ISO issue. can't shoot ext. night above 1250

i thought 160, 320, 640 WERE the ISO's we were aiming for as opposed to 100, 800 etc... . If i'm correct thats not the problem. Quite frankly just based on the responses i'm getting here i do have a feeling that if you're shooting something for vimeo or what have you then sure.

If shooting something for distro then stay at 640 and under. Thats the conclusion i made before posting this but thought i may have been doing something wrong. Apparently not.
 
1250 is the absolute cap for me too. Here are a few things that can help you on your quest:

1. Make Sure Auto Lighting Optimizer is Off. It will wreck havoc.
2. Experiment with some picture profile stuff...
I typically start with Neutral.
Turn sharpening to 1 or 2 (0 does something funny with the debayering I think)
Turn contrast all the way down.
In a moderately lit situation turn saturation down -1. In a low light situation turn saturation down to -2 or -3. You'll have to find one to taste.
3. If we are shooting in sodium vapor baselight I turn the WB to 2700k, and in a mercury environment I range from 4100 to 5800 depending on the type of lights and look. Watch out for the brown bars of death from any high pressure gas lights...these are some kind of shutter sync issue and you can fix it by varying shutter most of the time.

The good news is that even at ISO 640 you really don't need to have Much light to create a decent keylight/backlight ratio. I'm a fan of large soft sources especially for night scenes. Make yourself at least a 6x6 or 8x8 rag and bounce an open face unit anywhere from 500w to 2k into it if you can't afford expensive lighting equipment. Even a 650 open face running on a car inverter can do a lot more than you could get away with using another setup.

Hope that helps and stay warm up there in Canada shooting nights!
 
What Lenses are you Using... I get More Noise Using Canon at night as Opposed to Nikon Glass. Just a thought I get Cleaner Images with The Nikon
 
Dan_Kanes said:
1250 is the absolute cap for me too. Here are a few things that can help you on your quest:

1. Make Sure Auto Lighting Optimizer is Off. It will wreck havoc.
2. Experiment with some picture profile stuff...
I typically start with Neutral.
Turn sharpening to 1 or 2 (0 does something funny with the debayering I think)
Turn contrast all the way down.
In a moderately lit situation turn saturation down -1. In a low light situation turn saturation down to -2 or -3. You'll have to find one to taste.
3. If we are shooting in sodium vapor baselight I turn the WB to 2700k, and in a mercury environment I range from 4100 to 5800 depending on the type of lights and look. Watch out for the brown bars of death from any high pressure gas lights...these are some kind of shutter sync issue and you can fix it by varying shutter most of the time.

The good news is that even at ISO 640 you really don't need to have Much light to create a decent keylight/backlight ratio. I'm a fan of large soft sources especially for night scenes. Make yourself at least a 6x6 or 8x8 rag and bounce an open face unit anywhere from 500w to 2k into it if you can't afford expensive lighting equipment. Even a 650 open face running on a car inverter can do a lot more than you could get away with using another setup.

Hope that helps and stay warm up there in Canada shooting nights!
Click to expand...

Great stuff man!!! Lots of stuff ididnt even know about in this short message you posted. Never heard about the sharpening causing problems when at 0 and thats where i've had it. Also good to know in regards to the saturatin leve.s and the issue with the sodium vapor lights. Thing is thats really the color tone i'm going for in a lot of my film as i feel it really represents the "streets." if you check out the synopsis on my films site you'll see why: www.janedoemovie.com

I'll be using a lot of hard lighting with kino's as fill. Any comments in regards to that here and there?

thanks.
 
speedjunkie said:
What Lenses are you Using... I get More Noise Using Canon at night as Opposed to Nikon Glass. Just a thought I get Cleaner Images with The Nikon
Click to expand...

I've heard this aswell but unfortunately AFTER i bought my lenses. I have a canon 50mm 1.4, canon 85mm 1.8 and sigma 20mm 1.8. I'll also be renting longer lenses, once in a while, a fish eye a couple times and a tilt shift lens twice (any thing i should know about in regards to these and the 7d?)

I start shooting on Jan 25th so i really think i should resurect my "production blog" post which i started. got really busy then forgot to post on it, but i'm sure i'll get tons of help as i go along.

heres a link to the post: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=190693

and heres my film's poster (oh yeah i managed to land a hollywood name in it by the way based on the script AND a little money ;) )

JaneDoe_The_MovieSMALL_.jpg
 
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Ian-T said:
Ahhh....yes...I know exactly what video you are talking about. I've even posted that example in other forums. If I recall he shot between 1600-3200 ISO. I couldn't believe it either....but it was crazy clean. BUT...there was a lot of ambient light in that video. Matter of fact....I was thinking of that very same video during this whole conversation.
Click to expand...

Yes I saw that video, and there ambient light and I think the # 1 factor is watching it on the internet on your computer monitor, when you are watching the original footage on good HD editing monitor it will shows everything, compressed it down to internet HD and you just can't see all the details including noise like what you see in the original.
 
