Low Light settings?

When i turn the mic off i get NO noise...AT ALL, check it out: go to menu>microphone>turn microphone off NOW>microphone OFF>OFF
Ok, not funny.
Bronxjragon, i enjoyed watching your park footage btw. Wjat are you adjusting the f stop to when you search for/lock exposure? Do you find exposure open at 5.6 or 8 then lock and then open to 1.4, or just lock exposure at 1.4? I've tried all the methods (kholi's , car3o's etc) and find that in low light switching to live view first and then locking exposure works better for me than locking out of live view. I set at 5.6 on a lighter area and then open to brighter noise free 1.4.(with 50mm 1.4 AI or f4 for the 28mm 2.8 AI). I would be interested just to know how you do it, thanks.
Car30 thanks for the info.
 
pveal said:
When i turn the mic off i get NO noise...AT ALL, check it out: go to menu>microphone>turn microphone off NOW>microphone OFF>OFF
Ok, not funny.
Bronxjragon, i enjoyed watching your park footage btw. Wjat are you adjusting the f stop to when you search for/lock exposure? Do you find exposure open at 5.6 or 8 then lock and then open to 1.4, or just lock exposure at 1.4? I've tried all the methods (kholi's , car3o's etc) and find that in low light switching to live view first and then locking exposure works better for me than locking out of live view. I set at 5.6 on a lighter area and then open to brighter noise free 1.4.(with 50mm 1.4 AI or f4 for the 28mm 2.8 AI). I would be interested just to know how you do it, thanks.
Car30 thanks for the info.
Click to expand...

i have an AF lens which means once i turn on live view, i cant change my exposure but i dont think thats the problem really. i guess its a matter of testing out in different lighting situations. thanks for the kudos on the park footage
 
Car3o said:
Curves dont' really do much in my opinion. The standard, neutral have been fair for me so far.
Click to expand...
but neutral is not a curve, it's a preset? in my tests curves have had a *tremendous* impact on the quality and look. as for the noise it's really not rocket science in low light. the shutter speed and aperture are already at the max exposure and the only thing left is the iso, aka gain, aka noise amplification, so the brighter you're trying to expose the image the more noise you get. the solution is to expose down, and it's *not* just to crush the blacks. using a curve like the excellent "white wedding" one (google it) helps lift the shadows and mids so that you can expose one full stop down and still get a bright image. using curves to lift the image is much better than higher iso which justs lifts the entire image, including the noise, and doing it to the raw data in camera is much better than after jpeg compression in post.

/matt
 
i guess when i put "my opinion", you take it upon yourself to try and correct my opinion. thanks for setting me straight. curve vs preset...once you save the curve it's now a preset. i've played with curves and i'll say again, my opinion, you really can't accomplish much more than the presets already saved in camera. i've lifted the saturation, brightened up the picture a bit and the results were no better than the presets. so matt, why don't you upload some footage of the tremendous impact curves. you could probably benefit from curves when taking pictures, but from my experience, curves aren't gonna do much for noise or the video...but, heck, what do i know. i just post opinions.

/car3o
 
I'm not dissing your opinion, i'm questioning whether you have actually tried the curves. If you have and still think it doesn't do much i simply have to strongly disagree. Why do you think this is a personal attack?!? If you think i'm responding to you more harshly maybe i just disagree with you more. :-) I have nothing against you and i hope that's mutual. /matt
 
So I played around with the d90 tonight for the first time like in a week and finally achieved clean, low light settings. Set it to aperture priority mode, f/1.8, -2.0 compensation I think, exposure locked when I viewed something half light and half dark then locked it down.

Blacks are a little too crushed, but I'll get it with experience I guess. Wish it could do beautiful low light like the 5d though, but this is a step. Encouraging stuff. Thanks again everyone. link here:
http://www.kingsbridgeproductions.com/LowLight.mov
 
Some recommend using positive EVF settings +1 to +2 to keep shutter speeds low (closer to the ideal 1/50th). I have done this, exposing the sensor to a brighter area before pushing AE-L to keep ISO lower.

Any thoughts?
 
bronxjragon said:
So I played around with the d90 tonight for the first time like in a week and finally achieved clean, low light settings. Set it to aperture priority mode, f/1.8, -2.0 compensation I think, exposure locked when I viewed something half light and half dark then locked it down.

Blacks are a little too crushed, but I'll get it with experience I guess. Wish it could do beautiful low light like the 5d though, but this is a step. Encouraging stuff. Thanks again everyone. link here:
http://www.kingsbridgeproductions.com/LowLight.mov
Click to expand...
So your D90's are no longer for sale?

I haven't had a chance to do any good low light work yet cause I'm still waiting for my 50mm f/1.4 to arrive......It's only taken a month......damn that pacific ocean, maybe some pirates are shooting with it. I shot some night footage @ f/2.8, pretty noisy but almost usable.
 
Car3o said:
squig i have some footage using 28 2.8 and there's no noise. you can check it out on vimeo.
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I've been thinking of selling the 2.8 and upgrading to the 2.0 28mm........Some noise doesn't bother me, I just want to capture as much light as possible. I'll be adding some noise in post to mask any compression artifacts as suggested by Zak.
 
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