Going from an HMC-40 to an HMC-150... GRAIN!!

Butchnap

Butchnap

Member
Hi all,

I sold my HMC-40 a while ago and got an HMC-150, which I figured I should've gotten in the first place - The "big brother" model with all the external controls, etc. Of course I realized I'd be going backwards in a sense, and that the 150 would lack certain functions that I was used to in the 40 (zoom variance etc.) and that I'd be going back to CCD. This is all completely fine.

My big problem is that this HMC-150's footage is extremely NOISY (grainy). I think have read all the noise posts on here now regarding this problem, and lots of others have griped about it.. I've read the solutions - AGC and DRS off, black balance, gain switch on lowest setting, manual everything, reset to factory settings, use various tweaked scene files.. I have done most of these things (not the scene files yet) and the problem persists.

I just don't understand it.. Why would these cameras be put on the market with crappy grain in the signal no matter what? Basically, I'm shooting at 1080/30 with the shutter set to off, no agc or drs, everything manual, iris open, scene file 1.. I will do a black balance and then record as I walk around my house with a decent amount of light (though not GOOD lighting by any means) and noise will be evident in anything black or even dark. I went back and checked my old HMC-40 video files and they don't have this problem.. The blacks are nice and inky.

Is a Low Noise scene file the only option? Why make a $3000+ camera that has noise you can't turn off?

Thanks,
Nick
 
I mean, do all of you folks have this problem and are not bothered by it? I doubt that's the case.. I have viewed footage on my pc monitor and also have plugged the hdmi into a smaller LCD TV and have noticed this on both.
 
Wow, no help or guidance? Well I guess the camera is pretty old now..

But here's what gets me - What if I want to shoot something with lots of shadows? Something moody, or film noire-ish? Just can't do it without a bunch of grain in the picture?
 
Butch nap,

I own both the hmc40 and a hpx170. The 170 is mostly the same cam as the 150 except for the codec it records to. What I can tell you is the 40 is simply a sharper cam. What I can also tell you is the stock scene files don't bring out the best in the cam. You said you hadn't made any changes, and until you do, you simply can't judge the cam. There have been many many threads with scene file suggestions so ill let you do some homework. Suffice to say, until you do, you are being unfair to the cam. The 40 will always have a cleaner image than a ccd cam, but it just wrong to think you can't do good work with a 150

Grant
 
Hi, and thanks for your response. I understand and agree with most of what you have said. But shouldn't this expensive professional camera be able to to handle NO GRAIN in the picture, as long as the gain switch is off? I thought that was a standard thing with most prosumer cameras that give you gain control.. You should be able to turn off gain completely and therefore not introduce any grain to the picture.. Right? Again, what if I want moody lighting with lots of shadows (and no grain)? Am I just screwed here?
 
Hi Butchnap

Gain doesn't have to be a cause of grain..the simple fact that the iris is open means that you need lots of light and you are not providing it. Point the 150 at a dark scene with open iris and no gain and unless the camera has a high enough sensitivity yes it will have grain in the image ... there is simply not enough light coming in!! Try the camera in auto and see what it "suggests" ..let it find the correct exposure then switch to manual and see what the iris and gain were set at... You will probably find the auto mode opened the iris fully and applied quite a fair bit of gain too ....open iris and say 15db gain will look a lot very than open iris and 0db gain in the image is under-exposed.

Chris
 
Disclaimer: I'm fairly experienced with the HMC40 but not so much the 150, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I'll try to provide some assistance if I can.

You mentioned in your first post that the blacks especially are noisy in the footage that you are getting. You already said that you are black balancing the camera (good). Maybe give this a shot if you haven't already:

Pick your gamma. Note that BPress has the least noise if you want to start there. Close the iris all the way and pull up the waveform monitor. You should see a solid line at the bottom of the monitor. If the line appears to be jiggling in any way, that represents noise. Lower the master pedestal bit by bit until that jiggling goes away and you only have a solid, still line. This should give you a nicely calibrated scene file with black as black and no more noise than necessary. If you want to remove even more noise, you can continue to lower the master ped, but note that going too far will remove detail from the shadows, making them solid black. Of course, that may be exactly the effect that you want.

Also note that even though the HMC150 is more sensitive than the HMC40, you still need to light your scene properly to get the best results. This is true for any camera.
 
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Proper settings can make a world of difference. But you also need to have an understanding of the realistic limitations of your camera. The HMC150 handles low light situations pretty well for the price, but it still has it's limits. You can't expect a completely grain/noise free image without the proper amount of light (which can be more than you would think). That being said, if you're shooting outdoors in sunlight or similar situations with a lot of light and still getting a ton of noise, your camera could have an issue.
 
I have an hmc150 and hck10 (mini version of hmc40, same guts).
Shooting indoors without good light my 150 looks better. It's cleaner and does much better when light is not so good and especially in low light.
I'm going to try the above recommendations as well.
I recently tried DRS 1 during a dark wedding that only had some accent lights and for the first time was unsatisfied with the noise in the image. The hck10 however really struggled and looked considerably worse. I'm still trying to learn the cameras but until that wedding I have been able to bring up the dark weddings in post and still have a pretty clean image.
 
I appreciate all your comments, and will be trying out some of the scene file settings soon.

I guess what I'm mainly taking from this thread is that some noise will be apparent in dark scenes no matter what. I have used quite a few different camcorders in the past and it always seemed to me that if I kept the gain off, no noise (or at least nothing I could see) would be introduced.. At least with this camera, that appears to not be the case.
 
This is where having some lighting experience will help with the cameras downfall, which is not so great lowlight ability. If indoors, and you have some sections of the frame thats dark with noise present, use a little light to fill in those voids, this will help to reduce the noise in the footage, and will add some depth to the shot. There's not always a cure for it, but sometimes you have to spend more time with lighting your scenes to avoid the grainy noise. There's also a few good plug-ins for noise removal, neatvideo, magic bullet also has one that works well. I have a few old xha1's that have similar issues, I actually think the hmc is even better in low light, but even that cam has to have some custom presets to help with it, otherwise it would be very grainy. The ccd's are not used much in cameras these days, but there's advantages to having them over cmos in certain situations.
 
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