Low Noise - What's your best workflow?

C

c3hammer

Well-known member
I've been testing picture profiles and workflow to determine what gives the lowest noise levels possible with my T3i.

Here's a few of my observations of late.

1. Technicolor Cinestyle is much noiser than Marvels Advanced 3.3 Picture Profile.
2. Boosting levels of an underexposed image in post adds more noise than shooting a higher ISO exposed properly.
3. ISO 640 and lower is the sweet spot when exposed properly.

On a side note I found that if you turn down the saturation a few clicks in Marvels 3.3 you don't get the plasticy skin tones as much.

Interested to hear what others are doing to keep noise in check on the ASP-C cams? I found that I really dislike the dancing red and green noise these things create when they out of control.

Are there any tricks to adjusting levels / brightness / gamma in post that produces less noise?

Cheers,
Pete
 
Chroma blur helps a lot with "dancing red and green noise".

As you said, shooting at higher ISO and darkening in post reduces noise. That's how ISO 640 actually works (it's ISO 800 darkened by 1/3-stop).

Don't shoot at more than ISO 1600. ISO 3200 isn't much cleaner, and ISO 6400 is software gain.

Follow Magic Lantern updates, I'll add some nice low-light capabilities soon.
 
Lift your shadows with fill where possible to lower your contrast and expose for your highlights. Then add the contrast back in in post. Try and shoot at 640 or under and use fast glass so that you can shoot between f2.5-f4.

Cheers!
 
"Follow Magic Lantern updates, I'll add some nice low-light capabilities soon." ---> me salivating
 
visugeek said:
Try and shoot at 640 or under and use fast glass so that you can shoot between f2.5-f4.

Cheers!
Click to expand...

This is all well and good but i know there are a lot of guys on here that don't have the money for fast lenses. I mostly shoot with a 3.5-63 tamron 18-270 because as a run and gun set up its great but its not the fastest. I often find myself pushing as high as 1250 in some places. I use the Red Giant denoiser in After Effects with great results in post. I have also played with Neat Video which i am fairly certain i will be buying after the holidays because it will allow me to do the same things in Premiere and its hardware accelerated.
 
Thanks fellas! Some good stuff here.

I have been able to match and even get better results with ISO 2500 than with boosting ISO 640 shots. It was crazy how much of a difference it makes to be bringing levels down rather than boosting in post. I had always thought that underexposing a tad was advantageous. Now I'm thoroughly convinced that you have to use the Histogram funtion of Magic Lantern to nail your shot on the top end with out clipping to get the best noise results for a given ISO.

Here's last nights test. The first half is ISO 2500 the second is ISO 640. Both with no noise reductions in post.
http://vimeo.com/34008779

I'll play with chroma blur and am looking forward to seeing the low light capabilities a1ex !!! Thanks

Cheers,
Pete
 
treynolds said:
This is all well and good but i know there are a lot of guys on here that don't have the money for fast lenses. I mostly shoot with a 3.5-63 tamron 18-270...
Click to expand...

Ouch - I salute ya. Many of those do-it-all lenses only excel at 5.6 or so.

I'd really really try to get an old-school 50mm 1.8 for tele shots and a 28mm 2.8 for "normal" (on an APS cam). Nikkor AIS, Canon's older mount, Pentax screw mount, Olympus OM - and an appropriate EOS adapter. You don't need an AF lens for video, and watching Ebay and KEH.com should find you stuff for under $100.

Seriously, I find I need to be at 2.8 often, I try for f4 if I'm not lighting the shot. There are some stellar lenses out there for super cheap. Just pick a brand and get the right adapter.
 
I will forewarn prospective products of plug-ins like NeatVideo. You have to be conservative with your noise profiling, as you can easily induce banding into the image, especially if you profile the noise in the shadows to low-mids. DSLR video is just too lossy.

Noise reduction, like color grading and film grain effects, should be subtle.
 
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