Need Help - Tons of motion blur on very minimal movement Red MX footage

J

Jungle Media

Don't Stalk Member
Hey guys, I shot a music video on Saturday on my Red MX and for the first time experienced a problem with motion blur.

There is NOT extensive motion.. I realize with a lot of big movements, blur is inevitable.. but even on my close up shots of the singers face, just him simply moving his head side to side goes blurry / smeary out of focus, whatever you want to call it.

I shot a bunch of stuff in 2k 48 frames, and that does not have the problem. However all of the 4K 24 fps footage, whether it is wide, medium or close up, has this motion blur problem.

I am told by my camera crew ( i was director ) that we used the exact same settings we always have in the past and they are stumped as to why this happened.

Any ideas as to what could have caused this, and secondly, if there's ANY way to fix it at all?

I've attached a picture example of a close up, just so you know it's minimal movement...when he's basically STILL, the picture is perfect.

blur1.png
 
Looks like the shutter speed was too low- maybe the lenses were too slow, DP ran out of light... Might just have to live with that...

Noah
 
NoahK said:
Looks like the shutter speed was too low- maybe the lenses were too slow, DP ran out of light... Might just have to live with that...

Noah
Click to expand...

Noah, according to the 1st AC: "The Shutter speed was set at 1/48 which is normal for 24 fps. At the beginning we bumped it to 1/96 which would make things crisper, but the 1/48 shouldn't be so blurry as to make it unusable or even noticeable."

He says it was either 1/48 or 1/96 the entire shoot.

Could not be a lighting issue, we had a tonnnnnnn of lights man.. I'm not a DP but we really went all out on the lighting.
 
Exactly,

What does it say for:

ISO
Aperture
Shutter Speed
ETC.


Just copy and paste as much stuff as you can here.
 
sorry I am googling as fast as I can here but can't view the shutter speed... the only things I can see in Redcine or redalert are: Kelvin 5100, Tint 0, ISO 800, FLUT CONTROL 0, Shadow 0, Contrast 0, Brightness 0, Exposure 0

If someone can tell me where to view the shutter speed / aperture etc i will definitely post it.. otherwise I will continue trying to figure it out...
 
You may not have it. Lens data doesn't always make it depending on the lens used. But the ISO speaks volumes to me as I am sure it does to NoahK as well. I have no idea in the world why they were on ISO 800 with as slow a shutter as this. You can see he's getting hit with at least two hard lights. You'd have to imagine they are at least 1Ks. 2Kw of light on anyone with an 800 ISO in a closeup, should light them up like daylight. The lens would have to have been WAY stopped down to get a shutter speed slow enough to cause this blur.

Noah, I'm all ears if you have other ideas man. But this looks like textbook 360 degree shutter stuff to me.

5100K also strikes me as somewhat odd unless they had a mix of Daylight and Tungsten sources. The skin tone looks reasonable so it can't be too far off the mark.
 
no it's a white cyc that we painted purple for the video.

maybe i should share some wide shots too that have the same problem.. but are you saying that changing the ISO could fix it? because i can change ISO settings in redcine...
 

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No, I am not saying that changing the ISO can fix it. This is not something that can be fixed in post. This is a re-shoot.

What I am saying about ISO is that usually, most people try not to shoot a RED above 320 ISO. 500 in a REAL crunch. Pushing it to 800 means they were WAY short for light. So that number screams out that something was amiss. Looking at the shot, we can see that the subject had light directly on them. So there was probably adequate light. So we've accounted for the fact that there was plenty light, but yet a high ISO was still chosen. There are only two other factors in play. One is shutter speed, the other is f-stop on the lens. The motion blur indicates that a very slow shutter speed was chosen. This is also something you would do if you didn't have enough light. But again, the subject had 2 lights directly on him, AND an obscenely high ISO was chosen as well.

The only missing piece is the lens f-stop which we don't have information for. But basic photography dictates that if the lens were set for any common setting, this shot would be totally blown out. So the aperture must have been set very small, which would necessitate using a high ISO and a slow shutter to make a proper exposure.

This is beyond a rookie mistake. It's photography 101. I can hardly fathom how it would be made by anyone remotely familiar with capturing images in a camera. Shooting onto a cyc, depth is of no concern, so you select best ISO (Maybe 100 or 200 in this case), select a shutter angle (180 or 120 in this case), and select an aperture to get the exposure level you want. Done.

This should never happen on any kind of professional shoot. Just shouldn't happen.
 
before my head explodes i'm going to share this info with my dp and get back to you. a re-shoot... yeah.... probably not possible...

thank you for this information man..... *sigh*
 
Watch this...

http://vimeo.com/16766232

That is 1080/24p, 1/48 shutter, indoors, single window, single desk lamp, and NO movie lights at all. ISO for this shot is likely 320 or thereabouts. If you can't get this out of a RED something is very very wrong. I shot that on an original EX1.

Here is another 1080/24p shoot with a LOT more movement. Same camera.

http://vimeo.com/17042531

You should be seeing results at LEAST this good if not significantly better. My camera cost 1/5 what a RED MX does, and I am a DP/Editor, not a Camera-Op... and I was working alone on these.
 
Ok, talked to my dp/camera operator. I got him to look at this thread. He says you would be right about the 800 ISO if it was a Red One, but it was a RED MX and with the new MX sensor it should be native 800.

I also found the camera reports.

Shutter speed is always either 1/48 or 1/96
ISO is always 800

For the Stop, I have things like 4, 5.6, 5.6 2/3, 4 2/3

If I pick a specific shot for you that is really bad, like the close up one in the first post of this thread, these are all the details:

Lens - 100
Stop - 4
No Dolly
Shutter - 1/48
ISO - 800
FPS - 24

Does this make any difference to your conclusions?
 
PerroneFord said:
What I am saying about ISO is that usually, most people try not to shoot a RED above 320 ISO. 500 in a REAL crunch. Pushing it to 800 means they were WAY short for light. So that number screams out that something was amiss.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that with the R1-M sensor, you really don't want to be pushing it over 320, rarely over 500, only in extreme circumstances, but on the R1-MX sensor, 500ISO and even 800ISO is what most DP's have rated the new sensor at.
I agree with you on every point you have made except for the fact that because it was shot at 800ISO, there was something amiss.

Cheers,
Peter Mosiman
 
k so if the ISO wasnt the problem, and 1/48 and 1/96 are normal shutter speeds, what exactly was the mistake?

or are we suspecting that what's written in the camera reports was not correct?
 
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