5D Mark III - Flat Cinestyle profile for extreme low light shooting?

M

miseducation

Member
I'm shooting a ton of footage this weekend at a particularly dark nightclub. I've done this before with a t2i and decided to go against using the flat profile as it brought up a ton of noise in my shadows (not that ISO 1600 stuff was even close to usable on t2i.)

Seeing as the ISO ceiling for a Mark III is closer to 5000, do you think it would be okay to shoot Cinestyle in this extremely dark environment?

And as for the look I'm going for, I honestly wouldn't mind a mostly ungraded (as in yes to colors but no to bringing back the shadows via contrast) Cinestyle look if the shadows wouldn't appear noisy and blocky.

Any input on this would be really helpful and thanks in advance.
 
Buy Dark Energy for After Effects, and shoot any profiles you like, you will be stunned by the denoised results. From my experience, I can get great noise free footage from 5D3 at ISO12800 with the help of Dark Energy, detail loss is negligible.
 
marvinhello said:
Buy Dark Energy for After Effects, and shoot any profiles you like, you will be stunned by the denoised results. From my experience, I can get great noise free footage from 5D3 at ISO12800 with the help of Dark Energy, detail loss is negligible.
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How long does the de-noising process take with Dark Energy? Neat Video does a great job of de-noising but takes so long that I only ever use it if I really need to rescue a portion of a particular clip.
 
nigelbb said:
How long does the de-noising process take with Dark Energy? Neat Video does a great job of de-noising but takes so long that I only ever use it if I really need to rescue a portion of a particular clip.
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Not very long, Dark Energy is far superior than Neat Video in my opinion, they are not the same kind of technology. You can download a trial and see if you like the results.
 
marvinhello said:
Not very long, Dark Energy is far superior than Neat Video in my opinion, they are not the same kind of technology. You can download a trial and see if you like the results.
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Sorry just spotted that it is no use to me as it's Windows only.
 
marvinhello said:
Not very long, Dark Energy is far superior than Neat Video in my opinion, they are not the same kind of technology. You can download a trial and see if you like the results.
Click to expand...

Neat Video has a Premiere Pro Version- thus Dynamic Linking or round-tripping to AE is not needed. AE is very, very slow, compared to native PPro (with GPU accel, etc.). If you set Temporal Radius to 0, it's much, much faster (and looks better in some cases as the resulting footage won't be oversmoothed).
If Dark Energy had a PPro version, I'd take a look (not interested in AE plugins anymore (until Adobe gets AE up to PPro speed)).

For real-time denoising (pretty good quality too), for $49 vReveal is excellent: http://www.vreveal.com/ (requires round tripping).
 
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Thanks guys, I ended up shooting Prolost flat instead of Cinestyle. I kind of underestimated how dark it would be and how good the low-light of the MKIII really is in practical use.

On the subject of noise reduction, I have Denoiser II and have used it maybe a handful of times. I might not be using it correctly but I feel like there's a distinct oil painting like smudging of details in darker images. I agree that an after effects workflow for noise reduction is awfully cumbersome. I know people say that you're supposed to reduce noise before you color correct but reducing noise to the entire pool of good shots for a production like this is essentially booking 36 hours of CPU time on my current rig.

I will definitely try some of the other suggested software on here if they have demo versions. Thanks again guys.
 
And since I am posting on the MKIII subforum, let me share some of my other findings about shooting in a place so dark I call it "where cameras go to die."

Rigging: I've brought shoulder rigs (rails based and the cowboy studios seatbelt strap one), tripods and sliders to a nightclub. They are useless there. The two best rigging strategies are

1. Monopod (I borrowed a Manfrotto H61-BHDV) - I don't shoot events often so I've never felt the need to use a monopod. I am astounded by the possibilities allowed by a monopod in a DSLR setup. Astoundingly good. Absolutely no reason to ever lug around a shoulder rig in an uncontrolled environment as far as I'm concerned.

2. By hand - the handheld aesthetic is too important a tool to replace in favor of strictly monopod. A steady hand and patience can really allow you to get all the movement your shot could need with increased flexibility. I could get on the floor, I could raise the camera on high. It's difficult to focus and a bit like shooting guns in the air but if you have really thought out what shots need this aesthetic, I think this is the best way to do it.

