Tips on shooting in the dark

M

Moath

Member
I tried last night to film @ night, and I honestly expected the shots to be brighter, anyways my lens can not go under f3.5, do i need to get a lens that goes up to f1.8?

Some shots looked fine, some i had to up the iso and get a bit of grains, are there general rules i need to follow or general advice?
 
1.8 is OK but in my experience you need more like a 1.2 or 1.4 on the 7d if you want to avoid a lot of noise
 
Moath said:
I tried last night to film @ night, and I honestly expected the shots to be brighter, anyways my lens can not go under f3.5, do i need to get a lens that goes up to f1.8?

Some shots looked fine, some i had to up the iso and get a bit of grains, are there general rules i need to follow or general advice?
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No, you don't need to get a lens that goes to 1.8. You need to take some time and learn about exposure. There are forumulas to learn what your exposure should be for certain light levels. But to use them, you need to actually know how much light you have to work with. So you could go out and buy a $10,000 35mm F1.0 lens, and if you don't have enough light, it's still not going to work. I suggest you get yourself a basic light meter, then refer to an exposure chart such as this one:

http://www.panavision.co.nz/main/kbase/reference/tbleExposure.asp
 
Why can't the 7D be used as a light meter? Why can't you ask the camera to automatically pick a good ISO based on a given shutter speed and exposure and adjust the exposure to achieve the desired ISO? What would be the procedure for doing something with the camera to get you in the ballpark as opposed to a light meter that many of we vidiots don't have?
 
mhood said:
Why can't the 7D be used as a light meter?
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Because it doesn't contain the functions to do so.

mhood said:
Why can't you ask the camera to automatically pick a good ISO based on a given shutter speed and exposure and adjust the exposure to achieve the desired ISO?
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This is backwards. In shooting movies, YOU should be picking the ISO and the shutter speed should be fixed. The only variables should be F-Stop. Even if the camera COULD adjust it's ISO on the fly, it would be doing it while you're filming. So if you have a subject walking into and out of shadow, your exposure would be changing as either you or the subject is moving, or both. You don't want ANY of this changing while you're recording.


mhood said:
What would be the procedure for doing something with the camera to get you in the ballpark as opposed to a light meter that many of we vidiots don't have?
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You shoot tests. The problem is, since you don't have any accurate way of actually KNOWING how much light you have, all the tests would be invalid. So you either need a way to hold a steady light level so you can test, or you need a way to measure light levels accurately. Unfortunately, you've got neither. You purchased a camera without those abilities. Thus the need for a light meter.

So I pose you this question. What is wrong with getting yourself a light meter? It's a basic tool that will allow you to do amazing things with the camera, and get your exposures correct. Compared to purchasing a calibrated monitor, a waveform monitor, or some other such tool, it's a bargain.

I'll pose you another question. Why do you think the Hollywood big wigs bring in half a million dollars worth of lighting, shoot on quarter million dollar cameras, but still have a guy with a $500 light meter checking every shot?
 
If the 7D doesn't measure the light it sees in a shot, how does it know to pop the flash? Yea, I must not have worded my question very well. I understand that my shutter speed will be fixed (1/60 usually) and that ISO can be varied as it relates to different F-stops...at least I think I understand that.

Can you vary the F-stop and let the 7D automatically pick the proper ISO given a fixed shutter speed? If you set the F-stop to 8 and the ISO goes to 6400 and you think that's awfully high for the ISO, can you bring the F-stop down to 2.8 to get to 320...1.8 to get to 160...?

I'm not interested in the Hollywood paradigm and don't share your admiration/infatuation. I'm interested in using my new 7D in the best ways I can without having to spend more on a light meter than I did my lens or contacting the union. It's a brave new world and I'm hunting new ways of dealing with it.
 
- I have the same shitty 3.5 kit lens. The problem is that the grain caused by high ISO is made even worse by a narrower iris. A faster lens would give you clearer pictures.

- I don't think you can give the 7D two exposure settings and have it calculate the third. I'm still reading the manual, but I'm pretty sure you can assign it an f-stop in Av mode or a shutter speed in Tv mode.

- The AE lock will let you use one of the automatic exposure settings without having it jockey up and down during your shot.
 
k, lock the shutter speed on 1/60...play with F-stop to see its effect on ISO. When you get an ISO you like using the camera to automatically read the light in the scene, then jump into manual and set the F-stop and ISO there being confident that you are at least close on exposure. Might that work?

