Gain pain?

P

PaulWM

Active member
Covered a long shoot yesterday - everything manually locked, white and black balanced and shot in broad daylight with ND or pola. Got home late and very tired, took the HMC out of the bag and saw that the gain switch was set to 'high' (don't know when I knocked that switch but I have never shot on high gain before). After a quick panic attack I then grabbed Barry's book as I remembered reading somewhere that high gain cannot function if the material is shot in 25p (it was). Am I reading this correctly?

I don't have a large screen to check the results but on a relatively small 1080p screen - the footage looks fine to my eyes. Hopefully I am OK then?

Cheers
 
I use gain in 25p all the time in dark scenarios, so the bad news is that your footage is going to have lots of gain (assuming it was on while shooting), and therefore noise.

The best way to salvage the footage is using the Neat-Video plugin to your NLE (if it supports it). Not sure if they have a standalone version - I used it plugged in to FCP.

It's not going to make it noise free (at least not if you still want some details) but it can certainly help.
 
PaulWM said:
After a quick panic attack I then grabbed Barry's book as I remembered reading somewhere that high gain cannot function if the material is shot in 25p (it was). Am I reading this correctly?
Click to expand...
No, you're confusing two different things. "HIGH GAIN" is a function that you assign to a user button, and that's the one that wouldn't work in 25p. It goes to +18dB.

Putting the gain switch on "H" will work in 25p, up to +12dB, depending on what you had the menu setting on. You can choose any setting from 0 to +12, in 3dB increments, to assign to that switch.
 
Just checked the menu and the high is set to 12dB so now I'm really worried because I was also shooting in Cine D (Mast Ped -45, DRS Off, D Coring -2, detail -1 etc).

I have no idea if I knocked the switch before, during or after the shoot. The footage was captured in bright daylight but I have a couple of facial close ups in shade. On my smallish screen I can't see much noise here. I will try and view this on a larger screen elsewhere in a few days time.
 
It's really worth getting in to 'good' habits every time you mount the camera on it's tripod, i.e. checking the settings - ALL the settings. I drill this stuff in to my staff all the time.

If you had been on +12db gain I would have though you would have also been in need of unusually high ND filter settings. When ever anything like this is out of the ordinary you need to question all the other settings to discover what the problem could be. I also assume you have the db setting on the LCD at all times - if not I recommend that you do. It can help highlight issues like this very quickly.
 
I've done this a few times myself. It's a nasty accident. I've since disabled my gain switch by setting all the positions to 0db through the menu. Probably not a great solution if you're often doing documentary or news shooting and you need those options, but it'll prevent it from happening in the future.
 
I went up to 1/16th ND a couple of times but I cannot recall if we also had the polariser on for those shots at the same time (very fast day!).

I will knock out all of those settings to 0db just in case.

I will look into the noise reduction software that you mention when it comes to editing if I need it. Hope I don't though - I was covering confrontational scenes outdoors with actors and it was quite dynamic, so there will also be some rapid cuts to keep the pace up.

Thanks for all of your help.
 
Well the good thing is that the HMC even jacked up on the gain isn't really all that noisy so I'm sure you'll be able to salvage it. You musth have had it stopped down though with the NDs on and such too even get an exposure outside with that gain on... One thing that might also save you is the -45 master ped, but it will be contrasty.. Good luck and share your results when you finish..
 
Well I still can't get to a bigger screen for a while to see the results BUT I've just looked at a snapshot that someone took showing the cam clearly. Although it was a little earlier in the day I zoomed in on the image and the gain switch is in the LOW position! I shall ask others who took snaps if they can forward them to me ASAP in case they also show the cam controls.

Justyn thinking about what you said above, I don't think I ever went beyond 5.6 during the day - so that might also be a good sign.

Maybe I am going to be lucky after all but either way I've just learned a lesson! I am usually pretty careful and have a respect for equipment but I will double check every single setting ad switch from now on.

It was such a busy day I don't know how I ever ended up in high mode though I was very tired in the afternoon after going several nights with less than four hours sleep (yeah I know four hours is probably a luxury to some of you but then a lot of you are younger and fitter than me!).

Cheers
 
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