C100: More noise than I was expecting, any thoughts?

S

sonofaresiii

Well-known member
edit: thanks guys! I removed the clip since it's not really ready for "release" and I just wanted some quick feedback. I got lots of great info from everyone, please feel free to continue discussing noise and noise removal while I test out some of the great information I got from everyone

Sample:

[redacted]


(you only need to watch a few seconds to catch the noise, it was a blown take anyway)

I don't remember exactly where I had the ISO for this one, maybe 640 but could've been 800 or 850 (never went past 850 on the shoot).

but either way, I'm seeing a lot more noise than I'd have expected (and more than I've experienced in similar settings). It's all very pleasant noise, considering, and I'm sure we can get it cleaned up easily in post so I'm not worried about it at all (the producer's happy regardless, so I'm happy), but I'd like to hear what your thoughts are.

I've only had the c100 about three months or so, so I don't have extensive field experience with it, but I haven't seen noise like this at these ISO settings before. Does this seem typical to you guys? Mostly seeing the noise in that green background, but a bit of it is coming through on the guy's blue shirt. (note that vimeo's compression isn't helping at all-- all those blocky artifacts aren't in the original, so do your best to see through them and just look at the noise)

The background is certainly underlit (which we wanted), but even still I wouldn't have expected so much noise. In similar situations, if I wanted less noise in the camera original, would I be better off dropping my ISO, or upping in-camera noise reduction?

Any other thoughts at what might be going on here?

Thanks guys.

edit: note that the caucasian subject on the left is clean as can be, who's a) fully lit and b) mostly red/pink/white. Seems like it could be an issue with pumping up in the green and blue channels? I dunno, you guys tell me.
 
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My guess on the background is it being underexposed -> causing the artifacts etc. I almost never shoot under 850 ISO (will use the NDs before going lower).
A saturated pic profile might crush some of the darks as well giving the compression some issues.
 
mhood said:
When did you last black balance?
Click to expand...


fair question, i did at the top of the shoot but this was a pick-up day so it may have been a while. I'll make sure it gets done at the top of every day and major location change in the future, thanks. Any other thoughts?
 
What profile are you using? What is your noise reduction setting? It doesn't look like WideDR or Log as it is quite saturated. Honestly, the noise looks fairly normal to me. The C100 in WideDR or a low contrast picture profile shows noise in the darks even under 850 without noise reduction. It's generally not a problem if you just plan to crush the blacks or set some noise reduction in camera, but the contrast is so high in that shot that it would look fairly underexposed if you drop the blacks much more. Just my opinion, though.
 
it was actually the widedr setting, no adjustments made. I was planning on doing NR in post anyway, but it surprised me with how much was there already.
 
First off, no one will study background noise except other DPs. It actually looks to me like the wall was painted that way, so you dodged a bullet. I see some in the guy's blue shirt and if an actor came onto set wearing such an over saturated, solid, primary color I'd ask if there were any alts, something that would mask any issue. I use Wide DR 100% of the time and am happy with it.


The question of noise on this forum, BB always comes up, I do it at the beginning of the day but some, and I believe the manual, say you have to do it every time you change WB but I find that hard to do, I change ISO constantly.

However, if you are happy with the original then this is probably Vimeo's issue so don't sweat it. Was that the real audio track?
 
If that was WideDr, than those were some extremely saturated and dark colors. This looks like my C100 footage at WideDR when it is highly saturated and fairly dark. This is actually my problem with WideDR. The blacks are lifted quite a bit in widedr and if you light for picture profile, you end up with noticeable noise in the blacks if you don't intend to crush the blacks a little. Also, the compression artifacts in highly saturated colors near black on the C100 become noticeable.
 
What do you mean "real" audio track? That's the scratch track from the camera, we had an on-set recordist as well booming and I believe he had them both laved.

And yeah, like I said I'm not "worried" about the noise, just curious as to why I was seeing it here when I don't usually under similar situations. I will add "No saturated/primary colors" to my list of wardrobe recommendations in the future (not like anyone cares about my recommendations anyway, ha! "But I really wanted to wear this shirt, it's my favorite!" Wardrobe seems to be the one place where I should have control, but always seem to have none)
 
cpreston said:
If that was WideDr, than those were some extremely saturated and dark colors. This looks like my C100 footage at WideDR when it is highly saturated and fairly dark. This is actually my problem with WideDR. The blacks are lifted quite a bit in widedr and if you light for picture profile, you end up with noticeable noise in the blacks if you don't intend to crush the blacks a little. Also, the compression artifacts in highly saturated colors near black on the C100 become noticeable.
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Fair enough, the compression artifacts are all vimeo, but I guess it's important to keep in mind. Thanks.
 
