Low light questions for HF100..

Rippie

Rippie

Veteran
Hey guys,

I'm pretty new to this camera and would love some advice on shooting in lower style lighting and getting away from the grainy look (gain)

I have on order a letus extreme adapter, and while i feel confident in
shooting with "normal" levels of light I have a scene (50%) of a short I'm going to shoot where it is going
to be a pretty moody style lighting setup.
Think interrogation room, 1 source light on the "hero"..rest of the frame falls to black.

Starting to do my camera tests (without the letus ex.) im having difficulty getting the blacks to fall off without introducing gain in the picture.

Any advice and help is greatly appreciated!



Just for the backstory, I'm in the biz. (production sound mixer).
I work with everything from panavision, cine alta's, varicams to hvx200's in the HF/film side of things.

I was so impressed when I got this HF100 as a hobby style cam
that I want to prove it can in the end do 98% of what the bigger cams can do.

I'll be calling in a lot of favors the day I shoot (full crew, gear), but coming from the sound side of things my whole career im trying to learn the limitations and workarounds of
this cam in a "semi" hurry.

Thanks again.
 
Last edited:
It can do 98%...jut not in low light...the only way i've been able to get rid of grain is to bring down the exposure which of course makes the image darker. Bottom line is this thing needs light. Ask Johnny Cola...he's done way more shooting with his.
 
Use a narrow fresnel light.... Like a mini mole. Or on a budget..... Try a 150 watt Outdoor PAR Spotlight..... You can use Blackwrap to narrow it down more. Dial in the exposure in manual or Exposure compensation .... Maybe -2 or -3

frisco
 
Hi,

Terrific camera, huh?

It can do 98%...jut not in low light...the only way i've been able to get rid of grain is to bring down the exposure which of course makes the image darker. Bottom line is this thing needs light. Ask Johnny Cola...he's done way more shooting with his.
Click to expand...
The Rock is man with this cam. He has some footage at Vimeo to check out, too.

Starting to do my camera tests (without the letus ex.) im having difficulty getting the blacks to fall off without introducing gain in the picture
Click to expand...
If you're using the Tv mode, and 24PF setting, the 48 Shutter speed is the "normal" setting for the film look in ordinary circumstances. The exposure setting then sets the aperture and gain in some combination. Barry Green wrote an article on Controlling Exposure on an HV20 that I had hoped would quid pro quo on the HF100,but they aren't the same cameras, but they are similar enough that the article gives you some starters.

Going up from 48 will give you a "Faster" shutter which can be cool for some effect shooting popular with some of the fast action movies today. Band of Brothers, Saving Priviate Ryan both used that type of thing so the particles of sand were clearly visible in the beach or in the snow.
From where ever you are in "automatic" mode and go to "exposure" you are locking your camera to zero and can then go to (-) to (+) by units of 1. What those units are baffle me. Likely a combo of f-stops and gain db. Read Barry's article for some insight as to what/how much. The spread is different based on the amount of light when the camera sees when you have your shutter speed set and punch the exposure setting.

=======================

The cadence of film isn't the only thing that gives video the film look; it's just the most obvious thing the user can influence. More subtle and more realistic selling features of video as film will actually lie in nearly everything else.

Video's contrast gives it away. I personally like contrasty images, most men do, nothing sexist about it. Men who set up their TVs will set them up with more contrast than women - women setup TVs to realistic colors, says volumes abouts us all; but film's palette of colors is significantly greater than video and has a lot less contrast. You can reduce it on the front end (literally) with a contrast reducing filter (Tiffen makes contrast filters) or in post with something like Magic Bullet or Nattress).

Using any HD format puts wide aspect on the table. While 16:9 is certainly more cinema like, as you know, cinema is gone to a different gauge, too. It's generally wider still.

Depth of field (DOF)a lot of attention, and it should. There's even a forum here dedicated to adapters. But I wish folks would put that it context as "depth of field control". To use an adapter for adapter's sake is kind of silly if it doesn't move the story to some end. You can just move the camera back a bit and use telephoto setting to some degree of success or even put a +4 diopter on for a few shots to achieve some control of DOF in some shots. It's not perfect, but in some cases, it can work. It's a $35 solution that provides, with some ingenuity, a $500 look instead of $3500 solution that provides, with some setup and cash, a $3500 look. (Whoever said that budgets don't count, didn't count their own money.)

The HF100/HF10 has a Custom settings feature for Detail, Brightness, Contrast, and Color Depth. Once set, these settings remain in the camera's memory and can be used to enhance imagery. There's only three steps, (-) - (0) - (+), but I've found them very nice for adding flavor to the pictures. The differences are markedly different. While it would be nice to have a memory to store them in, it isn't onerous to dial them up.

Taking the 24PF mode to progressive isn't too hard. I use two programs, either works very well. Procoder 3 is a pricey option and does a good job. TMPGEnc is $90 and does a great job, too. The latest version also transcodes MTS files from AVCHD to MPEG HDV TS stream files if you're hamstrung by the CODEC. I have a Quad core with Vegas Pro 8b and no problem with it. But if you do, and you're working on a budget, TMPGEnc will crunch AVCHD to 9bit 24P HDV MPEG TS you can edit easily on a lot of machines.

While not really finally, but for this post, if one wants their video to look like film, that means shooting video like a film - good lighting, well-thought-out scenes and continuity, zero use of zoom, limited to no use of hand-held camera work (that's a discussion for another time), and techniques based on film work.

I'm working on a larger, fuller article that has many specifics on this I hope to complete next week.

Enjoy your camera!


 
Last edited:
Thanks so much for the info so far guys.

Im definitely the type to want to be taught how to fish, not be handed a fish for a day.

Would love to hear more about the exposure settings from anyone who wants to join in.

(off to read this hv20 article)
 
Mike, wanted to say thanks for that article.
It put me right on track on a lot of things.

The chart (exposure bar) was very interesting to see.

Seems that if I stick my hand over the lens, forcing auto iris to go full open, then
put it in manual...

There is now a -11 to 0 bar
taking it all the way down to -11 seems to put it at
F1.8 / 48 shutter / 0 gain

Perfect!
I'll use the 35 adapter to stop down as needed.

Sucks ya gotta go through that process everytime you turn it off..but oh well ;)
 
gain

gain

Rippie said:
Mike, wanted to say thanks for that article.
It put me right on track on a lot of things.

The chart (exposure bar) was very interesting to see.

Seems that if I stick my hand over the lens, forcing auto iris to go full open, then
put it in manual...

There is now a -11 to 0 bar
taking it all the way down to -11 seems to put it at
F1.8 / 48 shutter / 0 gain

Perfect!
I'll use the 35 adapter to stop down as needed.

Sucks ya gotta go through that process everytime you turn it off..but oh well ;)
Click to expand...

That sounded really interesting so I tried it. However, contrary to what you said, it seems that gain is probably at the maximum to compensate for the darkness. Can you please clarify?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top