PX-270 and Black Noise

[ggrantly]

Hello Listers,

I think the 270 is a great cam for what I do, small-corporate. For me, I am happy with the color on the cam, it still has that Panny mojo and me coming from the predecessors. The only real concern with my images are having somewhat noisy blacks. More specifically blacks that are a little lighter than black-black, call it gray-black; think dull black plastic automotive trim. We aren't talking purple sparkles here, but these areas crawl around a bit more than I'd like. Seems like this color in particular, requires the exposure to be just perfect, often to the detriment of the subject of the frame. Thinking about crushing the blacks a bit more is fine with me as I prefer a slightly contrasty and a lightly saturated image.

I'm curious what others think about this? I'm wondering if I have improved this as much as I can. Do you have any secret sauce on this?

Grant

 

[Bruce Watson]

I'm wondering if I have improved this as much as I can. Do you have any secret sauce on this?

The laws of physics are the laws of physics. All cameras, digital and film, have problems in low light. Light starvation of a digital sensor is problematic. This is really only a problem for those who insist on either available light (sports) or in trying to capture their final look in-camera to avoid a color grading step. Really, if you're shooting by candle light you're almost guaranteed noisy blacks, desaturated colors, etc. -- all the symptoms of a light starved sensor.

The only cure is to throw some light in the shadows so the sensor has something to sense. Adjust the image inpost. If that means crushing your blacks, at least your newly crushed blacks will be nearly noiseless.

So, my "secret sauce" is to correctly expose the scene, from blacks to whites. And yes, I know the extra lights are a PITA to haul around and set up. But I have yet to find a way around the laws of physics. Not from a lack of effort.

 

[Bassman2003]

I don't know how much variation there is between cameras as mine are pretty close together in serial numbers. I never film above 6db and the camera is clean as a whistle. Cleanest Panasonic video camera I have ever used, especially in the blacks where older Panasonics were the worst. I don't know the secret sauce other than tweaking to my liking and I do not like crushed blacks. It is in there unless your unit is faulty.

 

[ggrantly]

Bruce thanks for the response. You are right that I prefer to bake my look. And further, in my market, I don't really have enough money-time to do grading or send work out for post. I'm not saying these jobs are amateur in nature, just that small corporate interviews and the like doesn't need much more than a good clean bake. For any lit scene, noise isn't a problem.

The particular scene in question is an auto parked in shaded full sunlight, so no lack of light but a high dynamic range; a few areas are full sun so if I iris up for the shadows, I blow out or have to engage the knee more than I want. The black plastic trim on the car, in partial shade, is as mentioned, is noisy. I am happy to crush the blacks a bit if needed. But achieving the maximum clean DR the cam can deliver without looking artificially bad is the goal. After that, I'll go to crushing. It is always a compromise isn't it.

So back to the secret sauce....

Grant

 

[Bruce Watson]

The particular scene in question is an auto parked in shaded full sunlight, so no lack of light but a high dynamic range; a few areas are full sun so if I iris up for the shadows, I blow out or have to engage the knee more than I want. The black plastic trim on the car, in partial shade, is as mentioned, is noisy.

That is peculiar. If you have light, you shouldn't have shadow noise. And a high dynamic range scene in sunlight should be a challenge, but not for shadow noise. That's interesting. It's not light starvation, so it shouldn't be the typical "photon shot noise" associated with pixels not capturing enough photons. Maybe it's amplifier noise from the sensor reading circuits? Maybe the signal processing in the camera is applying some level of dithering in the shadow areas? IDK. But you're right, it shouldn't be there.