Highest ISO for Television Production w/7D ??

G

George D.

Well-known member
When shooting video with the Canon 7D in "DOCUMENTARY" television productions, for companies like the National Geographic Channel, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel, what is the highest ISO that will give "acceptable" results before noise becomes a problem ??

If anyone has experience shooting and/or producing for any of these companies, I would be most grateful for your feedback on this issue.

Thanks.
 
Hi George.

The combination of a fast lens+ISO 640 is giving nice clean results acceptable for broadcast.

All the best.

Johnnie
 
I don't mind an 800 ISO, but I guess it depends on what your shooting. While I agree 200 is the most ideal, I would feel comfortable shooting at 800, but probably not anything past it.
 
My T2i only goes down to 200 when shooting video, but I guess the 7D can go down that far. So yeah I guess that would be better, lol.
 
You can shoot as high as 3200 iso and lower the shutter speed + use a de noise software plugin and still have a great looking image
 
When you're considering higher ISOs, it seems really image-dependent. If you don't have a lot of areas of deep shadow it can look nice - have a lot of blacks in the frame and even 800 gets iffy (to my eye, and at 720 or 1080). Of course, that's a catch -22, not being an issue in, say a well lit daytime scene.

I've did some tests tweaking AE's denoising plugin. It's fairly remarkable for what it does, but I didn't like the sort of "smeariness" it added.

If you get in a real noise jam, you can always try making a matte based on a beefed up grayscale layer (so only the darks are coming through), and do a denoise layer set to "darken". Kind of the NLE version of an old photoshop trick to get dust out the blacks in poor scans; it'll leave mids and highs intact. (expect some rendering time with that one though).
 
stew75 said:
Ahh, you are correct! Do you think it's worth it to shoot with the Highlight Tone Priority on?
Click to expand...

Personally, no. I never shoot with it on. But I have only had the t2i for a month. The tradeoff for whatever highlights it preserves are more noise in the blacks. I don't like that tradeoff. And I've never seen a benefit of the HTP.
 
with the digital bumping and rule of doubling starting at 160, wouldn't a 640 shoot cleaner then an ISO of 100 ?
 
Where can I read more about this? I've been shooting with the mentality "lowest ISO is cleanest." I don't have a 7d, so I don
t have the inbetween ISOs.... is 100 not the cleanest on a t2i?
 
Just remember increasing the exposure through ISO is the same thing as adding GAIN on a camcorder. You increase noise and flatten out the exposure range as you go higher. And most pros would agree that more than a little gain is a sign you are not bringing enough lights to the party. If it's just for Vimeo/Youtube this is no biggie. But if it's for broadcast you will ultimately hit a broadcaster's wall for quality control if you introduce excessive gain/ISO/noise into your footage.

Noah
 
NoahK said:
Just remember increasing the exposure through ISO is the same thing as adding GAIN on a camcorder. You increase noise and flatten out the exposure range as you go higher. And most pros would agree that more than a little gain is a sign you are not bringing enough lights to the party. If it's just for Vimeo/Youtube this is no biggie. But if it's for broadcast you will ultimately hit a broadcaster's wall for quality control if you introduce excessive gain/ISO/noise into your footage.

Noah
Click to expand...

This is how I have been thinking. Less gain is more good. Is this wrong?? is there a sweet spot?

I think the original red ones, for example, liked ISO 400.
 
Nathan.Buxton said:
This is how I have been thinking. Less gain is more good. Is this wrong?? is there a sweet spot?

I think the original red ones, for example, liked ISO 400.
Click to expand...

The least noise on the Canons is 160,320,640, and so on.

100 has more noise than 160, and I believe 320 has less than 200 too. There is a thread about this quite a while ago with comparisons.
 
Generally speaking somewhere between 100-320 is the 'normal' i.e. least amount of added gain range in most DSLRs. This is something you can Google for on specific models to get more info.

Noah
 
rallymatt said:
The least noise on the Canons is 160,320,640, and so on.

100 has more noise than 160, and I believe 320 has less than 200 too. There is a thread about this quite a while ago with comparisons.
Click to expand...


Same what i've learned from these cameras....double the ISO other wise you'll be making noise!
 
Do a lens cap test, blow the image up to around 400%, lift your shadows and you'll probably feel very uncomfortable shooting above 400 iso.
 
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