7D Noise at 100 ISO; F 1.4

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etrust

Well-known member
Hi Guys,

I have a Sigma 1.4 and a 7D. I allway have much noise on dark areas. I tryed with all ISOs.

My test was: A candle in an dark room. It seems that the cam has difficulty to work in dark areas.

Is this a known issue or a dummy question?
 
What color profile are you using? Try setting the color profile to neutral and re-shoot.

How picky are you being? Are you hoping for 'zero' noise? That's simply not going to happen on *any* camera.

Minimize it in camera then treat in post with something like Neat Video.
 
People are too much concerned about lowlight,viewers dont care that much about noise in lowlight, i dont think that 7d is bad in dark areas ,dont go over iso 1250-1600 and this test with candle is weird,where in movies you have stuff lit by one candle only ?What you see is probably codec limitation and not so smooth transition between black and dark grey in shadows.
 
Personally, I think these cameras do amazing things if there's no black or shadow in a scene, you can practically go up to 800 with light colored objects and very exposed situations and it'll look great. The second there's a shadow or the color black, things go pretty haywire, and it doesn't seem to change much even at 100ISO if you don't have perfectionist settings. I don't really like the noise on the footage from the Canon's simply because it somehow looks too technological, not enough like soft film noise - also, the blacks have that weird color transition thing that even makes the native files look like blocky Youtube stuff.

Thing is though, with perfection, it seems things turn out alright. For example I was just doing some insane testing on a subject I was testing (a small trash can with a starkly white trashback, and a brown box and a black cabinet in the background) and I was getting pretty iffy results when I was just playing around (using contrast based picture styles, winging the exposure, ect ect) but when I buckled down and used a grey card in the right position for perfect exposure, and shot the video as flat as I could possibly get it (0 satuation, 0 contrast), the video looked superb at 30 shutter, 2.0 aperture, and 400ISO. There was almost no truly annoying noise on the black cabinet, 0% blockage, and even the noise on the brown box looked very smooth and film-like. I'm guessing that if you use any sort of contrast in black or dark areas, the small color transitions in the black will be blocky as all get-out in it's attempt to pick up the color changes, and if you shoot it flatter, it seems to smoothen it out as there's less stark color changes from what I'm guessing. All in all, it seems that the codec and video for these things are horrible, but you just gotta be perfectionist to make it look great.

Question is though, how in the world do you find the perfect exposure for a dark room with a candle? Its one thing to shoot flat, but another to find the perfect exposure for such an extreme condition!
 
etrust said:
I have a Sigma 1.4 and a 7D.

I allway have much noise on dark areas.

My test was: A candle in an dark room.

It seems that the cam has difficulty to work in dark areas.

Is this a known issue or a ***dummy question?***
Click to expand...

It's not necessarily a dummy question, but one that comes up over, and over, and over again.

Hollywood feature films are shot with camera costing $50k - $500k. They are MUCH better than your camera. They are bettier in low light (mostly), they are better in all other light as well. And yet Hollywood films have an entire department with dozens of people who's only job is to light films. Inside, outside, daytime, night time. It's all they do. And they bring lights in 18-wheeler trucks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of light. Nighttime scenes in Hollywood are so bright you nearly need sunglasses. And you guys want to light your scenes with a single candle and a $1500 camera.

There is nothing wrong with your camera. Add light, and your noise will disappear.
 
Search the threads. There is plenty of info on this already.

Keywords: Noise, low light, problems with noise, dark, how much light, what ISO to use
 
Hi Guys, thanks for the replies. I must say that a little bit noise is ok and the video see like more natural. But I'm speaking from very much noise on black areas using a fast prime lens. I played around with exposure and Iso and Picture Style. I can not accept the result. I will upload a test soon so that we have a situation point to disscuss.

And yes I'm using Neat Video and the tool can't help because it to much noise..

On the candle video I could only delete the noise using Levels, but the video becomes to dark than :=(
 
Did you watch the Zacuto shoot out videos? They have examples of lighting with one foot candle ;) This would be the best you can expect. After that, you should be adding more light to the scene that you are shooting (at least a couple of stops more light) and then darken down in post.
 
etrust said:
Hi Guys, thanks for the replies. I must say that a little bit noise is ok and the video see like more natural.
Click to expand...

Awesome, then add "noise" in post. But shoot cleanly.

etrust said:
But I'm speaking from very much noise on black areas using a fast prime lens.
Click to expand...

