Shooting in low light place

L

Lor

Well-known member
Will someone give me some settings or practical ways to shoot in low light environment? I've been invited to shoot a concert/party and people like to dim the light down quite a bit. What are the max gain that I can crank up before the footage is no good?
 
The EX is king of HD lowlight sub-$10K. So if you're shooting in dim lighting conditions it really is best case scenario.

With that being said, how much noise is acceptable to you? For me 18dB is acceptable if it means I have a good exposure and am not allowed to use an on-camera light.

The most sensitive mode is 720/24p with the shutter off. Gamma set to CINE or STD4. Noisey but sensitive!

When I shoot weddings I normally use an on-camera light though at receptions. If the bride and groom don't want it on I warn them of the camera noise and they usually would rather have that. Plus it's in the contract about gain causing noise in low-light....LOL!

Anyway good luck and shoot some test footage if possible to find out what is an acceptable gain setting for you.
 
i agree with much of what adam just posted except my max would probably be 12db gain. if your going to shoot at +18 and "still" not feed enough light to the sensor then it will be less than pleasing to me.

24p @ 1/48 or 1/24th if there isnt a lot of motion. if your on a tripod for most of the time even 1/24th can be acceptable to me. if your bouncing around then its too sloppy IMO.

another thing would be to shoot from a closer vantage point so you can utilize your lenses more "open aperture of f 1.9" rather than f2.8 when zoomed in .

for me there is definitely a point where if the people want the dimmest atmosphere and wont compromise and kick it up a little for you then they really dont want video too much. if its a memento for a friend and just a favor then they would be happy to get probably anything.

there is a point where something like a 5DmkII will comfortably take over where the EX1 will stop. unfortunately a DSLR isnt the best for a candid run and gun IMO but they do shoot nice in real low light.

david
www.davidprobst.com
 
Thanks for the response. I may have to try some of those settings and see if it is within my acceptable range.
 
If there are spotlights on a band on stage, no gain is ever needed. Just because the majority of the frame is dark does not mean it's time to raise the gain--because you'll only blow the highlights and it will look awful. I still shoot -3dB and use cine gammas with a bump up in the black gamma if I need to pull detail out of the shadows. Gain is for when you're shooting after dusk in the woods with no point light sources in the frame.
 
basspig said:
If there are spotlights on a band on stage, no gain is ever needed. Just because the majority of the frame is dark does not mean it's time to raise the gain--because you'll only blow the highlights and it will look awful. I still shoot -3dB and use cine gammas with a bump up in the black gamma if I need to pull detail out of the shadows. Gain is for when you're shooting after dusk in the woods with no point light sources in the frame.
Click to expand...

That's a good point. You are saying I change the cine gammas in the EX1 versus post, correct?
 
Yes, I find that the cine gammas provide better highlights handling, thus offer more dynamic range in-camera. In a lighting-adverse situation like stage nightclub where the dominant light is point lights surrounded by relative black, one needs to open the lens up a bit and use cine gammas to gently compress the highlights, rather than allow a hard clip with std gammas, which would look pretty bad.
A lot of people think they need to push the gain, and they end up with terribly-blown highlights, (worse with gelled spotlighting in strong primary colors), ghastly facial rendering and noise in the black areas.
In this case, DON'T TRUST THE LCD DISPLAY! It always looks too dark and every time I fall into the trap of trusting it, I end up with footage that's overexposed. Zebras and histogram are the only reliable indicators. Trust those. Darker, more saturated blacks will also give the picture more pop and punch, and the saturated colors from gelled lights will be less prone to funny colors due to clipping in one of the RGB channels.
 
Turning off the shutter is great. In my home with one 40 watt bulb from a lamp, I can get a nice image at 720p30, shutter off, +6db gain. It all depends on the situation. You can always add gain. Also I find that things look dark in my LCD, but come out fine upon capture. I have turned up my LCD backlight quite a bit, but it still looks darker than the real image on my calibrated work monitor.
 
The EX's LCD has very poor contrast/black levels though. It's difficult to see shadow details because everything disappears into a sea of dark gray--there's no black unless the camera is turned off.
Shutter off is my way of shooting in indoor subdued lighting. I manage to avoid gain, unless I'm shooting outdoors in dim twilight, or aiming into a dark corner.

