Sharpness/Mud in Low-light

C

crunchy

Well-known member
As everybody knows, GH1 might suffer from "muddy" footage in low-light areas. In order to measure sharpness at lower-light, the following video settings were tested:

a) STANDARD with all other settings (CONTRAST, SATURATION, SHARPNESS, NR) 0
b) SMOOTH with all other settings 0
c) SMOOTH with CONTRAST -2
d) SMOOTH with CONTRAST -2 and SATURATION -2
e) SMOOTH with CONTRAST -2, SATURATION -2 and NR -2

I experimented with one of my "dead" charts - diagonal one and use artificial light.

The results are given below (only part of frame grabs). It seems that switching from STANDARD to SMOOTH and, especially, changing NR from 0 to -2 results in increase of sharpness in lower-lit areas. Unfortunately, picture and file size limitations do not allow posting entire frame grabs.
 

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Cool. Thanks for that. I think the big factor is noise reduction. I’m guessing that there is obvious noise in the dark areas that the noise reduction smooths over a little too much. If this is the case then I’d rather have noise reduction completely off to manage it in post. I’m just glad we have an option to turn it all the way down thus preventing any mud issues.
 
Ian-T said:
If this is the case then I’d rather have noise reduction completely off to manage it in post. I’m just glad we have an option to turn it all the way down thus preventing any mud issues.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, as far as I can see, -2 value for NR does not mean that noise reduction is completely switched off. The picture is just slightly less filtered. Mud is still present, but less pronounced as before. And we know that usually there is no free lunch. So, probably, there will be more noise in the picture.
 
I have found that turning noise reduction to -2 when shooting night time scenes means i always get fairly nasty noise in dark areas even when shooting SMOOTH. So i'm guessing its a choice between mud and less noise OR sharpness, no mud and more noise.
 
Subjectively I have never been able to detect a difference in image quality between NR -2, -1, 0, +1 or +2. And I'm very much concerned about FPN.

The effect of all the other film settings (contrast, sharpness and saturation) are quite evident.

To my eyes, NOSTALGIC provides a significant boost to the shadow areas. It's almost like having a built-in fill light even for long shots.
 
nobbystylus said:
I have found that turning noise reduction to -2 when shooting night time scenes means i always get fairly nasty noise in dark areas even when shooting SMOOTH. So i'm guessing its a choice between mud and less noise OR sharpness, no mud and more noise.
Click to expand...
hmm so would you suggest shooting with NR -2 during lit, or daylight scenes to reduce mud, and then shoot with some NR during night to compromise, get mud but reduce the noise?
 
Homunculus said:
should I be on smooth or nostalgic then?
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This is really strange. I have done some additional experiments and, as expected, found out the following: Smooth and Nostalgic settings gave the highest dynamic range (from dark to bright) when used with NR=0 and NR=-2. Nostalgic was a bit better than smooth.

However, when I put the camera in manual mode (lens opening 5.6, speed 1/30s and ISO 320) and compared STANDARD, SMOOTH and NOSTALGIC settings with NR=-2 and CONTRAST=-2 it seemed to me that STANDARD showed the highest dynamic range. I give up!
 
crunchy said:
This is really strange. I have done some additional experiments and, as expected, found out the following: Smooth and Nostalgic settings gave the highest dynamic range (from dark to bright) when used with NR=0 and NR=-2. Nostalgic was a bit better than smooth.

However, when I put the camera in manual mode (lens opening 5.6, speed 1/30s and ISO 320) and compared STANDARD, SMOOTH and NOSTALGIC settings with NR=-2 and CONTRAST=-2 it seemed to me that STANDARD showed the highest dynamic range. I give up!
Click to expand...
damn.......
 
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