GH2 Exposure guide for beginners

M

maltess2

Well-known member
Hello, I am totally new to shooting video and DSLR. I am using a hacked Gh2. When I am outdoors in a sunny day I get a great Image, as soon as I get indoors in places with a lot of light or even if I shoot a subject tree , I start to get noise. I have been playing with shutter and ISO with no results , I always get a little noise when I am not outside in a bright day. I am using an old Vivitar zoom series and the lumix 14 140, with the panasonic the noise problem is much worst. Can I be making some mistake here?

is there any basic standard shutter/ISO settings for interiors that I can learn? any guide for this?


cheers
 
To avoid noise you need to keep the ISO as low as possible. Without additional lighting, this can get tricky indoors, especially with a slow lens like the Lumix 14-140.

To keep the ISO relatively low and still get a well exposed image in situations with low light, you need to get a faster lens (which means a bigger aperture and a smaller f-number, like f1.4 for example). Additionally you could go with a longer shutter speed, like 1/25.
 
If you could post a short video clip and let us know the settings you're using (shutter speed, ISO, aperture), we could give more specific advice. Everybody has a different opinion regarding when noise becomes unacceptable. For me, I feel like ISO 800 with a well-exposed image is usually the limit, though it depends on the subject matter (you can get away with a higher ISO if the shadow details aren't important, or you plan to crush the blacks in post).

With regular indoor lighting (say, several 60 watt bulbs in a living room at night), the 14-140 often can't produce acceptable results because of the maximum aperture of f/4. You usually need a lens around f/2.8 or better to get a proper exposure in indoor light. However, I've never had trouble with it outdoors in the day - even in deep shadows - so you definitely want to check your ISO settings.

Typical shooting for 24P would be a shutter speed of 1/40 or 1/50, and an ISO as low as possible. Then you adjust the aperture until your histogram looks right. If you're new to the whole exposure thing, just adjust the aperture until the histogram turns white, or the exposure meter at the bottom gets to 0. If you're showing a negative number on the exposure meter, first drop the aperture to a lower f-stop, and keep going until you can't get any wider. If the exposure meter is still showing a negative number (or the histogram is still bunched up on the left side of the graph), bump the ISO up a level or two. If you need to go above 1000 or so, you're definitely going to see noise, and the only thing you can do is add more light.

Good luck!
 
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