The footage looks pretty normal to me. Wide DR certainly shows more noise than other profiles though.

For sequences like this wherethe end product is dark for the sake of story I would recommend upping your ambient light significantly and dropping the ISO down as low as possible. This will shift the sensor's dynamic range to the shadows. Or just up your ambient and over expose by a 1/2 stop and bring down exposure in post. Those have been my tricks to getting really clean "dark" scenes.

No matter how sensitive cameras get, more light is still better.
 
It is a good way to make some test before you will use a new camera. Blue color has the largest amount of noise, it's a noise characteristic of camera (about +6dB).

The second part of this problem are dark places at scene, bright places have less noise than dark places. Dark blue parts of image is the worst scenario.

The third part of problem is gamma curve, if you will test WDR, cine1 and canon-log (on the same dark blue scene), 25p vs 25i mode, you will see a lot of differences at dark places.

Cine1 gamma has the least noise at black, WDR gamma at 25p with internal NR is ok, but 25i mode is much worse. Canon log needs big color corrections, it's better to use log with an external recorder. If you don't want to use cine1 and if you want WDR without lights than it is better use higher ISO - you will use "the good part of noise characteristic" (from black to white levels), you must to test this! Also an external recorder helps a lot.

I hope that this helps.
 
Check out this recommendation about the adverse effects that shooting below the native 850 can have on your image and dynamic range. They basically recommend never shooting below 850 and using NDs. Of course, that's pretty tough in bright situations since I've always thought the C100 could use an extra 2 or 3 stops of ND.

http://www.cinema5d.com/exposing-with-native-iso/
 
I'm curious why ISO 850 is always referred to as the native ISO for the C100? I know Canon recommends it as the base ISO for Canon Log, but the Canon chart that shows dynamic range at various ISOs for the C series cameras shows ISO 640 as 0dB and ISO 850 as 2.5dB gain. Wouldn't 0dB gain technically be the native ISO of the sensor? Or am I missing part of the equation?
 
er.... yeah. just so we're all on the same page here, that was totally raw footage from the camera, 100%. It's not edited, it's not been graded or corrected, no sound has been synced, it's not in its final form in any way and it was a blown take. It was purely an example of what I was talking about.
 
If it's not on your original, played back on a pro monitor, I would chalk it up to Vimeo's compression, which is a Black Art. 90% of the viewers will be watching the speaking role anyway. Viewing on my 15" MBP full screen I don't think it's "that bad". Unless I missed something, this was done on the internal codec, right? And what was the NR setting? Mine is at 2 based on posts from gurus here. And I'm sure you probably know, if it was an external recorder then the signal bypasses the C100's NR circuitry. In sum, I don't think it's something to be worried about but as I mentioned, I would have nixed the blue shirt unless there was no choice. It's wide areas of solid color (and dark backgrounds) where I notice noise in my work. And it's usually the editor mentioning it. The clients and viewers never notice such. Unless....this is for projection? If so, then I would be more tuned into the noise issue.

Best,

Ned
 
nedcam said:
If it's not on your original, played back on a pro monitor, I would chalk it up to Vimeo's compression, which is a Black Art. 90% of the viewers will be watching the speaking role anyway. Viewing on my 15" MBP full screen I don't think it's "that bad". Unless I missed something, this was done on the internal codec, right? And what was the NR setting? Mine is at 2 based on posts from gurus here. And I'm sure you probably know, if it was an external recorder then the signal bypasses the C100's NR circuitry. In sum, I don't think it's something to be worried about but as I mentioned, I would have nixed the blue shirt unless there was no choice. It's wide areas of solid color (and dark backgrounds) where I notice noise in my work. And it's usually the editor mentioning it. The clients and viewers never notice such. Unless....this is for projection? If so, then I would be more tuned into the noise issue.

Best,

Ned
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Like I said in my original comment, I'm not worried about it at all, just wanted to discuss and maybe learn some things (which I have, thanks again for the advice everyone).

The noise is in the original, and is actually more noticeable as noise-- the compression artifacts are all vimeo, and actually cover a lot of the noise (but I'd prefer the noise. Damn compression!)

Yep, internal codec (rewrapped with clipwrap but not transcoded). Shot on WideDR profile, no adjustments (including NR, which I assume default is set at zero. I certainly have the option of increasing it, part of the reason of starting this thread is to get some opinions on whether that was the best route or to look at alternate methods)

I had basically no wardrobe input on this one (someday... someday they're going to *listen* to me when I make wardrobe recommendations. but not today)

So yeah. I'm aware that not only can we get it all cleaned up in post, but also that the general audience isn't going to notice it... but *I* noticed it, and I wanted to talk about it a bit with you guys. Thanks again.
 
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