How to light for a dark scene with the HVX 200

S

sebas1366

Member
I shot some stuff last weekend where I needed a spot light on someone and then have everything else go dark. I come from using a sony vx2100 and what I use to do was just stop down until my blacks went dark and grainless and got the biggest lights I could. I always got crisp blacks. I tried that with the HVX 200 and the further I stopped down the more grain I got in the blacks, completely different than the vx2100. I thought maybe the dynamnic range was so high that I didnt have enough light to create the contrast for deep black and highlights that I wanted. So I lit the hell out of the subject with 2 650s and a 350. Still had the same problem. I finally just lit the whole room and then lit the subject much brighter than the rest of the room and shot the whole thing bright. Then I color corrected it and squashed everything darker. Looked pretty good but still a fair amount of grain and you can't always light your whole location. I read some posts and tried to mess with the scene setting but as someone pointed out to get nice dark scenes you really have to light well. Now that I look at the illegal grabs those dark scenes are awsome and still a bit grainy, so maybe you just just have to work with it. Sorry for the long post, basically is the only way to get a good not so grainy dark scene to light everything and turn it down in post? how could you get a good looking outside night scene if you couldn't light the infinitely large background? Just want to hear any techiques out there, grainy or not for lighting dark scenes with the HVX. for some reason I can't upload clips to my school server, hopefully that will be fixed soon and I can show more of what I mean.

http://people.ucsc.edu/~sburke/AlreadyDeadRoughHighC.mov

http://people.ucsc.edu/~sburke/bathroom%20test%20compress.mov
 
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Did you use any gain? And if so, how much? I find 6dB is enough for noise to kick into the blacks in light low enough to call for full aperture at 25P.
Tom
 
You can bring the master pedestal down to get rid of the noise in the blacks while keeping the whites and most mids visable.
 
Getting great dark shots is all about proper lighting and not as easy to achieve as many think.

Post a grab, it would be easier to see what you were doing right or wrong, then comment.
 
Also, as far as black grain goes the LCD monitor is completely unreliable. Often there is much less or it is even unoticeable in post.
 
how low can you go?

how low can you go?

I am mainly shooting underwater and am having the same problem with grain in my blues. I have all gain settings at zero. How low can I set the master pedestal without running into different problems, and what problems whould I be looking out for?
 
A trick I sometime use in post if i get a shot with too much noise/grain is to look at my RGB channels separately, and degrain the one channel that is responsible for most of the noise. You don't want to degrain so much as to blur the channel though. Keep in mind that your goal is too make it better, you won't be able to make it perfect.
 
underseafan said:
I am mainly shooting underwater and am having the same problem with grain in my blues. I have all gain settings at zero. How low can I set the master pedestal without running into different problems, and what problems whould I be looking out for?
Click to expand...

A trick that I have seen done is to use a warming filter in front of the lens (85B) and either use the 3200k preset or better yet, re-balance after the filter is installed. The reduction in the blue channel noise can be considerable and might just give you the results that you are looking for.
 
Heres two things I shot. the first is what I mentioned before and teh second are some tests. I guess this is now more of a screen grab post. For some reason I am having trouble exporting screen grabs, they are like not anti-aliased at all. Give me any suggestions on how I can do more effective lighting and/or get less grain. OH All the camera settings were the default constrast scene file. Thanks.

http://people.ucsc.edu/~sburke/AlreadyDeadRoughHighC.mov

http://people.ucsc.edu/~sburke/bathroom%20test%20compress.mov
 
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In due course, some uncompressed source frames would be good, once you figure out export.

I don't think I can assess the footage (.mov file) for noise, as you have recompressed it, correct?

It looks interesting what you are recording. I am also wanting to learn about lighting for a dark scene with some material I am planning to shoot next year.
 
Cynic821 said:
You can bring the master pedestal down to get rid of the noise in the blacks while keeping the whites and most mids visable.
Click to expand...
ding ding ding ding ding
http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/MP/

sebas1366 said:
Heres two things I shot. the first is what I mentioned before and teh second are some tests. I guess this is now more of a screen grab post. For some reason I am having trouble exporting screen grabs, they are like not anti-aliased at all. Give me any suggestions on how I can do more effective lighting and/or get less grain. OH All the camera settings were the default constrast scene file. Thanks.

http://people.ucsc.edu/~sburke/AlreadyDeadRoughHighC.mov

http://people.ucsc.edu/~sburke/bathroom%20test%20compress.mov
Click to expand...
you can get way more light on that dude and have the res fall to black if you learn to love your master ped




__________________
 
so is the master ped something you can't do in final cut color correction? or does it just allow you to get closer to the look you want so you don't have to stretch the color correcting too far?
 
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