I think...

I've got the cleanest night footage of all. I played around with some settings and think...I might be onto something here. So, gimme about 20-30mins to upload. I think you might be a bit surprised how sharp and noise free it is.
 
uploading footage now. if people think it's less noisy than most videos i'll post what i did/do. it was more about digging through the settings and seeing if there was any progress.
 
I had similar results in Vivid mode and opening my 50mm to 1.4 aperture and then putting the EV down to the minus figures and then setting the lil vertical bar in the live view to minimum. Still has that slimey compression look though, like the image was resized in camera to 640x360 and then blown up.

I am interested in how you achieved the look though o_O
 
I think the low apparent noise is the result of a perfect storm of choosing a black crushing curve (which saves major bandwidth 'cause its just lost data), tricking the camera into a lower ISO, etc, and just the right amount of elements in the frame to create a clean looking image...
In the end though, theres no real more 'guts' or 'robustness' to the image than before...

That said, it still looks great!
 
I don't really see the big deal -- the video is extremely dark = little detail. Am I correct in saying the darker the footage is the less artifacting? And the brighter it is, the camera is trying to compensate and inevitably adds noise? I guess the way a camcorder works?
 
yes, the image becomes much much cleaner if you crush the blacks. i've gotten the cleanest footage with the most latitude so far by locking exposure to something bright then adjusting the aperture until the blacks just clip. i use the zoom button to check the black level noise, very handy and you see immediatey when it goes away.
 
no custom curve, not CCing or crushing the blacks. i'll post on it a little later. the preset is actually "standard" or "neutral" in camera.
Maybe the camera is itself is crushing it, but i'm not doing it.
 
Okay, here are my settings. You will need to get "camera control 2". There is a free 30 day trial. I'd recommend it. I also posted some in camera menu stuff, cause I wasn't sure the program adjusted that for me. You'll see repeated steps from Camera Control and the in camera changes.



*NOTE* This may affect with your still shots. In fact, it probably will.

Menu/ISO sensitivity/
Iso sensitivity/3200
Iso sensitivity auto control/ON
Maximum sesnitivity/400
Minimum shutter speed/ 1/30

Long sxp. NR/ ON
Set picture contorl/ Anything mine is STANDARD
b2 Easy exposure compoensation/OFF
High ISO NR/HIGH


Cam1.jpg
Cam2.jpg

Cam3.jpg
Cam4.jpg

Cam5.jpg


I let the camera do the walking for me. If I point it at a bright surface or area, the image gets darker. Point it at a dark area, the image gets brighter. I looked for an even surface of light so it's right in the middle and locked the exposure to my taste. You can use the zoom in button to see just how much noise is there. The one thing I kept thinking was this camera will see what I see and it doesn't...so I had to compromise. If something is too dark to the camera I let it go. That pretty much sums it up. If any of these settings don't do anything and it comes down to just one, that's cool too, don't flame me. I'm just posting what I have. I have never tried to cancel out one or the other, just kept them and shot video. So if you find something that doesn't matter, feel free to let us/me know.
 
Car3o THANK YOU!

In the tests I just did at home it is true magic!!!

Next step, how to make the picture a bit sharper....


Johnnie
 
no [...] crushing the blacks
well in that case they crushed themselves because they are in fact crushed. yes, the term often refers to a post processing technique but what we mean is that there's no detail in the black at all, it's at zero. it's still interesting to hear what you did of course, but i still believe that the very dark exposure is the main reason your footage looks so clean.

/matt
 
i'm okay with crushed blacks...as long as my stuff is noise free. but i get what you're saying. got some stuff i recorded earlier tonight with some fireworks going off. so, gonna post that up later tonight.
 
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