It was so much easier with a typical camcorder. Auto exposure and a couple of gain boost levels when there wasn't enough light...zebras to show you the hot spots. I've shot video for a couple of decades now and never once owned a light meter.
 
mhood said:
If the 7D doesn't measure the light it sees in a shot, how does it know to pop the flash? Yea, I must not have worded my question very well. I understand that my shutter speed will be fixed (1/60 usually) and that ISO can be varied as it relates to different F-stops...at least I think I understand that.
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It has a threshold of light/dark of which it can do this. But I don't believe it has an "auto-exposure" mode. And no, you didn't word your question badly, the question you asked makes no sense from a photographic perspective. Essentialy, you don't WANT to adjust ISO. You simply want to use the slowest ISO you possibly can at all times. That keeps noise and grain to a minimum. If ISO 320 will work if you open the lens to F1.4, but you have a 2.8 lens, then you go to ISO 640, and open the lens as wide as it will go. The ISO and the F-Stop have a reciprocal relationship.

mhood said:
Can you vary the F-stop and let the 7D automatically pick the proper ISO given a fixed shutter speed? If you set the F-stop to 8 and the ISO goes to 6400 and you think that's awfully high for the ISO, can you bring the F-stop down to 2.8 to get to 320...1.8 to get to 160...?
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Can you vary the F-Stop, and have the 7D pick the ISO. I doubt it, as no one would want to operate the camera that way. It would make FAR more sense to select the ISO and have the camera vary the F-Stop, and that is something I believe the camera can do. I don't know for sure because I've only shot with the 5D, and only in full manual mode. I'd never let the camera make those choices for me.

A doubling of the ISO 320 to 640 for example, would require a halving of the F-Stop, say F4 to F8. To get from ISO 6400 to ISO 160 would be 5.33 stops. To get 5 stops from F8, would be F0.25, so impossible.

mhood said:
I'm not interested in the Hollywood paradigm and don't share your admiration/infatuation. I'm interested in using my new 7D in the best ways I can without having to spend more on a light meter than I did my lens or contacting the union. It's a brave new world and I'm hunting new ways of dealing with it.
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I know, many are uninterested in how Hollywood does things. However, there are fundamentals of photography that hold no matter whether you are Steven Spielberg, or Steven Jones. If you are unwilling to buy a light meter, and apparently unwilling to buy a camera that can serve as one, then your best option is to buy the fastest lenses you can afford and hope for the best.

It's a brave new world where we want the camera to do things automatically, and make perfect images... I know, I know. And us old fashioned guys with light meters and monitors seem out of date.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge about the automatic features of the 7D will come along and give you the answers you want. I'm sorry, I only know the old fashioned ways to expose correctly. Fortunately for me, they hold up on every video and still camera ever made since they rely on basic physics and math.
 
PerroneFord said:
It would make FAR more sense to select the ISO and have the camera vary the F-Stop, and that is something I believe the camera can do..
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k then...can you lock shutter on 1/60, select your ISO and have the camera vary the F-Stop to show you the reading you can select in Manual Mode to get you in the ballpark?

And by varying your F-Stop, don't you vary your DOF? When some have said ISO 640 and 320 are as clean as 100, why wouldn't you want to vary your ISO to a given F-Stop and shutter speed?

Oh yea, my 12 year old Granddaughter grabs my D90 and takes wonderful stills using only the Auto setting.
 
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I worded my response weird. What I should have pointed out is this:

Av mode = you pick f-stop; camera decides ISO and shutter speed.
Tv mode = you pick shutter speed; camera decides ISO and f-stop.
 
mhood said:
k, lock the shutter speed on 1/60...play with F-stop to see its effect on ISO. When you get an ISO you like using the camera to automatically read the light in the scene, then jump into manual and set the F-stop and ISO there being confident that you are at least close on exposure. Might that work?
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When eyeballing with the 5D, we set the F-Stop wide open, and dialed through the ISO to get what we wanted. That took some practice as the LCD is HUGELY inaccurate. I'd say it read 2 stops darker than what the footage actually was.

mhood said:
It was so much easier with a typical camcorder. Auto exposure and a couple of gain boost levels when there wasn't enough light...zebras to show you the hot spots. I've shot video for a couple of decades now and never once owned a light meter.
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You didn't need it because A. you shot on automatic mode and B. True videocameras are designed to function as light meters. Honestly, still cameras are two, but the 5D/7D seem to have ommited much of the useful light meter/light monitor functions. Thus the need to treat shooting with them more like shooting film, and less like shooting a video camera.
 
