FS700 - Ugly Noise

mico said:
It does look like hell. Its happening when shooting high speed shots without enough light. Obviously high speed (slo mo) needs loads of light then add the compression limitations involved in getting that slo mo with Avchd bitrates and you get a crappy image, so the person who shot the footage upped his iso in order to get exposure for some of those high speed shots. Just the nature of shooting high frame rate AVCHD slo mo: you need lots of light and a high bitrate to avoid the noise.
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+1 I think you are right. I usually post the FS 700 videos that I find on Vimeo, but I decided not to post this one because the noise looked out of character compaired to most other FS 700 videos. It could be a number of factors:

1) Its a pre production camera
2) Human error of some sort
3) Compression
4) Nothing is wrong, just don't shoot slow motion at night without proper lighting

Note: The first time I watched this video on my laptop, as I have all FS 700 videos. I then hooked my laptop up to my 24" Dell monitor and the noise did not look as bad. I just mention this as maybe a reason why some people may or may not see the noise as bad in this video.
 
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I see more compression than noise. Also, the quality/level of lighting affects noise level even at same ISO. There's no reason to jump to conclusions on a single shot.
 
Plus, if you are shooting at 120 fps, set to the correct shutter speed (I've read that the FS700 automatically ups the Shutter Speed on extreme slow motion), you are losing 2 stops of light. So basically ISO 3200 (at regular FPS of 24) should be shot at 12800. At 240 FPS, you loose 3 stops of light. So yeah, low light situations using slow motion are going to be a lot worse on comparable ISOs.
 
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Like I said in the "video" thread... there's a reason why there aren't any lowlight examples...
 
gene_can_sing said:
Seems like white balance was also way off as it was extremely green. Not exactly the best shot to judge a camera with.
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Agreed. The white balance or grading in most of these shots is way off. For some reason, most of the FS700 footage I've seen has had ugly color casts. The first FS700 video has violet and magenta color casts everywhere and a lot of the subsequent stuff I've seen has looked the same. Too much red in the skin tones or something. Is this just me or is this an issue with the camera?

I admit I've never shot FS100 and know next to nothing about either camera except what I've read in the past few weeks.
 
FelixGER said:
I remember a guy who was involved with the "VS" video said slowmo produced more noise than realtime speeds at same gain.
But the noise is really bad. I ofte used my FS100 with 18 dB of gain and it looked just great! Better than a GH2 at ISO 400!
The FS700 noise I´ve seen yet really has ugly blocky and heavy noise just like an old canon DSLR.

I already ordered the 700 so I have no interest to bash it.

Edit: Look at the noise at the slow-mo at about 1:30 and then the 24p shot right after that with the same ISO. Looks much much better![/QUOTE

Download the AbelCine low light test and you will see that there is at least one stop difference in noise in a real life test, not the charts. hopefully just a poor optimized preproduction codec.
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philiplipetz said:
So we are purchasing a pig in a oke and that is acceptable? At one month before delivery all other cameras had decent examples.
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These cameras are not ones manufactured a month before release... they're the first pre-production units. Prototypes even. Sensors are not final production run sensors.

So, the lack fo lowlight footage is because it doesn't represent what the camera will be capable of upon release. It's expected that it won't be as strong as the FS100 because of the new sensor's additional focus on 4K images, but it'll be close enough to justify the upgrade with the sweetener of a 4K option.
 
gene_can_sing said:
The lighting in that scene looked like HELL. It was so bad. Not sure if any camera can make that light scenario look good. Plus with slow motion, you need more light because of the increased shutter speed. Seems like white balance was also way off as it was extremely green. Not exactly the best shot to judge a camera with.

Would the Scarlet really do a better job in that situation? I thought the REDs are not a low light camera and really need optimal lighting.
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Yeah, it would have. The image from a Mysterium X sensor is so squeeky clean and packed with data that you have plenty of room to dig into the blacks for detail in post. The REDs are designed for options in post and are relatively forgiving. Directors love them because you can spend less time spoonfeeding the camera a perfect image and more time on the action. And when your budget is too low for a dedicated DP and DIT, that's important.

Is the problem in that clip user error? Sure. I guess the guy who filmed it could have floated a couple of 12K helium lanterns over the street and followed the talent with a hand-held chimera. Or he could have used a camera that's more forgiving in a guerilla-style scenario.

Choosing a camera is hard, though. Not every camera is right for every shoot - which is why we rarely buy cameras. We let someone else buy them and we rent.
 
Maybe check out the Part 2 of P. Bloom's FS 700 test.

He said he thought the low light and noise were going to be worse on the FS700 because of the 4K sensor, but in his side by side low light test between the 100 and 700, he said he could not tell the difference between the two cameras, that the difference was very negligible.

Like several people have said, the test clip in the OP was not well shot at all and has horrible lighting and bad white balance. From the stuff shot by people who know what they're doing Frank G., P.B., James Millers and a handful of others, the footage looks really good IMO
 
Easy guys, this wasn't shot at 3200.

I'm sure that guy set the 700 to 3200 ISO, according to the available light he got there.
What he didn't know is, that in Super-SlowMo, the 700 takes over the ISO and shutter, to make sure, it get´s enough light and speed.

So if you need to set the 700 to 3200, you can be sure it was pitch dark there.
With a Phantom, one would need to bring about 4k HMI, to a shot like that.

So from that flick, I would say, he forced the 700 to crank up the ISO to the max.
No wonder it´s noisy like that.

Frank
 
I understand that the camera goes up to the minimum shutter speed for the framerate but that you can´t control the ISO in super slow-mo is pretty "consumer style" isn´t it?
 
Wow, not being able to control the shutter on high speed. Man... I hope a firmware change or the final version will fix that. That is super consumer.

Seems like if you could control the shutter speed, it might allow more control over the flickering light issue.
 
I understand the fixed 360º shutter, but no ISO control is really disappointing... Does it just add a fixed quantity to the displayed ISO to compensate for the light loss, or is it a variable auto ISO based on the exposure in the frame?
 
Wait, I could control the shutter just fine at 240fps.

Was it locked on other pre pro cameras? You can't lower it, but you can certainly raise it.

...and you shouldn't be able to lower it less than it needs to be to actual record that framerate.
 
Philip Bloom said he used 1/500th shutter for his 240fps stuff therefore it can't be fixed 360degree shutter.
MaxThomas said:
I understand the fixed 360º shutter, but no ISO control is really disappointing... Does it just add a fixed quantity to the displayed ISO to compensate for the light loss, or is it a variable auto ISO based on the exposure in the frame?
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360degree shutter would be so much worse than no ISO control. 360degree shutter definitely does not look cinematic (certainly with things moving rapidly in frame).
 
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