Noisy Blue Skys... any help?

[DM_rider]

I've been having trouble getting a clean image with blue bird skys. I was shooting with cine v and my matrix set at norm 1, technically it should give me a pretty clean image right? I was also using a polarizer. In all of my shots, the sky is incredibly noisy, it looks terrible. Anyone have any good settings to get rid of this nasty noise on those blue sky days? I've been striking out with the settings I've tried.

[Arrow]

DM

I have found that some Plolrizing filters increase the grain and others don't.

Try this with and without a polorizer and if you could post the result grain or less grain, I would be intrested.



DETAIL LEVEL: -3
V DETAIL LEVEL: 0
DETAIL CORING : 7
CHROMA LEVEL: 2
CHROMA PHASE: 0
COLOR TEMP: 0
MASTER PED: -8
A.IRIS LEVEL: -2
NEWS GAMMA: OFF
GAMMA : B.PRESS
KNEE: MID
MATRIX: CINE-LIKE
SKIN TONE DTL : OFF
V DETAIL FREQ : THIN



Your will have to convert from HVX 200 to HPX 170 settings but I think the conversion is in Berrys book

Hopes this helps.

Have a great day.

[DSWMEDIA]

unfortunately alot of that noise is an inherent part of the 170. You build smaller cameras with smaller imagers, and you're electrons are bouncin' around in there like bumper cars. Many of them end up tainting the voltage readings..

Anyways. This may not be an issue, but make sure you're not adding any color in-camera. Level everything out, and keep your coring at +2 or +3.

And because the camera uses pixel shifting, the performance decreases when the camera is pointed towards a singular color, like blue, for instance. When pointed at a blue sky, the effect of pixel shifting is decreased because there is not enough information for the red and green CCD's...But I don't see why that would make a difference in noise levels.

All in all the 170 is generaly fairly clean, with noisier midtones than anything, i think. But it's still a great camera, and pixel shifting really does work wonderfully

[DSWMEDIA]

ARROW suggested upping your saturation to +2..never EVER do that, as you are simply adding gain.

[Matt T]

DM_Rider, what camera are you using?

[DSWMEDIA]

He uses the 170 I believe..by looking at the picture

[DM_rider]

ya, sorry I'm shooting with the 170.

I'll have to mess around with the coring and detail levels a bit, I think that's what might be getting me. I had everything set at zero, and a -20 master ped. There's gotta be some way to get fairly clean blue skys. I can accept some noise, but what I have is pretty distracting.

I was using a tiffen polarizer, so it's definitely not a cheapy, and I was using it more so to even out the difference in brigthness between the sky and snow, not to deepen the blue.

[Arrow]

DSWMEDIA,

Are you saying I should raise my chroma level even more from 2 on an HVX 200 for saturation?


DM,

I use a Formmatt 4x4 hd polorizer and in some cases it does in my opinion increase grain in an image other times it works great. I ran some test in the last couple of days with and without the filter and on with certian light the grain is incresed why I have no idea.

[DSWMEDIA]

Arrow -

I meant, keep your chromo values at 0, or below zero, always. Raising the chroma level increases amplification, thus increasing crawling noise in each channel. I assume lowering the gain, to - values like -3, would decrease the gain.

[DSWMEDIA]

DM rider, I have viewed some of your other footage on this board of which looked clean. Which settings are you most accustomed to using? Changing anything besides coring to a + value adds noise, especially detail and chroma

CineV is actually, to my eyes, very noisy on the 170. I stick to B. Press.
In some cases, it seemed as if CineV gave me MORE midtone noise than CineD, which I found strange, seeing that CineV crushes blacks.

But like I said before, the midtones seem to be, well, just noisier on this camera all in all.

[mainstreetprod]

Are you shooting wide or telephoto? I've found that zooming in, using a polarizer
can result in some graininess. I've had few problems with well lit skies looking noisy when not zoomed in. Generally I have use the "Spark" scene file but change the master ped to -8, B-press, detail at -2, and other minor tweaks.