Noise Noise Noise!

Although grain is not much of a problem for me I think it's a bit unfair to compare these two footages in that they were photographed under different conditions and we don't even know which lens/stock/lab/telecine were used.

I've seen 16mm footage photographed in low light with way less grain than this one.

But again, I'm not worried about grain, actually I even like it since I'm more focused on making films with this camera and sometimes grain can even play a role in the story ("21 Grams", for example).

For the ones who are too worried about grain, I'll copy a paragraph from the magazine "American Cinematographer" on the making of Collateral (I hope there's no problem in doing that):

"In testing the F900, we found that some things looked great on the monitor at +3dB or +6dB, but when we made the film-out, those scenes picked up even more noise when projected on film on the big screen. Basically HD shooting has to do with signal-to-noise ratio", continues Cameron. "In film, photo-chemical magic takes place in the falloff and in the highlights, but HD reacts very differently ...once you start pushing the grain, you have to carefully monitor your signal-to-noise ratio. Our biggest concern was how to deal with the noise in scenes that show Tom and Jamie in the cab, and those scenes comprise about one-third of the movie. We discovered we had to increase the signal - meaning amount of light - on the actor's face to an acceptable IRE level, knowing that we'd later bring it down digitally with Power Windows in color correction before the film-out. What looked great to the eye, didn't necessarily translate into a good-looking close-up on the final film-out ..."

"... we had to over light the actors to reduce noise on their faces. On the monitor, it looked horrible and incredibly overlit. It was very hard to wrap my head around what we were doing, and it went against every instinct I have as cinematographer. It was a constant battle between what looked good on set and what would look good at the film-out every weekend"

So ... you see noise ? Light properly. Simple.
 
ropbo said:
Although grain is not much of a problem for me I think it's a bit unfair to compare these two footages in that they were photographed under different conditions and we don't even know which lens/stock/lab/telecine were used.
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Oh, it's not meant to be a "fair comparison" at all, of course. It's almost tongue-in-cheek.

Basically, I rented Marc Singer's excellent documentary "Dark Days", a triple-award winner at Sundance which was shot on B&W 16mm, and as soon as the screen came up I almost shouted "HOLY BLEEP, WHAT'S WITH THE GRAIN!?!?" I'd been so focused on this whole HVX noise controversy I'd forgotten what 16mm looks like. I mean seriously, I was like "people are complaining about the HVX noise? Seriously?"

So then I thought back to what I had on the shelf, and this old PSA-type thing I did for a nonprofit came to mind. It was shot on 16mm Fuji 500T six or seven years ago, and I just remembered it being pretty grainy. And -- yeah, it was.

So, it's Fuji 500T shot on a CP16 and Eclair NPR, transferred to DV on a Rank telecine. (and, it's about 1/4 as grainy as Dark Days was -- Marc was living among the homeless for that doc so he probalby used the most extraordinarily fast B&W stock he could lay hands on, and may have even pushed it in post I don't know). I was just surprised that I had something that was at least partly comparable on the HVX and on 16mm -- dark backgrounds, smoke in atmosphere, etc. And I thought the HVX looks absolutely noise-free in comparison.

So ... you see noise ? Light properly. Simple.
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Excellent quote! I agree completely -- and note, that was discussing the "noiseless" F900... :thumbsup:
 
Am Cin article brings up a question that's been on my mind re: dark scenes and noise.

When I shot film, esp 16mm I got in the habit of rating the film at a lower ASA rating than it was listed.- thus overexposing a half stop or more. This is very common in order to assure a thick negative so that blacks are dense and don't show noise.
Of course on Negative you don't have to worry about losing highlights so it is very safe.

Is this a good idea in video as well & esp on the HVX?
Of course you don't want to wash out highlights, but if everything is relatively dark and you expose the image brighter than intended and correct down in post will that reduce grain.

My guess is it will.

Unfortunately, common practice in video is to keep the DP out of post production, so I usually try to give as perfect exposure & color as possible on the original.
Often they screw it up anyway, but if you bring the director in on what you are doing, I suspect this would help.

What do you guys who do more post than I think.
 
That post a few up was right--

You guys need to just plan more.

Get the light setup you need and work through it.

This noise stuff needs to be addressed, I know; but it can also be alleviated with proper planning it seems.
 
When I did a recent short that would have a "nighttime" diner scene, I lit it just as I would have if it were broaddaylight. I shaped the light differently, but I used a lot of it. Then I controlled the exposure with ND filters and (gasp) -3 gain. I kept the aperture open for DOF. The rest of the look I achieved in post. It came out too clean, I added grain to the final footage. I came to doing this after many tests of my camera and different shooting options. It seems to be the best route for my equipment and skill set. I sort of figured this is what everyone did...

Matt
 
ropbo said:
So ... you see noise ? Light properly. Simple.
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That excerpt from American Cinematographer (which I also read with GREAT interest) demonstrated that Cameron REALLY understood VIDEO. Often, people accustomed to working in film tend to light to the monitor, and I've seen many an experienced film DP (but first-time video DP) either severely underlight (underexpose), or overlight (too much base and fill light) HD sets. Cameron's language, talking about "increasing the signal (light level)" and maintaining a proper IRE level is my kind of language. Although I didn't agree with every aesthetic choice in Collateral, I loved their overall aesthetic approach and their innovative use of the tools.
 
Unfortunately. this approach doesn't help when you are shooting in a natural but dark environment. That will put alot of stress on the HVX which is already slower than a DVX.
That's the trade off though.
 
