I may test that out. I have been getting good ISO1600 footage from Cinelike-D with Contrast set to 0 and NR at 0. I will try your Cinelike-V settings and compare. Cinelike-V is a contrastier profile that also places middle gray higher than Cinelike-D. To get the same exposure as Cinelike-D, you will expose Cinelike-V to the left by 1/3 stop. So the added contrast and consequent lower exposure drop the noise into the shadows. Makes sense.
GH4 Extreme noise even at ISO 200. Anyone else? (video inside)
- Thread starter antonionhb
- Start date
I may test that out. I have been getting good ISO1600 footage from Cinelike-D with Contrast set to 0 and NR at 0. I will try your Cinelike-V settings and compare. Cinelike-V is a contrastier profile that also places middle gray higher than Cinelike-D. To get the same exposure as Cinelike-D, you will expose Cinelike-V to the left by 1/3 stop. So the added contrast and consequent lower exposure drop the noise into the shadows. Makes sense.
stoneinapond
Veteran
This is so important to hammer home. So many people ask about what is the best setting for this, or the best setting for that, when in fact there are so many variables at play, it's almost impossible to answer such a question. To paraphrase the Old Corpse (from the grave :shocked:?:cheesy
use YOUR eyes, not someone else's. While recommended settings can be a good starting point for the newer users of a particular camera, NOTHING beats personal experimentation. As I said earlier, you either have a bad unit, or as others have pointed out, you followed the wrong advice for your particular application and are now blaming the tool. Bern summed it up well, that's bad form.
RickyNorris
Member
So is anyone getting no noise at 200?? Because even set up well I still find that I get bits of noise at the bottom end. Just doesn't make sense. You expect noise on the high end but either way we should have none on the low side.
I havent got my GH4 yet...even tho I paid for it on pre order 2 months ago (Australia).
But I have downloaded a ton of videos shot on it, one was shot of a band in a club, it was pretty dark with lighting that would have been difficult to shoot in, the poster said it was straight off the camera and at 1000 ISO,
I downloaded the 4K version (with 4K doenloader) and even with Vimeo compression it looked clean, I was looking for noise and macroblocking but couldn't see any.(There is a link to it on Personal View)
I have also seen plenty of 800 ISO vids at 4K that look clean too...maybe I'm blind, but I have been a graphic and 3d designer for decades and if there was a problem I am sure I would have noticed it.
So if there is noticeable noise at 200 ISO I would say you either have a faulty unit, or the settings are way off somehow.
But I have downloaded a ton of videos shot on it, one was shot of a band in a club, it was pretty dark with lighting that would have been difficult to shoot in, the poster said it was straight off the camera and at 1000 ISO,
I downloaded the 4K version (with 4K doenloader) and even with Vimeo compression it looked clean, I was looking for noise and macroblocking but couldn't see any.(There is a link to it on Personal View)
I have also seen plenty of 800 ISO vids at 4K that look clean too...maybe I'm blind, but I have been a graphic and 3d designer for decades and if there was a problem I am sure I would have noticed it.
So if there is noticeable noise at 200 ISO I would say you either have a faulty unit, or the settings are way off somehow.
David W. Jones
Veteran
I just got around to watching the posted video…. It is incredibly underexposed!
RickyNorris
Member
Interesting. Yeah I'm wondering if it is a faulty unit, because at ISO 200 in daylight I get light, mosquito like noise in the whole image. With IRES and IDynamic off.
Maybe you could post a screen grab from some footage. Noise is always there and we all have different standards of acceptable "noise".
@ RickyNorris
Yep ...if you are getting noticeable noise thats bothering you at 200 ISO in daylight, that would be a concern...you may have a faulty unit, I would do some serious A/B's, maybe post some footage here as well.
As far as the OP here. I think he has made up his mind, but to my mind..it was either the settings or he had a faulty unit.... as I said I have seen loads of footage that looks good...loads of it ...and not in perfect daylight either.
