FS5: Low-light improved with external recorder?

S

seanarmada

Well-known member
Hello all

My apologies if this question has been addressed elsewhere. I'm particularly curious about this in the context of Firmware 1.11 addressing macro blocking/tearing.

From what I've seen (to be fair most of the footage is probably pre 1.11) the FS5 struggles past ISO 3200 in darkly lit situations. There's one clip floating around filmed at night at a train station and even at ISO 3200 it looks quite terrible to my eye.

I'm wondering if an external recorder would help address the issue of low-light situations? I'm looking at the PIX-E5 because of its size, so I suppose thinking about ProRes specifically. I'm also not too interested in 4K at the moment, so 1080p footage in particular.

Has anyone had experience with this and noticed an improvement?

If this is the case I'm considering ditching the LCD and recording exclusively (or most of the time anyways) to the PIX-E5.

Thanks!

Sean
 
seanarmada said:
I'm wondering if an external recorder would help address the issue of low-light situations?
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I'd be very surprised. The "bottleneck" is the imaging chip, and the supporting chipset / firmware. If the imaging system can't do the job you want done, a different storage system will just record that failure in a different way. How do you expect an external recorder is going to fix the failings of the imaging system?
 
Thanks for the clarification. To be fair I'm not knowledgable enough to have known exactly where that bottle neck is. I've definitely seen improvement in quality from internal FS5 clips vis-a-vis external recordings; I wasn't sure if that also extended to ISO performance overall.
 
I had this same question regarding a different camera and was told that an external recorder would not help. Being the hard-headed SOB that I am, I got a recorder anyways and found out for myself. No, it didn't help. My thought was more along the lines of getting more video info in the recorder, ProRes HQ and raw with the BMD Hyperdeck Shuttle II, and then getting a better result with Neat Video removing a "finer" grain pattern. But it didn't work out that way, no improvement with the recorder, pre or post-edit.

Mark
 
Thanks for the reply Mark. That's a shame! I really want to like this camera. I've seen a handful of nice stuff made with the FS5 by people who know how to work with the colour space, but poor low light is a real hard one to cope with.
 
An external recorder could (probably) help when going from 4K to 2K by adding up values but I suspect it's not done because the effects are marginal.
 
The FS7 has good low light performance. If I were concerned about shooting a low-light scene, I'd slap on the Metabones Speedbooster and a f/2.8 piece of glass. Same sensor as FS5 I believe.

Mark
 
DLD said:
An external recorder could (probably) help when going from 4K to 2K by adding up values but I suspect it's not done because the effects are marginal.
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I hear this theory every once in awhile but have yet to ever see a side x side to prove it. I take it you're saying that mathematically, the luminance values are additive when pixels are down-scaled. I don't know, sounds more like making water out of wine. But, next chance I get, I will do some testing. The idea then, is to shoot (I will use the FS7) in 4K and output that into an external recorder (I'll use the 7Q+) which is set up to create a 2K file. So if I do that, and then shoot 2K into same recorder with same settings, and also shoot 4K and record in the 7Q+ as 4K and compare all three video files for brightness, this would be a valid test of this theory, right? Would be cool if you're right!

Mark
 
Mark Watson said:
The FS7 has good low light performance. If I were concerned about shooting a low-light scene, I'd slap on the Metabones Speedbooster and a f/2.8 piece of glass. Same sensor as FS5 I believe.

Mark
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For sure, that's a way around it to an extent. I'm primarily interested in shooting docs, so it's highly likely I'll find myself in interior spaces, perhaps with minimal lighting, still needing to shoot at f4 (give or take) in order not to obsess over pull focusing as events unfold. It seems like the FS5 would fail quite badly at this kind of scenario. I'm quite bummed out, it's really the only thing that I can't reconcile with the FS5. The FS7 is excellent but it's WAY too heavy for me. I almost purchased one from a colleague and as soon as I tried it hand held I knew immediately it wouldn't work for me.

I'm quite keen to upgrade my gear but it seems like my C100 is still the best all around solution, in spite of a lacklustre codec.
 
seanarmada said:
For sure, that's a way around it to an extent. I'm primarily interested in shooting docs, so it's highly likely I'll find myself in interior spaces, perhaps with minimal lighting, still needing to shoot at f4 (give or take) in order not to obsess over pull focusing as events unfold. It seems like the FS5 would fail quite badly at this kind of scenario. I'm quite bummed out, it's really the only thing that I can't reconcile with the FS5. The FS7 is excellent but it's WAY too heavy for me. I almost purchased one from a colleague and as soon as I tried it hand held I knew immediately it wouldn't work for me.

I'm quite keen to upgrade my gear but it seems like my C100 is still the best all around solution, in spite of a lacklustre codec.
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The c100 is perfect for what you need. The FS5 has some great features but it does need light too provide optimal exposure. Have you tried to apply neat video to clean up the FS5 footage? It works great in most situations.
 
Tcap said:
The c100 is perfect for what you need. The FS5 has some great features but it does need light too provide optimal exposure. Have you tried to apply neat video to clean up the FS5 footage? It works great in most situations.
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I think so as well. I've got the MK1 so a move to the MK2 might be enough of an "upgrade".

I haven't had a chance to do that myself but I've seen some examples of it. I think in reasonably lit situations that works fairly well. I've seen a few low-light clips where Neat Video is applied and it does help for sure, but not enough to really feel confident in the footage.
 
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