Fast prime lenses work very well when you have adequate light. They do not work when there is no light. And a candle = no light.

etrust said:
I played around with exposure and Iso and Picture Style. I can not accept the result.
Click to expand...

Then light your film.


etrust said:
I will upload a test soon so that we have a situation point to disscuss.
Click to expand...

Please don't. We have 1000 examples of terrible video from people who refuse to accept that you must light your films if you want them to be noise free. There is nothing you are going to show us in your example that we have not seen hundreds of times.

etrust said:
And yes I'm using Neat Video and the tool can't help because it to much noise..
Click to expand...

The fact that you need Neat video should tell you that you are doing it wrong. How many Hollywood video post productions do you think have a copy of Neat video on their systems?

etrust said:
On the candle video I could only delete the noise using Levels, but the video becomes to dark than :=(
Click to expand...

Light your film! I don't know how to say it any clearer than that.
 
for real man...a candle is not going to give u proper exposure. accept it or not...but that fact isnt going to change. light your scene.
 
a common method in the still world is to overexpose the shot and then properly expose the clip in premier. This way you get less noise in the black, but a good exposure in post. Don't know if it works without much light though.
 
Big budget films have so much lighting going on for each shot that to the naked eye it looks completely unnatural. But that's what makes the picture look so good. They light it appropriately, then set up the camera to accomodate for all the lighting (T stops, NDs, Polarizer etc) and then shoot. Films that aren't well lit usually look like garbage.
 
Hi Guys,

ok ok I will not upload my terrible test and try to give more light to my scene and try to reach the look I want.

On my last project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Be_UabDss I was trying to have a complete black background. But the result was terrible. We add then smoke. And the smoke was my salvation.

Have a nice wekeend!!
 
I have to disagree with the predominant suggestions in this thread. The principle here is the same as photography in dark rooms. You have to understand how your exposure meter works. It basically tries to set the exposure so that the scene will average out to 50% gray.

In a dark environment, this means you need to either manually underexpose (compared to the meter) or set your exposure compensation down - between 1.33 and 2.0 stops, depending on the scene. If you don't you'll overexpose and get noise.

Setting your ISO to 100 or 200 will help you attain clean results. Then, play with your aperture and other settings until the meter shows 1.33 to 2.0 stops negative exposure.

Here's an example I shot with my 7D. No noise at all- because I'm "underexposing" relative to the meter:
http://vimeo.com/9970524

I learned a lot by reading a friend's wedding photography book. The inverse principle is also true- if you're shooting a mostly white subject (wedding dress, snow scene, etc) you need to overexpose relative to the meter so that your whites don't turn out gray. That's just how the camera's exposure meter works.
 
Gavin - your clips do look very clean - but you're exposing for the candle...which is great if you're shooting a close up of a lit candle.
I believe the OP was talking about shooting a scene lit by a single candle, which led me to believe he wanted to shoot a subject being lit by a candle.
If you expose as you did a subject would be completely dark....

... which leads us back to additional lighting being needed to shoot a clean scene that appears to be lit by a single candle.

So, not disagreeing with what you're saying - but the question becomes 'what do you want to expose for?' - if you expose for the candle itself, then your image will be much cleaner, but everything else will fall to darkness.

etrust said:
Hi Guys,

ok ok I will not upload my terrible test and try to give more light to my scene and try to reach the look I want.

On my last project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Be_UabDss I was trying to have a complete black background. But the result was terrible. We add then smoke. And the smoke was my salvation.

Have a nice wekeend!!
Click to expand...

By the way etrust - your video is set to private so it can't be viewed.
 
PerroneFord said:
It's not necessarily a dummy question, but one that comes up over, and over, and over again.

Hollywood feature films are shot with camera costing $50k - $500k. They are MUCH better than your camera. They are bettier in low light (mostly), they are better in all other light as well. And yet Hollywood films have an entire department with dozens of people who's only job is to light films. Inside, outside, daytime, night time. It's all they do. And they bring lights in 18-wheeler trucks. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of light. Nighttime scenes in Hollywood are so bright you nearly need sunglasses. And you guys want to light your scenes with a single candle and a $1500 camera.

There is nothing wrong with your camera. Add light, and your noise will disappear.
Click to expand...



+1... this is so true.. next time you see a scene thats at night on the street or in the woods, Pay close attention to how well light those trees are and How Shiney Blue the Street behind the subject look. They HAVE tons of lights, ballons lights the list goes on.. Night in a film is never DARK.
 
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