Desired Darkness

Eddie B

Eddie B

Active member
So I periodically see on here warnings about making sure you have enough light or else you'll get unwanted noise with your DVX. So I wonder what do you do when you need/want dark areas? I mean, let's say you want a shadow to be solid black, not black with noise, or similarly if you want a character or object individually lit with a vast solid blackness surrounding him/her/it?

Is this a job for master pedestal? Crushing blacks when color correcting? A combination?
 
You can do it any of those three ways. It's largely a matter of preference. I think it's less work to get the image you want in-camera, but others prefer to shoot a baseline image and manipulate it post. So, it's up to you. Try all three and decide which one gives you best results.
 
Well, I just did some tests with master pedestal and the image still seemed a bit noisy and in fact, the colors become more unattractively saturated the lower I went. Are there other DVX settings that come in to play regarding this situation?

I'm just honestly a bit confused with regards to all this talk of insufficient lighting leading to noise. I mean, I don't think anyone wants to light soap opera or 5 o'clock news style with broad lighting. So when people say noise comes in to play when there isn't enough light, how do they people light areas that are meant to be dark?
 
I'm not expert by any stretch, but I think what you need to do is keep the relative differences between light and dark the same so that in post everything can be pulled down w/o having shadows that are just clumps of noise. So, for example, if you want a three stop difference between the talent and the shadows you light the shadows enough to get above the noise floor of your camera and then you light the talent three stops above what you lit the shadows (obviously make sure you don't clip any highlights you want to keep). You also want to make sure you light it so that the talent is separated from the shadows. Wardrobe is key here as well. Talent wearing all black in a dark room will be hard to deal with, for example.

A common problem I have when color correcting is that shots w/broad tonal ranges (ex. a pale white dude wearing a dark suit in an under-lit hallway) aren't lit enough so when it comes time for me to work with it I'm very limited because basically all I have is a white face surrounded by varying degrees of blocky, flickering noise. When I've received footage that was light better it looked relatively flat on tape, but I had good picture info in the lows, mids, and highs so I was able to push and pull the image into a moody/noir-ish look that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.


-A
 
Detail coring and detail level can also affect the presence of noise. Higher detail levels accentuate noise. Detail coring can help smooth it out some, but it may affect the picture in other ways.

You can also try opening your iris more.
 
It can alter your focal plane somewhat. But you won't see much of a difference unless you're zoomed way in.
 
Okay, been doing some tests and what I've discovered is the main issue with noise is coming soley from blacks. I just lit a bed which has pink sheets and pillows and a black comforter and black pillow and it's front of a white wall. Everything is lit the same and everything is noise free except the blacks.

So I'm not sure this is a lighting issue. I must have some setting that is not friendly towards black objects. Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this?
 
The blacks are noisy because black doesn't reflect very much light and when the camera sensor doesn't have enough light it generates noise. Add enough light, or open up the iris, so the camera picks up the detail in the black comforter and pillows and the noise will go away. The blacks will probably look more gray but you just bring them down in post and you get nice, dark detailed blacks w/o all the noise.


-A
 
After researching today, I found a lot of my black noise issues were due to having the Gamma set at Cinelike D. So if you're reading this thread because of a similar problem, switch to Cinelike V or Cinelike (I prefer the latter).
 
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