Night Image

tony240sx

tony240sx

Well-known member
Ok so dont kill me because I have tried searching for this and my Barry Dvx book is on its way. When I tried shooting some footage outside at night with my dvx100a I got basically no image. I was on my street with only the street lights, and even if I stood right under them and tried to film something it was pretty much a black screen. I had the iris open of course and tried all the shutter speeds. I know these cameras are not so good in low light but is it that bad, where I would pretty much see nuthing. I watched the zombiefest winner TEXAS FORTUNE and there is a shot in the middle where the zombie escapes from the truck and is wondering down the street at night and you can see all the cars down the block and the character. Does anyone know how this can be done. Thanks alot.
 
lights.

I havent seen what you're talking about, however, to shoot at night, one needs much more intense lights than one would use to shoot even indoors during the day.

At night you want a strong backlight which really accentuates all of the edges and gievs everything a nice hilight.

Something like a 1K light or even 2 K. Ive done it with two 500Watt halogens even that isnt strong enough to get that nice rich glow.

Here is a still from LOTR just to give you an example. TONS OF LIGHT. Remember, that ilght looses its intensity the further from the source.

try to figure out where one of the lights are, its kind of obvious but you can just imagine how strong it is.

nazgul017.jpg



This one here probably had, simplified, two sources. One key and one backlight. The backlight looks about three times the intensity of the key light.
nightcamp003.jpg
 
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tony240sx said:
Ok so dont kill me because I have tried searching for this and my Barry Dvx book is on its way. When I tried shooting some footage outside at night with my dvx100a I got basically no image. I was on my street with only the street lights, and even if I stood right under them and tried to film something it was pretty much a black screen. I had the iris open of course and tried all the shutter speeds. I know these cameras are not so good in low light but is it that bad, where I would pretty much see nuthing. I watched the zombiefest winner TEXAS FORTUNE and there is a shot in the middle where the zombie escapes from the truck and is wondering down the street at night and you can see all the cars down the block and the character. Does anyone know how this can be done. Thanks alot.
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I'll bet you had your ND filter on. Make sure it's off, then try again.
 
I recorded in a cave this weekend and when I was close to the entrance I was surprised how much I could see when I reviewed the video on a TV. I'll try to post a few seconds of the video.
In the deep part of the cave it was dark and the flashlights barely showed up even with the gain on high.
No light = no picture.
 
i filmed default f1 at night with only a spotlight focusing on a artist . I was amazed by the quality of images filming in low light
 
The ND filter was definitly off. I could see some of my car that was directly under a street light but only with the gain all the way up which looks horrible. The only thing that showed up were lights in front of peoples doors and thats all. I dont expect to get great images at night with no lighting, but I thought the camera should pick up something especially down the street with street lights on.
 
You didn't mention anything about your gain settings so you might want to turn the gain up to 12db too, it may be a little noisy but it should help.
 
You didn't mention anything about your gain settings
Click to expand...

err he did...

only with the gain all the way up which looks horrible.
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:)

as stated you need to light the scene...going to repeat this quote again from a cinematographer "it takes a lot of light to make a scene look dark." one other thing that will give you a little more light is changing the shutter speed to 1/60 or 1/48 or 1/24...then again you're on F1 so whatever the first setting is. besides that more light...one of my associates has a light that can light up an entire block. it needs its own generator. you can't plug it in to a household outlet...you'll blow the house...the neighbors house...the guy down the street...

the best thign for you to do is study lighting.
 
Verify your scene settings as well. Maybe the master pedestal was set low and was crushing all the dark areas into black.
 
or as i use, two 500 watt work lights from home depot work great. But only within a 70 foot distance from them.

Where as a 4k or 2 k light, you could put that pretty much down the street and your good to go.
 
You should have been able to see some stuff, not a black screen...it sounds to me like something is wrong in either the Master Ped settings, or with the camera.
 
I think it was that master ped setting. I turned it down and it seemed to help indoors but I havent tried yet outside but I think it will help. WHats a good normal setting for that and how does changing the settings affect the picture quality? Dont worry my dvx book is on the way so I can really learn how to handle this thing.
 
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