I’m actually currently watching it on my 21 inch flat screen monitor. If there is noise I can’t spot it at all. But it was rendered in 720 so whatever noise that might have stuck out is probably smoothened. Still…it looks darn good and sharp to me.

The original video on Vimeo, “SAH RIL “Friday Night Lights” was #11524189 but it seems they deleted it (oh well).

EDIT: Ok...found it.

 
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speedjunkie said:
What Lenses are you Using... I get More Noise Using Canon at night as Opposed to Nikon Glass. Just a thought I get Cleaner Images with The Nikon
Click to expand...

I second this notion. I'm using contax/zeiss and nikkors and did a test vs canon lenses. Shadows are cleaner with non-canon.

Theories:
1. Contrast of the lens
2. Electronic communication altering processing of the image.

Maybe try changing your contrast in picture profile to -3 instead of -4 and see if it helps?
 
mastermind said:
i thought 160, 320, 640 WERE the ISO's we were aiming for as opposed to 100, 800 etc... . If i'm correct thats not the problem. Quite frankly just based on the responses i'm getting here i do have a feeling that if you're shooting something for vimeo or what have you then sure.

If shooting something for distro then stay at 640 and under. Thats the conclusion i made before posting this but thought i may have been doing something wrong. Apparently not.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much it. This stuff needs to be viewed on large sources to really be judged. 640's REALLY stretching it, man. The noise and softness that I'm seeing isn't pretty but, yeah, for when it's really really needed I think it'll work.

Glad you found that out before you started shooting!

Also, I'm not sure if Dan is "right" but I also noticed the same things as him. Using glass with electronic contacts seems to bring out the image artifacts. No telling why, though.
 
Coming from a stills bacground ISO and noise has always been a myth

every camera before the D3 was only usable at its base ISO usually 200 the D3 is good for 800

Yet every cam has had rediculous claims

how ?

Simple - stick a cam on 800 go out in dayight and take some snaps - no noise - post them as 'amazing at 800'

Everyone thinks the camera is amazing at 800 and then when they need 800 - because its dark - all of a sudden the pictures look poo

How about this - this ? The bottom third of the histogram is poo - always - ETTR - expose to the right and crush that bottom third noise out in post

what does that mean in reality - you need lots of light to expose right

more light will clean your image

I remember shooting a gig on my hasselblad - which is 25ISO fixed - and doing it the next night with my D200 or something

The hassy files looked fine because I was not stupid enough to photograph anything that was not being hit by a spotlight

The 800 iso D200 of course I got fancy and beileived the hype - noise central

People are obsessed with not blowing their highlights, my new (stills) trainee regularly shoots 3 stops darker than me, - let highlights blow but understand which highlights must not blow - like faces

This of course means careful use of contrast control (ratios) in lighting design - usually a scrim



S
 
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Going to agree with what MM is saying about exposure to an extent. This is why the 1dmkiv is not really exciting to me. What we're seeing on the 1d4 is very advanced in camera noise reduction.

Sometimes a cleanish image can be resampled by the camera at high iso, but the codec chokes on large patches of similar colored/exposed texture because it tries to compress areas of lower detail. My theory is that a net or soft disrupts this codec pattern noise and can sometimes introduce more detail via the codec while smoothing some detail at the sensor level.

A lot of people focus on resolution as king, but I tend to think exposure is king.

I'm sure I'm rambling all over the place because I'm writing on my iPhone from a pass van, but this is a good conversation ;)
 
I dont know that the1fdsiv is not better than the 7 - it should be - larger pixels

Im just saying many people light and expose wrongly for the tool they have

S
 
When you watch a scaled down image , like on vimeo, you don't see noise in most cases.
When you watch the same footage fullscreen or the original footage on a HD monitor you definately see lots of noise compared to Vimeo...
 
agreed there. its also the case when watching on an external monitor if like myself you're 8" and under. the LCD on the cam itself is definitely not going to show you anything either which is why testing is so important. You otherwise get home only to realize you shot Blair Witch 3. (is there already a 3 for that? if so then 4..lol)
 
Generally takes a while for people to realize this stuff. If you only intend to shoot for Vimeo or YouTube, internet distribution, you can pretty much get away with anything.

Once you decide you want to distribute for large sources (Hi-Defintion), you MUST heed the warnings that are all over the place, otherwise known as "nay-say" or negativity.

Something else that's horribly misleading is that the cameras are "better in lowlight" than a lot of others, including RED. Sure, if you're using T2.1 Standard Speeds then a 7D with F1.4 Lenses will be about the same or a little faster @ 320 ISO.

Slap on some T1.3 Master Primes and the RED, with new build, @ 500 ISO (viewing REDSpace, even) EASILY craps on the 7D and 5D w/F1.4 glass.

I'm looking forward to a clean video image using 800 ISO from anything less than RED, it may be a long long time.

Take care to raise your light levels appropriately and shoot at lower ISOs for maximum image quality.
 
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