Sorry but analog grain and digital noise are not the same... I did a film out of some noisy stuff for a project and it gets pretty nasty. Again Barry, with all due respect, you are really spinning too hard if you are trying to infer that the noise on an HVX somehow makes it film like.

After messing with the HVX for about a week I would say in most situations with decent light it has less noise than the DVX and people made some great stuff with the DVX.

Want to see some nasty digital noise? Check out these raw grabs I shot in a studio with almost NO light, had to use the Canon +30dB gain on the XL1s. Since there was almost no color I went ahead and desaturated it in camera. These are raw grabs with no effects... behold the nastiness! But that makes it look like 8mm film right ;)


ash =o)


PS I really like Dark Days

joe16.jpg


studio19.jpg


studio24.jpg


studio4.jpg


studio46.jpg


studio53.jpg


studio56.jpg
 
Haha... you are a funny man, Mr. Barry Green. :)

I could honestly tell in the first pass that all of the beginning clips were shot on film (as some others had as well); it just looks like 16mm, especially with the breathing in many of the shots. I will freely admit, however, that the HVX clip you used does look marvelous compared to the footage which preceded it. What may be shocking to the rest of the world (or not really, for anyone who knows me) is that I'm really not that big a fan of the aesthetic of film to begin with (I know, blasphemous...) and to me, the less grain/noise/whatever in the image, the more superior the picture is. That's just personal preference. This whole neo-trend of added/intentional grain for "artistic purposes" is silly and pretentious in my opinion, and personally, I don't care for it at all. I realize that mine is not a majority opinion, however, and that is perfectly fine. I will quietly enjoy my clean images on my own and everyone else can have their 28 Days Later.

I think what initially got me started on being very critical of the HVX footage was ironically not the noise, but the strange artifacting that was occuring. There is no question that in selected clips it's there - and it's not like any other kind of anomaly I've seen before. Because most of the clips that we've been able to download (essentially all of them for the PC users) have been compressed for the web, it has been difficult to determine what is really artifacting from the DVCPROHD codec and what is the result of any h.264 or .wmv conversions. I remember seeing the karate footage on Panasonic's 42" plasma at DV Expo, though, (and that was straight off of the DVCPROHD tape) and there were hoards of distracting artifacts present - way more than were acceptable to me. Jan later chalked it up to the codec being 8-bit like the rest of the codecs out there, but I still maintain that I've never run into anything that bad before - even from smaller cameras like the DVX. Fortunately, I haven't seen much of that kind of effect lately from more current footage that has been posted, but everything is so random and no one seems to know what settings they shot anything at, so it's difficult to get a handle on what is really going on.

All that being said, the noise I've seen from most of the clips has been acceptable - not really a step up from the technology they gave us three years ago, but acceptable - and I can't wait to put the HVX through its paces when it finally decides to show up at my door. If I've ever given you the impression otherwise, then I am sorry for that; I am 100% committed to buying an HVX for my own projects, and 95% sure that it's what I'm going to use to shoot my next short feature with in April. I think more than anything else, we're all just really excited about the camera, and with very, very few people actually being able to get their hands on one, all the rest of us can do in the meantime is stare at the 10 second clips we've been given and pick them apart into tiny little pieces. Hey, we're technology geeks; that's what we like to do. :)

Thanks for putting up this little example, though; even though it was somewhat tounge-in-cheek it did illustrate some good points, and although it didn't change my mind about anything (it confirmed a few things if nothing else), it is another good reminder that we're blessed to have the tools we have today. The coolest thing about technology is that it only continues to get better! :thumbsup:
 
yeah. i was shooting a bunch of stuffs in my place last night and the noise levels are fine. just like my old dvx. i really like this cam.
 
Low Light

Low Light

Has anyone attempted a shot with lamplight or candlelight?

I need to shoot a segment with a lantern, and I would like to shoot it with Practical light rather than faking it with a 1 or 2 K.

Thanks.
 
No. Well, the scene I previously described was originally to be candlelit and I couldn't do it without a lot of noise. I'm with Haakon, me no likee the noise. So that's why I over lit and then brought it down in post. I'll try and post samples tonight when I get home.

Matt
 
Lenilenapi said:
When I shot film, esp 16mm I got in the habit of rating the film at a lower ASA rating than it was listed.- thus overexposing a half stop or more. This is very common in order to assure a thick negative so that blacks are dense and don't show noise.
Of course on Negative you don't have to worry about losing highlights so it is very safe.
Click to expand...

Well, that also happens because your actual ASA rating is always a little less than it says in the film can. Because there is always some actual light loss from your lens and camera, in fact, when most lenses are saying f1.4, they are most definately f1.6 or so.

Doing a speed test with your lab shooting a grayscale at several different apertures and analizing it with a densitometer can show you that by overexposing your film by 1/3 of stop, or even 1/2, you are actually exposing it right.

Also, great post about Collateral. I'm always thinking about that and my best results noise-wise so far were with especially lit images and bringing them down in FCP.

We have to light in a different contrast ratio and find our own contrast in post. That's how I get by shooting video.

Cheers!
 
First of all thanks Barry I read some of your posts over the last few years and coming from a film backround I have learned a great deal of Technical info on here...The fact is that there is no magic red button on the the HVX...I've been lighting stes for 20 years and have seen alot of people make 35mm look like total SH!*...If you underexpose you will get noise or grain....I just inter cut DVX footage with someone elses 35 footage and mine looked WAY better...I should post that....My point is, you have learn to light to make anything look good....I think next time Panasonic should send out their first batch to professionals and eliminate all this noise crap...I love Panasonic products but they need to reconsider their marketing and recognize the power of these forums...Because people sure love to gripe regardless of how misinformed they are....
 
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