket.

Certainly the PD150/PD170 are more reliable in the audio department as they have XLR balanced audio inputs and manual gain control although audio wise they're still pretty noisy. You can probably pick up 150/170s pretty cheap. Down here their price has plummetted as everyone is buying Z1s!
Still you CAN feed external mics into cheap cameras, the Rode videomic is a good addition and any wireless lapel mic can be fed into just about any camera, the new HC1 wouldn't be a bad choice as it's got manual gain and will shoot 16:9 however a bit out of the price range. The Panasonic 400 might be worth a look.
Sure cameras can see better than we can, but without serious post work putting that footage onto DVD results in some nasty looking video. Sorry to go on and on about this but it's a real bugbear with me. I do a LOT of transfers to DVD and it's one thing that it's really hard to get accross to clients, they think DVDs are better than VHS but in one crucial area they're worse. Noise has no impact on VHS, DVDs mpeg encoding just doesn't cope with it and VHS add a lot of noise itself.
Bob.

CTJ, he will most probably have a line-in jack on the camcorder he gets. The easiest thing to do is to use a wireless microphone with portable receiver (running on batteries), and plug the receiver into the line-in on the camcorder. The least he should invest in a wireless mic is about $200. Anything below will keep losing signal and having noisy reception. Trust me, I tested a range of them!

Something more reliable than wireless is a separate portable digital audio recorder, like MiniDisc recorder, or an MP3 recorder.
Not only do you lose the risk of losing signal, but you also get two separate audio recordings, so that one of them can be used as a backup, or switching between the ambient sound, and the speaker carrying the mic.
MiniDisc has a good sound quality, but you need to use its headphones output to capture the recording again with your soundcard, which wastes time, and may introduce additional noise.
MP3 recorders vary in quality, but once you capture the sound, you can transfer it quickly via USB interface, without addditional loss of quality.
You shouldn't spend more than $200 on a decent recorder.
A very good and cheap mic is ATR35s ($30) for mono recording. If you need a stereo mic, ECM-MS907 could be good, but don't spend more than $100!

As for farss, and his claim about low light performance, I wonder if he has actually worked with VX2000 or a better camcorder.
I own a VX2000, and I can tell you that the videos it captures under low light conditions are pretty good. Some noise does appear when the light level is very low, but it's not significant to be disturbing.
I have shot videos outside, at night, with only street lights as the light source, and it looks good.
I don't remember having problems with scarcely lit scenes in DVD.
I think that farss exagerates the issue, and I wonder if he even has this kind of a camcorder.

I wonder if he (farss) has actually worked with VX2000 or a better camcorder.

You haven't been around here long, have you Edin 1?
I met Bob (farss) at NAB earlier this year and we had several long talks. Trust me when I say that he's worked with far better cameras than a VX2000 and he does know what he's talking about in regards to low light performance.

Mike

Yeah I've noticed how much trouble the mpeg format has with video noise as well. That's one of the reasons low light performance and good lighting is so darned important. It's also the reason why, even though I think the Sony Main Concept Mpeg 2 encoder is really good as far as Mpeg encoders go, I'm still looking for an even better encoder.

Check out the soon-to-be-released (Sep) Optura 600 which sports a 1/2.8 inch CCD. It's only speculation now but it may be the best low-light single CCD camera when it's released.

One needs to remember that the frame rate on the VX-2000 can be dialed down to as low as 4 fps. When shooting weddings in dark situations, I usually take advantage of that and dial 'er down to 30 or 15 fps and shoot away. 30 fps looks similar to the 24p look on other cameras (I KNOW IT ISN'T THE SAME). 15 fps looks a little more jerky, but can look pretty cool when people are doing the cha cha slide with colored lights and a blazin' disco ball. Haven't had a complaint yet.

Corey

I've done the same trick and it sure help, also because you're feeding less temporal data to the encoder it helps as well. I've just been working with footage from 4 PD150s shot in quite bright stage lighting but the noise in the blacks after CC is pretty bad and it gets way worse after encoding.
The VX2100 / PD170 are excellent cameras, the 4 x PD170s were the mainstay of the business I work for, now being replaced by Z1s but we'll still keep at least one PD150 simply for the low light capabilities.
Main point to grasp here is it's cheaper to add light than buy a more expensive camera and more light solves many problems, good lighting is what makes good video no matter what you shoot on. I'm not having a go at VX2100s or PD170s, they can take excellent footage. I'm more trying to get others aware of the noise problem as it relates to DVD production.
I don't think a better encoder will help either, there's only so much data you can fit in a given bandwidth. Mike Crash's noise filter can help a lot, saved my bacon after CCing very bad VHS.
Bob.

