Going insane with noise

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Ok I really need your guys help. I'm a new fs700 user. I've had it for a few months now shooting with it non stop. But I travel for a living so I haven't had time to test many picture profiles out. I have a client coming up in a few days so I sat down and experimented with the picture profiles all day. I found 7 distinct different types of custom picture profiles online to test out to figure out which one I want to use for this client. I went in my alley and filmed a friend with all of them and am now reviewing them. They all look terrible! I mean I like some of the detail and the colors in some of them but the noise is ridiculous. My crappy $400 DSLR does a better job than this. The image is just so muddy and the noise in the mids+shadows is horrendous. Color grading any of these shots would just deteriorate the image even more. The shadow detail and noise is just so bad. I've been shooting with slog2 the past few months (I dont have any 4k upgrade) and the noise was always bad in that. So i figured that was the issue. But now that I tried all these other PP's I can see the image is just noisey as hell. So my question is: What on earth am I doing wrong?!? Is this normal? Or is something wrong with my camera? The iso was set to the minimum on all test shots.
I uploaded this file just now unedited straight from the camera. Take a look at the shadows and everything. And please tell me if this looks normal or similar to your image and tell me I'm not insane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWPacboX8v8&feature=youtu.be

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
What F-Stop are you shooting with? For any camera except maybe the A7s, f 2.8 is considered the highest f-Stop for low light.

Not sure what you're doing wrong, but the FS700 is considered a very good low light camera. S-Log can be noisy if you under-expose too much in low light especially. The 7Q SLog is much more forgiving than internal AVCHD SLog which punishes under exposure.

I only shoot shoot with SLog these days because I have a 7Q, but the best low light Cinegamma is Cine 1 as it's range is shifted towards the shadows.

my URL - www.builtbyUgene.com, the movies section has a ton of stuff shot on the FS700, a lot of low light as well. It looks good to me. You probably just have to do some tests and figure it out.

My main suggestion is fast lenses and try not to under-expose more than 2 stops if possible. I notice S-Log on the 7Q in low light looks pretty decent even 2 stops under, but I'm a bit more noise tolerant than most people.
 
Yeah, what f-stop and iso you're shooting at? Imo, 3200 is getting pretty noisy.

Like Gene said, Cine 1 is probably the best for low light when shooting to the SD Card.

FS700 is still an excellent camera without the 7Q so don't feel like you HAVE to have it to get nice footage (though if you can afford it, it's turns your camera in to a beast)

Actually, for being uploaded on YouTube who's compression often adds artifacts.... it's not bad. I imagine if you bring the blacks down a bit you'd see a lot of the noise in the shirt go away.
 
Thanks so much for reply guys.
All the test shots I did yesterday were in broad day light. So when you guys are referring to Cine1 for low light, this isn't a low light situation, so why is the noise so bad? And I was shooting at f2.8-f5.0.

I realize the artifacts and compression of youtube, but when viewing the original files fullscreen on my computer they just don't look good. There's just so much noise. I can understand why there'd be noise if I was lacking light and boosting the iso and whatnot. But how come I can't get a noiseless image in broad day light? All off these shots would require a noise reducing software, which degrades the image even further, losing detail and quality. I try only to do that if it was a terrible low light situation.

And for those asking I kept the ISO all the way down for all tests. So depending on the Picture Profile, it was around 500 to 640. Is there no way to shoot with the ISO lower or at 0?

So I am still clueless as to why this is happening. Unless I'm crazy and this is what everyones fs700's are like. Is it possible there is something wrong with my camera?
 
You really can't tell anything from YouTube. The best thing to do is try and upload an original clip so we can look at it on our systems.
www.wetransfer.com can upload 2 GB for free. Send it to yourself and then post the link here so we can download it and take a look at it.
 
What rejdmast said. You could try to do a black balance, a function which is hidden somewhere in the menu, i don't expect it to change anything though. I achieved great results, using Cine 4 at ISO 3200, which is more noisy than Cine1.
 
Were you using ND? To me it looks like you underexposed a bit, which can introduce some noise. I've shot as high as 6400 and 8000 (in order to properly expose slowmo stuff). The key for me has always been to expose a bit bright. So to me, properly (or slightly over) exposed ISO 4000 would be better than underexposing ISO 2000.
 
