Why does my low-light footage look so AWFUL?!

DammitJanet

DammitJanet

Well-known member
I went out with some friends the other night to try out some low-light stuff with the A1, since its low-light reviews have been so good. I put her in Manual, 1/48th shutter, 24f, 1080i, Gain set at low (-3db). Took it home to watch on the HDTV and the results were....infuriating. There's noise/grain everywhere. It seems impossible to get a black looking black. A lot of narrative stuff we do requires dark lighting, and I got less grain/noise from the DVX. I know there's probably some "super duper professional" setting I'm probably not messing with here, so please PLEASE enlighten me. I thought about trying the "Night" setting on the camera. Is that thing worth a damn?

:dankk2:

I can't get a vid uploaded right now, so I'm going to try to just post some stills. Not sure how effective these will be at showing the grain, but I don't know how to take full-rez (1080) screen caps.

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Because . It. Is. Low. Light. Footage.

What did you expect it too look like ? You still were able too capture more light than film would ever be able too.
 
Shooting "good" night scenes is not about shooting in low light, rather it is about lighting for a night look. The grabs that you posted don't seem to be bad for just grabbing the camera and going. The color balance is obviously way off so you would have benefited from doing a white balance under the lighting conditions that you had.

As an example, your third grab shows a pretty black sky and a couple of highlights that are nearly fully exposed, but your subjects are underexposed and very poorly lite, so the results are what I would expect for these conditions. If you really want to just shoot with available light, you will likely need to add more gain (which will increase the noise) and reset your white balance to match the dominant lighting in your frame.
 
:)

Mole Richardson doesn't make those 24K watt lights for nothing...

More light = less noise. A lesson I wish I had learned years ago. The trick is to light things so it APPEARS that it's really dark, without it really being dark. You are also trying to squeeze more pixels out of CCDs that barely do the job for miniDV. So of course the DVX is going to give better low light performance. Also, from the looks of things, you aren't focusing either. Moreso than noise, that will make a picture look bad. Guess how I know.

If you light your subjects brightly, and keep the spill down, your contrast should increase, allowing you to crush your blacks and still keep your subjects clean and noise free.

Mind you, I'm still new at this, but this is how it was explained to me.

One other thing. That stuff looks interlaced to me. Is it?
 
First off: 24F is actually a bit more sensitive than 60i, so if you want the film look in low light, keep it on that mode. The grabs show interlace lines so you must've been using 1080i mode.

Additionally, the grabs look gained-up. They look fairly bright for shooting in parking lots at night, but if you're shooting to get nice rich blacks and still see enough in the night, there are tweaks you can employ.

If you want the best actual sensitivity in low light you will want to use normal video gamma (you can CC later) and employ black stretch. I'd also recommend shooting with the lowest gain you can get away with and try experimenting with some of the NR modes.
 
So far everyone's been giving really good advice. My two cents is just to point out that Elton's comments are not a contradiction to everyone else's.

I have only seen footage this noisy from this cam once, and that was when I first ripped it out of the box and hit record with Auto Everything on. There's definitely alot of electronic gain happening in those shots because this cam usually looks much cleaner in run and gun nighttime situations. For an example, look at Kaku Ito's demo footage posted at DVinfo.net. He shot alot of nighttime footage with no special lighting and it's all way cleaner than the pics you have here. I'm having a tough time believing these images were shot in manual mode with low gain. They definitely weren't shot 24f 'cause like Elton said, I see interlacing.

But to reemphasize everyone else's sentiments, cinematography isn't the art of hitting the little red button and hoping for the best. You really have to plan out your shots and think about how you're going to achieve the look you want. Just because it looks dark in the final product doesn't mean there actually wasn't any light at the shoot. Also, there are many other visual cues other than darkness that tell an audience that a scene is happening at night. Things like color temperature
(blue to suggest moonlight) and how contrasty a scene is rendered can do alot to imply the time of day. That's why it's possible for instance to shoot Day-for-night.

I understand that your situation may require shooting run-and-gun, but if that's the case, I would suggest studying the image controls available in this cam, they are very comprehensive, because with all due respect, these images look like you just didn't even bother.
 
Whew....this could take a while. First off, I know everyone's just trying to be helpful, and I appreciate that because help is what I asked for. I will take everything you said into account. That said...