This goes back to a complaint I have expressed many times, which is that the industry is shortchanging the public by adding features people don't need and skimping on the basics that create a good picture and make a camera easy to use.
Namely,

-Larger (not smaller) CCDs, and

-Knobs, wheels, and levers instead of endless LCD menus to wade through to perform simple tasks like manual exposure, white balance, manual focus, and manual audio.

The cameras are getting worse and worse in that respect. The PVGS120 isn't all that great. It has finiky settings (drops out of manual exposure suddenly, steady shot disappers when the light gets too low, etc. The big deal claim to fame for the camera is that it has Three Chips........but they are Three 1/6th CCDs!!!!
WOW. That makes them equal to a 1/4CCD Hi8 Camera from seven years ago that we used to laugh at because they weren't able to shoot well in low light like the 1/3 CCD Hi8 cameras did before them.

Today, finding a 1/4 CCD camera is like finding "gold".

What a joke.

Companies argue that people don't care. What has happened is that they don't know any better unless they have been camera owners for many years. Then they say, "How come this new camera doesn't shoot video as well as my old one did? Without actually understanding why. The fact that they shoot DV tape reduces the "generation loss" the analog cameras suffered when transferred to another medium so that deception justifies the industry cheapening the cameras in the hope that people will won't know any better. If you compare the 8mm footage from an old Canon A-1 Hi8 camera with it's 1/3 CCD with a PV-GS120's DV footage in low light the Canon blows it away.

Bottom line.......I would recommend a used camera in that price range.

John

By rs170a:

As much as I hate being wrong, I feel obligated to admit when it happens.
To answer your question, no, I haven't!
I was trying to answer the original question, where the guy was talking about a $500 camcorder, and a decent low light performance. I tried to point out what is possible, and I tried to reach the ceiling which the guy would most probably never want to exceed.
For the "below $10,000" crowd, especially far below, the VX2000 or VX2100 looks like the sweetest deal.
I apologize to farss for saying what I said, and I take it back.
All I wanted to say was that these camcorders were satisfactory for those who don't require pro or even near pro quality, but I went overboard.

I agree with farss on using sufficient lighting instead of an expensive camera. Today's studios, even with the most expensive cameras on their hands, still use a lot of light on the stage, yet us mere mortals expect to achieve the same with something far cheaper and worse. I have confirmed this theory by comparing my $600 Panasonic PV-DV203 to my $3,000 Sony VX2000. The quality difference in daylight was negligible, while only under low light conditions showed more difference. It goes to show that almost any camera does a good job when enough light is available.

I also agree with craftech on manufacturer tendency to go for "features" instead of quality and usefulness.
It really gets on my nerves when I see things like 700x digital zoom; what's the point on zooming in so much that all you can see is a bunch of colored moving squares on the screen! And he is right about menus, where you have to really dig deep to access the basic controls (if they are available), while "super cool features" controls can be accessed with their own button.
And further reducing the size and quality of CCDs, while knowing how negatively they affect the overal image quality is absurd.
Manufacturers are aiming for "features", convenience, size, weight, high tech gizmos (like touch screen), and similar stuff, while they ignore the basic features required to actually shoot a good quality video.
It's not that they can't, it's simply that they don't want to.
Now that a high quality media storage is available, they reduce the quality of the capturing circuitry, out of fear that those cheap cameras will become competition to the much more expensive ones, and that almost anyone will be able to compete with big studios.
And we all (should) know that money defines business and politics.

"Haven't had a complaint yet."

Wedding video customers and children's theater video customers don't really care as much for quality as we normally sweat over. I shot a theater project recently where the director decided that he needed follow spots on the stage, and worse, they went on and off during a scene. Talk about an exposure nightmare.

Not one viewer complained about the actor's face being totally blown out (white) when the spots came on. I, of course, thought that it was complete crap.

I am looking for another used PD-150 because I will be working a lot with this director in the future. I already have one camera locked down on the whole stage to give me some transition continuity while I chase the talent and lighting with my main camera. Having a third will allow me to have a second full-stage camera with the exposure set for the stage with the spotlights on.