I found something interesting about the noise response in these cameras while doing some timelapse with the EX3.. if I use the dial to slow down the frame rate, although the exposure seems funky because it doesn't follow the current BASE frame rate's duration, instead using a shutter speed of 1 second for 1 fps undercrank, requiring full ND filtering and apertures around F11, the picture is MUCH freer of noise than when I use interval recording and record 1/24th second shutter speeds, at 1 fps undercrank. I shot two clips of cloud movements, one with the knob on the EX3 and one by using my traditional method. When I viewed both clips, the undercranked via the knob was very clean, while the clip shot with interval record was grainy looking.
I've noticed on a number of occasions that when shooting cloudy, mostly overcast skies, the EX seems to produce a lot of grain, almost as if it were at +18dB gain, yet it's at -3dB. Certain ranges of the gray scale seem to be noisy in this manner. I have to do more experiments to find out what exactly is going on, but I suspect that EX is applying gain per pixel to some portions of the image, based on gamma curves, though I can't substantiate this yet. Why it's cleaner with long shutter speed and tiny aperture + ND2, than with larger aperture in interval record is a mystery I'd like to solve.
 
Many thanks for the all the helpful tips. Okay, so let me recap to see if I understand this correctly.

1. Set the gain to -3 to 6 at max
2. shut off the shutter speed
3. bump up the blacks on the cine gammas

Okay, so if I turned off the shutter, will I get blurry images? Most of the time, the camera will be on a tripod.
 
Chadfish said:
Turning off the shutter is great. In my home with one 40 watt bulb from a lamp, I can get a nice image at 720p30, shutter off, +6db gain. It all depends on the situation. You can always add gain. Also I find that things look dark in my LCD, but come out fine upon capture. I have turned up my LCD backlight quite a bit, but it still looks darker than the real image on my calibrated work monitor.
Click to expand...
Okay, this may be a dumb question but, how do I turn off the shutter? I'm shooting at 1920x1080 @24p. The shutter speed is 1/48. There isn't an option that says shutter off.
 
basspig said:
Yes, I find that the cine gammas provide better highlights handling, thus offer more dynamic range in-camera. In a lighting-adverse situation like stage nightclub where the dominant light is point lights surrounded by relative black, one needs to open the lens up a bit and use cine gammas to gently compress the highlights, rather than allow a hard clip with std gammas, which would look pretty bad.
A lot of people think they need to push the gain, and they end up with terribly-blown highlights, (worse with gelled spotlighting in strong primary colors), ghastly facial rendering and noise in the black areas.
In this case, DON'T TRUST THE LCD DISPLAY! It always looks too dark and every time I fall into the trap of trusting it, I end up with footage that's overexposed. Zebras and histogram are the only reliable indicators. Trust those. Darker, more saturated blacks will also give the picture more pop and punch, and the saturated colors from gelled lights will be less prone to funny colors due to clipping in one of the RGB channels.
Click to expand...

What are your recommendation settings for cine gammas and blacks?
 
Lor said:
Okay, so if I turned off the shutter, will I get blurry images? Most of the time, the camera will be on a tripod.
Click to expand...

Y E S.

Beware of the "Public Enemies" effect.

With the camera on a tripod, if a subject moves around your frame, you will get a very nasty blur effect. Just run some simple tests and you will see what I mean.
 
Lor said:
Okay, this may be a dumb question but, how do I turn off the shutter? I'm shooting at 1920x1080 @24p. The shutter speed is 1/48. There isn't an option that says shutter off.
Click to expand...

As Basspig said Lor, at the front of the camera, under the lens, there is a switch. I leave shutter on all the time unless I need that extra bit of light. Unless you are doing something fast like sports, I don't see any blurriness.
 
Thank you. I'll try to look for it tonight.

So, what are some recommendations on setting blacks and gammas for dim lighting situations?
 
I am coming from a pd 170 back ground now to ex1. I had a good understanding with my pd170 about trusting the zebra lines on my lcd, But with the ex1 if i switch the camera to auto iris to let it find the right level and then back to manual which i did on the pd170 al lot, the camera goes to a level that i would consider to be too dark. It has completely thrown me now and i am always a bit worried when i get back in post to see the footage.
 
Thank you for all your responses. The storm has passed. From looking at the LCD screen, I don't think it's that bad. I'll have to look at the actual footage when I loaded into my NLE. However, the place was quite well lit...it's a bit dim but not too bad. However, many thanks for all your responses with tips. I will need it in the future with a sub-par lit room.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top