Alright I uploaded the file to wetransfer as suggest. Download here: https://www.wetransfer.com/download...1744ba2b60844082e9b174c920140722224448/d08f82

Josh becker, I'm not sure if I used the ND'S or not don't remember, does that affect noise?
I guess there's something I dont't understand. How does underexposing cause noise? Wouldn't that crush the shadows, in turn causing the noise to disappear in those areas?
When shooting in an area like this alley there's shadows, mids and blown out high lights from the sky/buildings. I was always under the impression you underexpose a little to ensure your highlights aren't totally blown out and look awful. Because you generally end up crushing blacks any way.

Could you tell me how to properly expose? I'm still new to this camera but what I was doing was using the histogram. Making sure nothing hit's over the yellow line, which is very difficult in dynamic environments. Hence why I opt to go a little darker than usual. And lately I started using zebras, set it to 100 and make sure no lines appear on my subject.
 
My suggestion is for you to do a bracket test which is basically doing the same shot at the same ISO and varying the F-Stop. Basically, you just have to figure out what you are doing wrong by doing a series of tests. That's how I figure out lots of issues. I doubt there's anything wrong with your camera, you just have to work out the issues.

It's really hard for others to figure out what is wrong if they are not there. Just test, test and more test! Plus, that's how you learn about photography.
 
Problem is if the shadows are too dark... thats it. There is no data/information there. If you try to adjust gamma to pull detail out it wont work. Your waveform will get all fuzzy there. You are stretching all that data out and it makes it very noisy. Expose correctly via trial and error. BUT if all else fails expose to the right. Good luck!!
 
I looked at your video and the video from Luke Neumann on a calibrated broadcast monitor.

Looking at your video it may be more compression artifacts than noise. Your video is handheld and moving.
That makes it harder for the codec to work. Luke's shots are all on a tripod.

Also, neutral gray can really show noise more than most other things.

I don't think there is anything wrong with your camera.
Put it on a tripod and shoot something similar to Luke's. It will probably look pretty much the same.
 
slipstrea808 said:
Problem is if the shadows are too dark... thats it. There is no data/information there. If you try to adjust gamma to pull detail out it wont work. Your waveform will get all fuzzy there. You are stretching all that data out and it makes it very noisy. Expose correctly via trial and error. BUT if all else fails expose to the right. Good luck!!
Click to expand...
He's talking about original files, before ever trying to pull any detail out of the low-light areas.
 
gene_can_sing said:
My suggestion is for you to do a bracket test which is basically doing the same shot at the same ISO and varying the F-Stop. Basically, you just have to figure out what you are doing wrong by doing a series of tests. That's how I figure out lots of issues. I doubt there's anything wrong with your camera, you just have to work out the issues.

It's really hard for others to figure out what is wrong if they are not there. Just test, test and more test! Plus, that's how you learn about photography.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your continuing help guys, very much appreciated.
When you say change the F stop and keep the same ISO. Would that really make a difference? It's just changing exposure is it not? And if that is an issue, how can that be? I assumed I'd be able to shoot at varying f-stops with this camera without problems, that seems standard. I only shoot between 2.8 and 8.0 most of the time.
I guess I'll keep doing some tests. Is there a picture profile that you guys consider to be a standard noiseless one that I should test on?
 
And when you guys say expose to the right, you mean lift exposure till it's barely touching the yellow line?
 
100% zebras is perhaps a bit high - by the time you notice the stripe, it's over.

I tried slapping on a few random Magic Bullet looks, and it perks up nicely. Too flat for my eyes, but I'm not familiar with the camera either. There's very little colour information in the shot, very much grey scale.
 
paulears said:
100% zebras is perhaps a bit high - by the time you notice the stripe, it's over.

I tried slapping on a few random Magic Bullet looks, and it perks up nicely. Too flat for my eyes, but I'm not familiar with the camera either. There's very little colour information in the shot, very much grey scale.
Click to expand...

Yeah I color graded it and I can get it looking decent. But I just feel like for a $7000 camera the picture should come out somewhat noiseless in broad daylight. I need to keep experimenting. What would you set the zebras to?
 
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