Dealing with grain

S

scynda

Member
So the one thing that really gets me about these cameras is the amount of digital grain we are getting with them, specifically in the lower exposure levels in dark or nuetral gray.

Grain_set.png


This is part of the set in our studio. The imaging over all is great, its sharp, the features of the camera are awesome to work with, yet this low level grain is showing up more and more. Luckily we deliver almost exclusively to web and the compression smooths this all away(which was my first test when we were testing the camera) but I'd like to try and figure out an in-camera solution to help make this not as noticable or at least have a better reason than "Well, they're just CMOS chips." Our 500, btw, does not have this problem.

So we're exposing well for our talent, right about 70IRE and pushing 95 in the Red channel and there is not a lot of grain there.

Grain_face.png


But right below on his shirt, it's all over the place.

Grain_shirt.png


We're shooting 1080 30p with the standard Cine D setting but with detail ramped up a bit. We also have Skin Detail on, Cine-like gamma, and we lowered the pedestal a bit. I'm thinking if we shifted everything to be a bit more contrasty, Cine V, even lower pedestal, etc, it might have less of that low-mid range tone in the image and therefore less grain?

Anyone else have this issue? Am I on the right track here? Thanks in advance, you guys are the best...
 
Well, Cine D will create more noise, so I recommend Cinelike or Cine V. I use Normal a lot because I really like it.

Turn up the Detail Coring, that should reduce the noise a bit. Also, make sure your gain is as low as possible (I believe it can go down to -3 on the HPX300).

These are just things I learned from my DVX and all of Barry Green's posts here on DVXuser. Maybe he should write a short article about reducing noise on Panasonic cameras, since they all have pretty much the same menu and features (things like Detail, Detail Coring, Master Ped, etc.)
 
I am using the BBC settings and the image is very clean even for cinegamma.

E-mail me and I will send you the settings.
 
Have you upgraded your firmware? The original versions had some "black specks" issues, but the first or second firmware update was supposed to go a long way towards eliminating them. Make sure you're running the latest firmware as it is reported to have significantly decreased noise in the progressive recording formats, especially 1080/24p and 1080/25p.
 
Awesome dudes, I updated the firmware which didnt solve the grain but the Flash Correction is worth it on its own, especially as we just shot some flash filled red carpet footage.

However, what did make the biggest difference was reducing the low gain setting to -3db, which made a huge difference. I took the time to tweak a few other things, moving of Cine D into Cine V as this is all studio stuff with controlled lighting so im not as worried about limiting the dynamic range.

Thanks to everyone for the help!

=S=
 
Aloha,
Since you are talking about setting, I wanted to ask what you would recommend for a
Maui sunset. I have just started to use standard Cine D setting, so far I like the look better than the standard setting, but I'm interested in the public opinion?
Dan
 
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