C100: overexpose or underexpose on WIDE DR ?

S

Shawnvfx

Well-known member
Hi,

I know its a dumb question,but,for Wide DR, I find out its always better to overexpose a little, and add shadow on post. the image quality is better and less noisy than underexposing it and add highlight in post.

for underexposed shots, I get so much noise in post!

But I just want to retain highlight detail as much as possible !

without lighting, or even fill light. for Run n gun, what do you guys suggest?

In WFM, is it better to keep details around 70-100 ? or 40-60 ?

In other words, when you are in rush, which one is a safer way ?
 
This seems to be a continuing question. I reminds me of when when the AF100 was launched and people were concerned with noise. Being that both cameras are AVCHD, I have a sneaky suspicion that it's the same issue going on here. First, what are you viewing your footage on? I bet most of the issue you are seeing is due to watching your footage on the computer. Not everyone has a broadcast monitor, but if you have say a Playstation 3 connected to a nice HDTV, put your card in the Playstation and go look at your footage and see if there is abundant noise. It's not the perfect solution, as a 10bit pro monitor would be ideal. But when the AF100 hit, I did this method through my playstation and after seeing that it was my computer making my footage noisy. After that, I didn't really worry about the noise on the computer.

Give it a try before you beat yourself up over noisy images....
 
That is a great suggestion! With all this talk about noise I haven't heard a single suggestion that it might be the computer monitor. Not that it's creating all the noise but it might be exacerbating the situation.
 
Shawnvfx said:
Hi, I know its a dumb question...
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Then this might be an appropriately dumb answer =)

But why not expose correctly? With Wide DR, there's no need to over compensate in any direction. Wide DR provides you with a nice highlight roll off using all the 12 stops, but before the roll off the gamma curve is basically good to go. Expose correctly, cut, export, done.
 
I'm with Andree on this one - I'm getting just what I want with exposing correctly with WDR on all but the most challenging of lighting conditions, and those are sort of cured by using C-log.

Having 'chased the dragon' on FS100 with endless trials and tribulations with highlight handling and colour balance, it's so nice to just have a sort of 'low, medium, high' approach with the C100, choice being down to a simple Dynamic Range within a given scene. Noise? It's there, but not always the enemy. Better than the EX1/3, and it protects shots from banding in the 8 bit world.

Yes, you may be able to cheat things by borrowing from the highlights to put your mids further away from the noise floor, but you also increase the chances of burning something out. 8 bit is incredibly fragile when you're pushing the DR this far.

Let's also look at the AVCHD compression system, which may do a lesser job than, say, ProRes HQ on a Ninja when presented with all that data. I have consecutive frames from a high gain situation that show all sorts of mess that I'd lay blame on the AVCHD codec - which, in normal well-lit and sanely shot situations does an absolutely brilliant job. It's just, when the grain hits the fan, it does tend to fall apart quickly.
 
MattDavis said:
I'm with Andree on this one - I'm getting just what I want with exposing correctly with WDR on all but the most challenging of lighting conditions, and those are sort of cured by using C-log.

Having 'chased the dragon' on FS100 with endless trials and tribulations with highlight handling and colour balance, it's so nice to just have a sort of 'low, medium, high' approach with the C100, choice being down to a simple Dynamic Range within a given scene. Noise? It's there, but not always the enemy. Better than the EX1/3, and it protects shots from banding in the 8 bit world.

Yes, you may be able to cheat things by borrowing from the highlights to put your mids further away from the noise floor, but you also increase the chances of burning something out. 8 bit is incredibly fragile when you're pushing the DR this far.

Let's also look at the AVCHD compression system, which may do a lesser job than, say, ProRes HQ on a Ninja when presented with all that data. I have consecutive frames from a high gain situation that show all sorts of mess that I'd lay blame on the AVCHD codec - which, in normal well-lit and sanely shot situations does an absolutely brilliant job. It's just, when the grain hits the fan, it does tend to fall apart quickly.
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the noise has more impact on web compression than the original image. That's why it's still a low end cam even for web
 
Tcap said:
Good to know I purchased a low end camera. Is it good for family videos then? :)
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Its probably the best and most appropriate professional camera for that, plenty of people on vimeo are using it for that purpose
 
RZE said:
Its probably the best and most appropriate professional camera for that, plenty of people on vimeo are using it for that purpose
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the only excuse for me to keep C100 is that small budget commercials, weddings, and events needs it and it is those events that actually feeds me and my family.

quantities of those keeps me busy in the year.

isnt that great ? :thumbsup:

I would love to own a Sony F55 or C500 But my talent and connections wont allow me to make the money back lol
 
squig said:
I wouldn't shoot cats with it!

But it is currently the front runner for a feature I'm shooting.
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Can you explain more about why you guys decided on the c100, my issue with the camera is the usable DR, much like the complaints of the OP, I find that the noise and detail in the darks of the c100 is more similar to a DSLR than a c300, with only about 8 total stops of usable DR if you want a clean image, the contrast needed on a feature may yield worse results than other cameras in the price range, i.e. black magic or f3 whose usable DR is around 10+. If you shoot corporate stuff or events then yea its a better camera, noise and detail doesn't matter, but if you'r going through a full post production workflow, limited DR and noise in a 8 bit file will not be that easy to work with.
 
Noise? I don't see no stinkin noise. Reason is I have shot with the canon XF series for awhile now. I understand how to go into the menus and set the C100/300 up. Go load your C100 footage up on a playstaion 3 (the sd card slot). View it on a decent consumer TV. You won't see any noise.
 
dustylense said:
Noise? I don't see no stinkin noise. Reason is I have shot with the canon XF series for awhile now. I understand how to go into the menus and set the C100/300 up. Go load your C100 footage up on a playstaion 3 (the sd card slot). View it on a decent consumer TV. You won't see any noise.
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I've been viewing on a Flanders Scientific CM170 Professional Monitor through a 10 bit signal from a Ultrastudio, I see noise at 850 ISO for anything more than 3 stops under exposing middle grey at 40 IRE after a black balance using a Atomos Samurai
 
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