Kreutzer said:
I worded my response weird. What I should have pointed out is this:

Av mode = you pick f-stop; camera decides ISO and shutter speed.
Tv mode = you pick shutter speed; camera decides ISO and f-stop.
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So, with option A, you lose the ability to shoot "film like" shutter speeds, and with option B, you lose the option to get the DOF that everyone is buying the camera for in the first place.

So the answer is to shoot full manual. But then you need to actually KNOW how to get your exposure correct without camera assistance. With film stills, the ISO was essentially locked. So TV mode would let you pick the shutter speed, while the camera adjusted the F-Stop, and in AV mode, you picked the aperature and the camera adjusted the shutter.

Having the camera pick 2 of the three variables essentially will lead to a mess.
 
Its funny because at first it seems like a really simple solution to a novice question but as it develops the realisation is that its not so straight forward.

And to even make it worse. I thought i had some beautifully exposed shots on my 7d the other day and when i got them into the pc they were overexposed. Didn't and still doesnt make any sense to me. even when i put the card back in the camera the shots appeared perfectly exposed on the 7d lcd. but not in the pc. I played with levels. theres no info there. just on the lcd it seems to have nicer look, even without detail. bottom line, we need zebras (please tramm hudson) where we can set the sensitivity to our liking. or even better, a histogram while shooting video.

edit: in the meantime a lightmeter might not go astray, possibly, i suppose, in a way, it would be useful, when would it not be.....
 
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Perrone, I feel for you man. I almost responded to this thread on 3 separate occasions today....you are truly courageous.

Even if you don't plan on being a DP, it is useful to know basic exposure principals. If you plan on doing any kind of professional production work, you must understand exposure, otherwise you're wasting time and money on location trying to figure out why you can't get the 'filmic' look while shooting at ISO 160, f/2.8 and 1/4000s on a sunny day.

If you can take great stills in auto mode, and think that this skill translates perfectly to video work, I suggest you try to do some video work.

If people put so much emphasis on the 'filmic' look of S35 DOF characteristics and 24p, then why cut yourself short by not understanding the relationship between shutter speed, ISO qualities, and basic/rudimentary/beginner/intro 101 exposure theory?

The camera can do a lot on its own, but when a client asks what went wrong, I doubt they'll be happy when you blame the camera's 'brain' for not thinking hard enough.
 
What kind of shooting are you doing? I think this is the starting point for this conversation because the responses are assuming until you clarify.

The 7D has an exposure meter built in, but it is not highly useful. If you push the AFon button while in movie mode it will show your exposure in the bottom left of the lcd. However, this is only the exposure of the part of the frame that the white box is around. You can move the white box around the frame using the joystick. This can give you a ballpark exposure I suppose.

What many do - including myself - is snap a still picture while in movie mode and view the histogram (while in playback mode push info until it appears). This will give you a good idea of where your levels are. if you don't know how to read a histogram then you should look it up - it will take you 10 minutes. While a bit crude, this method at least insures that you are not under or over exposing parts of the frame.

The auto ISO can also be used to find the camera's recommended exposure. If set in auto iso and you push the AF on button the ISO setting the camera is choosing will be displayed. You can then hit the iso button and select this iso to lock it in so it will not fluctuate with scene movement. Again the camera's making decisions you should be making on your own. But there are times when you do not have the time to set up a shot (ie event/doc shooting) and this method works well. Heck even using auto iso can work well in this situation if you are able to deal with the iso steps in post.

And back to the original question - if you are using this camera to shoot night scenes then yes you should acquire a faster lens (1.4/1.8). You can get old nikon manual primes with 1.4 for a hundred bucks and use with a 10 dollar adapter from ebay. this will save you a considerable amount of iso / noise.

you can get a light meter of course - it is certainly a useful tool of course. but it is not going to be practical for a lot of situations and still doesn't address the fact that you have little light and a slow lens and are forced to raise your iso to levels that introduce significant noise.
and all auto priority modes work the same in video mode. they are full auto. you can lock this in, but is definitely not advised. work in manual mode, set your shutter to 1/50 for 24p or 1/60 for 30p, set your iris to desired stop and use auto iso if you must.

bottom line - get some faster lenses, learn the histogram and use it, and when you get that and feel like you need more accuracy then get an external monitor, light meter, exposure charts, etc.

good luck.
anthony
 
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Thanks Anthony. We used to spend hours chasing specular highlights with a waveform but histograms are new territory for me. I'm off to climb the learning curve...
 
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