Lenses: I used a 50 1.2 and a 24-70 2.8

1. The 50 1.2 shines in this environment: I've gone back and forth on regretting the purchase of this very pricey lens but it really justified itself to me in this environment. It's not the extreme shallowness and it's not the bokeh that make this lens special - it's the color reproduction. It's contrasty and dreamy and just adds a really special amount of character to shots with extremely dynamic lighting. This past year has had a lot of us Canon folk at a loss for words as to explain why we still choose Canon over cameras like the FS100 that sound so much better on paper. This lens and what it looks like in this environment I think distill exactly what I like about Canon DSLRs.

2. 2.8 isn't fast enough, even at 12,800 - Wish I had access to a 24 1.4 for this kind of shoot. 50 1.2 and 24 1.4 would be a dream team lens setup for packed, dark rooms.

Other:

1. The Mark III needs an EVF - I shot with my Zacuto EVF about 90% of the time this weekend. About half of what I shot without it is interminably out of focus. In a fast paced environment, the Canon LCD (if you don't do the punch-in zoom for focus checking) is incredibly deceiving. Don't rely on the LCD.

Hope that helps anybody who ever finds themselves in the situation I was in.
 
Thanks! That was very interesting!

I just bought a 5D3 specifically for low light stills & videos. I was shooting with a T4i and was very happy with that, but I needed the extra ISO reach.

The auto focus on the T4i with the 40 STM or the 18-135 is nice. Touch a point on the screen to have face tracking auto focus. But that doesn't go into really low light. I tested it for a while the other night, I have to go look at the footage - as someoe was walking towards me, etc.


miseducation said:
The 50 1.2 shines in this environment: I've gone back and forth on regretting the purchase of this very pricey lens but it really justified itself to me
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I have never worried too much about the cost of Canon glass! It holds it's value very well.

I was just trying to down-size my lens collection - I had 7 L's and 5 non-L's. I started selling and then suddleny needed about 2/3 of the lenses that I sold back for a job. So I decided not to fight it and only sell stuff that I really don't need. (I'm not doing much work right now. )

Thanks again! Best,
Michael
 
miseducation said:
1. The Mark III needs an EVF - I shot with my Zacuto EVF about 90% of the time this weekend. About half of what I shot without it is interminably out of focus. In a fast paced environment, the Canon LCD (if you don't do the punch-in zoom for focus checking) is incredibly deceiving. Don't rely on the LCD.
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I was going to purchase the Zacuto Z-Finder Pro for this exact same purpose, shooting low light in clubs, DJ footage. However, I have also thought about the Zacuto EVF. My only concern is how to use it. I see you said you like to shoot handheld the best in this situation, how do you pull this off with the EFT. The Z-Finder Pro is excellent handheld because it add another point of contact, to help keep footage stabilized. Focusing would no doubt be improved with the EVF, but what is your handheld setup with it?
 
I'm by no means a master of club videos but here are 2 that I did using the 5D Mark III

https://vimeo.com/50383991

https://vimeo.com/50365253 - club footage starts at aaround 1:50

I believe i shot the 2nd one of Faithful and the First Neutral

For clubs - you need to be mobile - no monopod no steadicam. Handheld thats all. You don't need a viewfinder it should be dark enough for you to see your screen. I absolutely do need a viewfinder for outdoor/daylight shoots though when I do have the freedom to rig it up. But yeah the highest i ever pushed the iso was 5000.

The 2nd one I tried not to use light too much to catch the ambient light in the club I think is always better - and most of the time when shooting in the club there are other cameramen who bring lights..I kinda sneak up behind them and use their lighting lol.

Anyways I hope this helped. And I quit shooting in cinestyle because to me it's a fake RAW. You don't get full dynamic range when you want to bring the colors back in.
 
The second one is private, can't see it.
The first one has a nice look: if you used a light for that one, you struck a nice balance of "enough light that you get proper exposure", but "not so much light that you kill the mood of the place" (my main complain about lit club videos is that the light makes it look like people are dancing in their -very dirty- living room).
 
Samuel H said:
The second one is private, can't see it.
The first one has a nice look: if you used a light for that one, you struck a nice balance of "enough light that you get proper exposure", but "not so much light that you kill the mood of the place" (my main complain about lit club videos is that the light makes it look like people are dancing in their -very dirty- living room).
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Thanks I opened up the link.
 
that one's a bit too shallow for my taste, people are constantly going out of focus - but I absolutely loved the last shot, the blurry one with the DJ jumping: great effect, using the quirks of the camera to your advantage
 
Great job.....loved the first one...excellent use of lighting....pacing and editing were great and you got some very nice shots.
 
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