I guess I knew it wasn't going to be perfect, but I still expected better. This was a test to see what we could get away with when it came to available light at night just running and gunning. No, this had nothing to do with "Planned Out Shots", so lessons in cinematography (while appreciated) aren't necessary. From looking at some of the other footage around the forum (The Ginza stuff that ncje did, for example) I was under the impression that it would look better than this, though I suppose ncje had way more ambient light to work with. I guess now I know what we can get away with, which isn't much under the conditions we had, I'm sorry to say. I know we'll have plenty of lights to play with when we're shooting, but from looking at the Ginza footage and poweredbyjolt's night footage of Austin, TX (which after re-viewing seems like he also had a lot more ambient "city light" to work with) I guess I got the wrong idea.

HOWEVER, I still have some points to address.

This WAS shot in 24f. And it WAS shot in 1080. I was under the impression that 24f was still interlaced footage (thus negating the "24p" name). If I have the wrong information here, please let me know what settings to employ, and more importantly, how to set them.

Elton, I used normal video gamma and I'm not familiar with what black stretch is, or how to employ it with the camera. Can you enlighten me? No pun intended.

Juan, you're right. We didn't bother with any image controls other than what was stated in my first post. If you'd like to recommend some settings for these controls you're talking about, I'd sincerely love to hear your suggestions. Thanks.

Perrone, I had the focus set to AF as I had the cam on the Steadicam Merlin. Thanks for the tips.

khmuse, can you explain to me the proper method for white balancing with the A1? With the dvx we just held a piece of printer paper where the subject would be and zoomed in until it filled the frame and held the white balance button until it was done. Is there another way to do this for the A1? Thanks.

I'm sorry if it seems like I need my hand held for this stuff but not everyone that browses this site is an expert (obviously) and if we can't provide helpful instructions in these forums then what good is it to have them? Thanks for the insight so far guys. I'm really looking forward to getting this sorted out and sharing some fantastic footage and ultimately, some real movies. :)
 
You are walking in the night at street, only one streetlight and I can see the buildings, the street and the surrounding? Yeesh, its almost looking in the dark. It is interlaced so you did not shoot it in 24F, maybe you forgot more, like the gain settings.

You can't shoot with any HD cam like you can with a DV Sony PD150. It simply needs more light. You show'd a picture in the car, only the small interior light and one wall light at the building and I can see the whole interior of the car! Amazing, but to much. So is the Missouri State shot.

Try again, it needs to look much darker.
 
You mentioned that you shot in auto, which would be in auto gain, not -3db. The shots are, as already mentioned 60i, not 24f (which is progressive as far as I am concerned) you should download some custom profiles or play around and get a good look. I also suggest a small 10-30 watt on camcorder light if you are doing interview, type stuff at night. Even a 3watt can be a decent fill for close interview shooting at night to minimize some gain.

I shoot in low light and I am pretty impressed. If needs be I will set the shutter 24 to reduce my gain.

I also suggest not using auto at all for this camcorder. It doesn't do any justice to filming at all.
 
dude, that looks amazing for how little light there is..

trust me, there is no way the dvx could produce anything near that...
 
what NLE did you use to grab those frames? if you have adobe premier 2.0 you need to grab the update for the 24F project file because if you dont have it, it will detect it as interlaced. 24F is progressive. I would assume not all NLES (final cut, vegas etc) have not released an update yet. That could solve your interlacing
 
If you shot in auto mode, it's most likely that the camera gained up automatically.

That's probably +12 or +18 dB in those conditions.
 
How else can I put this? I DID NOT SHOOT IN AUTO!


Ok...let's suppose for a minute that this mess is all due to user error (I'll be happy to report it so if I go out and try this again under the proper settings). I mean, I'm sorry to sound like a dunce, but break it down for me. When I turn on the camera, what do I need to do to get it ready for night shooting like I was trying to do when I took the above footage? Step by step, please.
 
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"How else can I put this? I DID NOT SHOOT IN AUTO!"

Was the AGC switch set to "off?" Even in Manual mode, if the AGC switch is ON, you WILL experience auto gain.

