Vicmilt, DSE, et al:

Victor you had a post somewhere about its OK to gain up, sorry I can't find your
post.

I do use some gain as needed on my camera, but try not to go "too high" on
the gain because of graininess and what I perceive as more work on the mpeg
encoder.
I always try iris, shutter speed settings first with gain 0. Then add lights indoors
or use bounce cards (large foam core cards on my budget) outdoors. I try to avoid
going above 9dB. There are times a want contrast and don't want noise in the
shadows. The less work in post the better for me.

Can you share some pointers as we prepare for HD shooting?

Thanks for sharing your time and knowledge.