Here is a link to a guy doing night shots with out of the box settings(and shows a 200% Zoom as well) with a stock 2.8 lens up to 3200 ISO and to me it looks good, (he was not using a superfast lens or a speedbooster and it still is more than acceptable)
there is some noise on magnification, but nothing that would upset me anyway. Personally I would avoid Andrew Reids, or James Millers settings, first start with defaults and work it out from there, then experiment with settings that others use...but thats my approach. Anyway here is the link
https://vimeo.com/93774106
You can download it in 4k by downloading 4K downloader here.....cut and paste the URL into it, and have a look...I downloaded the 4K version and even with Vimeo compression there was not extreme problems.
http://www.4kdownload.com/download
There are others that look even better than this...but I would have to re search the links again...as I said from what I have seen the GH4 does really quite well in low light (or anylight) with the right settings...its no A7s, but the A7s has to be
heavily ND filtered for daylight shots at low ISO/s...cant have it all I guess.
Yep ...if you are getting noticeable noise thats bothering you at 200 ISO in daylight, that would be a concern...you may have a faulty unit, I would do some serious A/B's, maybe post some footage here as well.
As far as the OP here. I think he has made up his mind, but to my mind..it was either the settings or he had a faulty unit.... as I said I have seen loads of footage that looks good...loads of it ...and not in perfect daylight either.
Here is a link to a guy doing night shots with out of the box settings(and shows a 200% Zoom as well) with a stock 2.8 lens up to 3200 ISO and to me it looks good, (he was not using a superfast lens or a speedbooster and it still is more than acceptable)
there is some noise on magnification, but nothing that would upset me anyway. Personally I would avoid Andrew Reids, or James Millers settings, first start with defaults and work it out from there, then experiment with settings that others use...but thats my approach. Anyway here is the link
https://vimeo.com/93774106
You can download it in 4k by downloading 4K downloader here.....cut and paste the URL into it, and have a look...I downloaded the 4K version and even with Vimeo compression there was not extreme problems.
http://www.4kdownload.com/download
There are others that look even better than this...but I would have to re search the links again...as I said from what I have seen the GH4 does really quite well in low light (or anylight) with the right settings...its no A7s, but the A7s has to be
heavily ND filtered for daylight shots at low ISO/s...cant have it all I guess.
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Walter Hergt
Active member
If there is any remaining doubt, I am affirming that you need to expose this camera correctly and work the settings to match the scene. When I was initially shooting very flat in CineD and raising the shadows, high contrast scenes that had underexposed shadows were quite ugly even before I tried to raise them in post even at base ISO.
Different scene : brought in a little light, good exposure in the shadows, CineD with contrast at -2, nr -2, highlights -2, shadows and master ped at 0, and no disagreeable noise at 200, at 800, 1600, particularly when dumping 4k into a 1080 timeline.
I think folks seeing all the image control the camera offers got a bit too hopeful that the sensor could do everything in every situation. I did too. I've since given the camera a break and accepted that still I gotta do the heavy lifting and am happy with all the opportunities the GH4 gives for me to do a better job.
Different scene : brought in a little light, good exposure in the shadows, CineD with contrast at -2, nr -2, highlights -2, shadows and master ped at 0, and no disagreeable noise at 200, at 800, 1600, particularly when dumping 4k into a 1080 timeline.
I think folks seeing all the image control the camera offers got a bit too hopeful that the sensor could do everything in every situation. I did too. I've since given the camera a break and accepted that still I gotta do the heavy lifting and am happy with all the opportunities the GH4 gives for me to do a better job.
RickyNorris
Member
@astromann Thanks that was a great link to post. I feel like my 1600 is no where near that clean. So interesting.
David Del Real
Well-known member
I wonder what his "out of the box" settings were??? Standard Pic style or Natural??? CinelikeD or CinelikeV maybe???
@RickyNorris
Thats very interesting...it would be good to get to the bottom of this, I cant imagine a bad bunch with bad or extra noisy sensors...I guess anything is possible tho.
I just wish I had my GH4 and 12-35 now so I could do some A/B's with you, but the supply of those cameras to Australia is abysmal.
Anyway yeah maybe try to re set everything to default and see if you can get a Panny 12-35 lens to borrow (if you dont have one) maybe start from there with all settings at 0.0.
