xh-a1 and low light shooting

Finnegan

Finnegan

Well-known member
hey everyone. I recently shot a documentary on location in the philippines with the canon xh-a1. a lot of the footage was shot in low light situations, as the philippines isn't the most industrialized country and access to electricity and lighting was almost out of the question most of the time. as a result, some of the footage has turned out grainy. what perplexes me is that when I was shooting I was very careful about lighting, and always worried that there wouldn't be enough of it for the shot I needed - so I often made sure to use a slightly wider aperture than I was used to. still the footage turned out grainy! I asked my sister, who is a photography major at san francisco academy of art if anything else could contribute to noise and grain and she told me that the heat could cause slight noise.

anyway, what I'm wondering is this: when shooting in low lighting situations, do you prefer to use manual mode (which is what I use nearly 100% of the time) or the night mode function that the xh-a1 has to offer?

clarification: the documentary in the philippines was shot in manual mode. some of the footage that is grainy was filmed while I was literally being blinded by how bright it was outside, which perplexes me. I checked the sticky thread "do you have grainy footage?" and have since made those changes on my camera - but I haven't used it in similar situations so I can't be sure it made a difference.
 
A couple of things. First, I think there's a limit to what you can do to mitigate the deleterious effects of shooting in dim light. The only real solution is more light, but as you've described, sometimes it's not possible.

Second, with what I see produced these days, I'm less and less worried about the appearance of grain in footage, up to a point of course. It's interesting that more network television shows have grainy footage. The "Law and Order" franchise isn't afraid of it and "Canterbury's Law" seems to have adopted it as its signature look, not that I think it's a good thing.

The concern about grainy footage today reminds me of how lens flair was regarded in the first half of the last century. It was to be avoided at all costs back then. Now, we either do our best to avoid it or use it for effect. As more cameras go where they have not gone before, I think the smart thing to do is what you are doing. Keep grain at bay, but when it does show up, don't worry about it.
 
There is a button on the side of the camera labeled AGC (Auto Gain Control). Make sure that it is Off. Nearly every complaints about noisy A1 footage under well lit conditions can be attributed to this little troublemaker.
 
thanks for the responses guys. I checked to make sure that the auto-gain control was off, and unfortunately it was on in about half of the tapes. I had originally planned to use auto-gain control for some of the surgical sequences (I filmed a medical documentary and was fortunate enough to be able to shoot about 20+ surgeries...something you'd never be able to do in the USA). at any rate, the plan was to use auto-gain control to deal with the strange lighting situations that you get in surgical rooms, where most of the room is dark except for the table, which is almost blindingly bright, in conjunction with the headlamps that surgeons wear. and since I was filming the entire thing by myself I must have forgot to take off the AGC in some of the shots and thus I have this grain even when there's more than enough light.

oh well, I'll deal with it. at least grain is becoming a little more tolerable to viewers these days, especially in documentary. my film professors have always said that viewers will forgive bad camera work, but they'll never forgive bad sound. so I guess I'm good to go for the moment! thanks again.
 
Cleaning up the grain

Cleaning up the grain

I find that applying Premiere's soft focus filter set low at say 1% or 2% very effective.
 
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