Also, low pressure sodium lighting (common for streets and outdoor night lighting) is useless for video. It has NO blue and almost no green in it. It's mostly yellow. That MIGHT have something to do with your poor image quality.

It is impossible to white balance under low pressure sodium lighting. Impossible.
 
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DammitJanet said:
How else can I put this? I DID NOT SHOOT IN AUTO!


Ok...let's suppose for a minute that this mess is all due to user error (I'll be happy to report it so if I go out and try this again under the proper settings). I mean, I'm sorry to sound like a dunce, but break it down for me. When I turn on the camera, what do I need to do to get it ready for night shooting like I was trying to do when I took the above footage? Step by step, please.
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Sorry, I don't have an A1 but I really feel like I have to chime in here. Exactly what kind of result were you expecting? 75% less noise? 50% less noise? No noise? Keep in mind that the A1 received good low light review in comparisons to other HD cameras!! But high def cams are a good deal slower than their SD counterpart. For a discussion on that I direct you here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=81736

Basically, you should accept the fact that footage shot under low light no matter which camera you use is going to look awful. You can go full manual, you can turn off the gain, and you can throw the iris wide open but chances are the A1 still won't be able to see crap under the conditions that you were in. You'll have to bump the gain, and that'll make it ugly. But hey, if that's what you have to do in order to get the shot then you live with it. If you expect to get better results, throw some lights on the scene and let the camera works its magic!

Cheers,
 
jade6472 said:
"Sorry, I don't have an A1 but I really feel like I have to chime in here. Exactly what kind of result were you expecting? 75% less noise? 50% less noise? No noise? Keep in mind that the A1 received good low light review in comparisons to other HD cameras!! But high def cams are a good deal slower than their SD counterpart. For a discussion on that I direct you here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=81736

Basically, you should accept the fact that footage shot under low light no matter which camera you use is going to look awful. You can go full manual, you can turn off the gain, and you can throw the iris wide open but chances are the A1 still won't be able to see crap under the conditions that you were in. You'll have to bump the gain, and that'll make it ugly. But hey, if that's what you have to do in order to get the shot then you live with it. If you expect to get better results, throw some lights on the scene and let the camera works its magic!

Cheers,
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Thanks, jade. I didn't really think of it in terms of other HD cams. Appreciate the input.

Chris Santucci said:
"How else can I put this? I DID NOT SHOOT IN AUTO!"

Was the AGC switch set to "off?" Even in Manual mode, if the AGC switch is ON, you WILL experience auto gain.

Also, low pressure sodium lighting (common for streets and outdoor night lighting) is useless for video. It has NO blue and almost no green in it. It's mostly yellow. That MIGHT have something to do with your poor image quality.

It is impossible to white balance under low pressure sodium lighting. Impossible.
Click to expand...

You sir, get a gold star. I guess I spent more time looking at my footage than I should have spent looking at the camera itself. I had no idea there even was an AGC switch. I'm going to re-create the setting of the other night this time with the switch off. I think the results will be...pretty pleasing. As I said in my initial post, I had a feeling there was some setting I had missed, and it turns out there was. Thank you again for your rational thinking. That goes a lot farther than "Well what were you expecting?" I know everybody means well on these forums, but there always seems to be some level of condescension running under the surface.

Even when I was researching the A1, there were lots of threads that said things like "Great cam if you know what you're doing." Now what the hell good does that do anybody? Obviously not everyone who buys an expensive camcorder "knows what they're doing". It has to be taught. The purpose of these forums isn't to discourage or put off the new folks. The purpose (as I understand it) is to educate and encourage and share ideas. Please consider that in the future.

I'm sorry to vent that, but I had to get it off my chest. I hope this doesn't turn into a flame war or anything, and I didn't mean to ruffle feathers. I'm not naming names or anything. Those of you who replied took the time to offer your insight and eventually we found the answer. I'm sincerely grateful. I love this community and the wealth of information it offers. Hopefully I'll have some better footage to update you with next time!

:dankk2:
 
DammitJanet said:
" Is that thing worth a damn? "
Click to expand...

If you start like that, be happy that ANYONE on this forum takes time to help you out. Please consider that in the future.
 
My apologies, xray. I guess I can be a little extreme sometimes. Sorry if I offended you. I'll be more mindful of my language in the future.
 
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