Process of elimination...or borrow or hire another GH4 and do an A/B.
Here is another link to another vid https://vimeo.com/101424810
Details from the OP
In this condition I tried some low light settings instead of flat cine like D. I used Cinelike V, Contrast +0,
Sharpness -5, NR -5, Saturation -5 and ISO 1000. The original 4K file was way crispier and better looking than I thought
I also downloaded the 4K vid...I was surprised how clean it looked actually.
Like I said it would be good to get to the bottom of this...some people are getting great results in lower light...others are not, on the previous link I sent it was
2.8 was used all the time (no speedbooster) and various ISO's...so he got good results at 2.8.
Someone should do an A/B between 3 or 4 GH4s instead of a GH4 vs A7s or whatever else...that might help.
Thats very interesting...it would be good to get to the bottom of this, I cant imagine a bad bunch with bad or extra noisy sensors...I guess anything is possible tho.
I just wish I had my GH4 and 12-35 now so I could do some A/B's with you, but the supply of those cameras to Australia is abysmal.
Anyway yeah maybe try to re set everything to default and see if you can get a Panny 12-35 lens to borrow (if you dont have one) maybe start from there with all settings at 0.0.
Process of elimination...or borrow or hire another GH4 and do an A/B.
Here is another link to another vid https://vimeo.com/101424810
Details from the OP
In this condition I tried some low light settings instead of flat cine like D. I used Cinelike V, Contrast +0,
Sharpness -5, NR -5, Saturation -5 and ISO 1000. The original 4K file was way crispier and better looking than I thought
I also downloaded the 4K vid...I was surprised how clean it looked actually.
Like I said it would be good to get to the bottom of this...some people are getting great results in lower light...others are not, on the previous link I sent it was
2.8 was used all the time (no speedbooster) and various ISO's...so he got good results at 2.8.
Someone should do an A/B between 3 or 4 GH4s instead of a GH4 vs A7s or whatever else...that might help.
I have been getting spectacular results with cineV all zero's and 16-235 luminance. If I can keep the exposure to the right on the histogram there is virtually zero noise even at ISO 2000. I haven't tried anything at ISO3200 and only have a few clips of family at ISO 2000 though.
As a side note, I think it is very important to use NR at 0. I found last year on the G6 that it appears Panasonic is very effectively using noise reduction before the codec. I can't for the life of me understand why everyone is shooting with NR at -5. In all my shots with the older G6 and now the GH4, I'm finding NR 0 to be incredible for low light scenes. It is just a no brainer to me. It's only when the scene is so under exposed that it's junk anyway that NR 0 causing softening and macro blocking. Does anyone have an A/B sample of NR 0 vs. NR -5 that proves otherwise ???
Cheers,
Pete
As a side note, I think it is very important to use NR at 0. I found last year on the G6 that it appears Panasonic is very effectively using noise reduction before the codec. I can't for the life of me understand why everyone is shooting with NR at -5. In all my shots with the older G6 and now the GH4, I'm finding NR 0 to be incredible for low light scenes. It is just a no brainer to me. It's only when the scene is so under exposed that it's junk anyway that NR 0 causing softening and macro blocking. Does anyone have an A/B sample of NR 0 vs. NR -5 that proves otherwise ???
Cheers,
Pete
Bruce Foreman
Veteran
I'll say it again. The OP's footage was horribly underexposed, PERIOD!
I've been shooting "available light"/low light since the early 1960's. I've shot weddings professionally where for a bit of a change of pace some of us would pose the bride and groom by candle light with ASA 100 color neg film where an f2.8 aperture on medium format was a luxury. We saw to it that we could see the "glow" of the candlelight on skin tones or else it was a "no go". We learned early on that one way or another you "found" or added light to get enough exposure.
I shot night scenes on Kodachrome 25 and then on Kodachrome 64 when that came on the scene. Ektachrome 400 was an amazing leap in night scene work, but still looked flat out ugly if you didn't get good exposure.
Early digital was a disaster when it came to night work if you didn't get decent exposure. But the last thing I and my colleagues would subject ourselves to would be the derisive laughter that resulted from not getting good enough exposure to make the imagery look right, and then weep and wail blaming the gear.
