Af100 Noise issue?

N

nate.lav

New member
Hi, it would be great if somebody could help me make sense of the noise I am getting and potentially banding? that I am finding in any black surfaces in my images. I am shooting at 1080/24p at 200 ISO on a Leica 25mm 1.4
Attached are a couple of screen grabs and it looks like there's some kind of screen of noise over any black surfaces, especially areas that are not in focus even when there is plenty of light. You can also see there are some horizontal lines that are evident in the noisy areas. It is absolutely atrocious.
Thank you

noise 1.jpgnoise 2.jpgnoise 3.jpgnoise 4.jpg
 
Sorry, I put them in the post and saved it but it looks like it didnt save properly. Here they are:

detail -6
V Detail -6
detail coring - 0
Chroma phase -2
Temp 0
master ped -2
DRS 2
Cine-like D
Matrix Norm 2
Skin Tone Detail off
 
Both Cine-like D and especially DRS tend to up the noise on Panasonic cameras.

DRS lowers the highlights and gains up the shadows, hence the noise in the blacks. It's useful for certain tough lighting scenarios, but always best to leave off if you can help it.

I'm basing this on the HMC150 that I have, so it may not completely apply to the AF100, but I'll assume it does. Perhaps others will chime in.
 
Looks like quantisation noise, and due to limited bit depth in the A-D convertor off the chip. As others have said, certain settings which tend to mean high gain in the blacks make it far worse than others.

What is a single bit when digitised at the chip is amplified such that it translates such that (say) 0 becomes 2, 1 becomes (say) 6 - so in the dark parts of the image you get levels represented by 2 or 6 - and nowhere in between.

You should be able to prove that easily by taking a frame grab into Photoshop, enlarging to see individual pixels and looking at their values. They are likely to be biased around just a few numbers, not random within a range, as you'd expect.
 
My personal 'clean' settings are the following (at least off the top of my head):

detail -2
V Detail -2
detail coring 0
Chroma level -5
master ped -3
DRS 0
B. Press
Knee: Mid
Matrix: Fluo
Skin Tone Detail off

Try something along those lines. There will still be some noise, as there always is with this cam but it will be more pleasant/manageable. If you still have an issue after that then something may be screwy on your end. Also try 400 ISO. It's the base ISO. If you're on 200 ISO just to cut light, use the NDs filters instead.
 
yes, use the NDs outside, and bring the iso up a little, skip the DRS and black balance often. I don't know what those horizontal lines are, I've never seen that before. Something's not right there
 
Last edited:
Id say use cine V and keep it at iso 400 if you a can. Thats what I do and I use drs1 most of the time and have a very noise free image.
I got my settings from Eric Naso and tweeked from there, got me the best results.

My settings:

detail -4
V Detail -4
detail coring -4 (this cleans up noise but sacrifices high freq detail but the image is clean so i dont crank it back up)
Chroma level -4
master ped 0
DRS 1
Cine V
Knee: auto
Matrix: norm 2
Skin Tone Detail off

Some times i go up to -2 detail for some corporate clients that want a more sharpened look but usually i add any artificial sharpness in post if i want it.

Funny that this has been brought up now. I was looking at the first few jobs I did with the Af100 just the other day from when I got it when it first came out and by god were they noisy! I was shooting in cine D, drs off and -6 detail as that's what I thought would be best and was getting mega noise. I look at what I shoot these days and its super clean, you really have to go searching if you want to get noise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top