ISO 200 under lighting that you couldn't even see on faces, with an f2.8 max aperture and a shutter speed set high for the situation? I would know far better before even picking up the camera!
In his shoes I'd have gone back a day or two later, picked a setting where the same street light actually lit somebody and shot again at ISO 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 and compared the results before "weeping" about the bad camera where others could read and wonder.
Harsh? Yeah you bet, he says he is an experienced shooter.
I have a GH4 I haven't had a chance to put through it's paces much yet (a 9 day stay in the hospital kind of got in the way), but the one 4K project I tried came out good enough to get me really excited about this camera. It may have about one stop less low light exposure performance than the GH3 (which astounded me with ISO 3200 performance on night street tests), but in my lens collection are several "fast glass" options (both Panasonic and Olympus) and when I need a low light option I go for f1.7, f1.4, and f1.8.
You won't catch me "crying" about poor camera performance at night using f2.8 max and ISO 200. I learned better about 3 decades or more ago.
I've been shooting "available light"/low light since the early 1960's. I've shot weddings professionally where for a bit of a change of pace some of us would pose the bride and groom by candle light with ASA 100 color neg film where an f2.8 aperture on medium format was a luxury. We saw to it that we could see the "glow" of the candlelight on skin tones or else it was a "no go". We learned early on that one way or another you "found" or added light to get enough exposure.
I shot night scenes on Kodachrome 25 and then on Kodachrome 64 when that came on the scene. Ektachrome 400 was an amazing leap in night scene work, but still looked flat out ugly if you didn't get good exposure.
Early digital was a disaster when it came to night work if you didn't get decent exposure. But the last thing I and my colleagues would subject ourselves to would be the derisive laughter that resulted from not getting good enough exposure to make the imagery look right, and then weep and wail blaming the gear.
ISO 200 under lighting that you couldn't even see on faces, with an f2.8 max aperture and a shutter speed set high for the situation? I would know far better before even picking up the camera!
In his shoes I'd have gone back a day or two later, picked a setting where the same street light actually lit somebody and shot again at ISO 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 and compared the results before "weeping" about the bad camera where others could read and wonder.
Harsh? Yeah you bet, he says he is an experienced shooter.
I have a GH4 I haven't had a chance to put through it's paces much yet (a 9 day stay in the hospital kind of got in the way), but the one 4K project I tried came out good enough to get me really excited about this camera. It may have about one stop less low light exposure performance than the GH3 (which astounded me with ISO 3200 performance on night street tests), but in my lens collection are several "fast glass" options (both Panasonic and Olympus) and when I need a low light option I go for f1.7, f1.4, and f1.8.
You won't catch me "crying" about poor camera performance at night using f2.8 max and ISO 200. I learned better about 3 decades or more ago.
Bruce Foreman
Veteran
I watched the vimeo file astroman linked to and that proves the points I made in the post above. Every where he pointed the camera there was light, more than enough for decent exposure at just about all ISO and settings he used.
OK, if you look for it you're liable to find some noise, I'm willing to accept a bit of noise to get the effect I want. But I also found out that if your monitor has the slightest degree of oversharpening it will take minor color artifacting that is not really a problem and turn it into ugly noise where there really is none.
I have all my monitors set for maximum sharpness without showing noise. Still plenty sharp for PhotoShop work.
OK, if you look for it you're liable to find some noise, I'm willing to accept a bit of noise to get the effect I want. But I also found out that if your monitor has the slightest degree of oversharpening it will take minor color artifacting that is not really a problem and turn it into ugly noise where there really is none.
I have all my monitors set for maximum sharpness without showing noise. Still plenty sharp for PhotoShop work.
RickyNorris
Member
@astromann I do have my 12-35, and man what a bummer you still cant get a camera out there. On a shoot this weekend with an extra body so I'll try and grab some frames from both for comparison. @c3hammer thats a interesting note, I'm guessing -5 is as close to OFF while 0 is actually middle ground between +5 in regards to NR. I might shoot some tests on that. What do you think about people saying to use Idynamic and IRes at standard?