"Blue noise" in the shadows. How do you shoot "black"??

[Kevin Marshall]

Sorry Arnold... I just figured since I put the whole word in there people would know what I meant. I'm one of those people that prefer home-made (but strongly implied) short forms to most other industry standards (particularly acronyms). My bad?

But, yeah, the original .r3d looks like it's under tungsten (confirmed by Matt above), which doesn't help the blacks... That, in conjunction with the 400 ISO and slight underexposure, definitely don't help the blue-channel in the shadows. By the way, the blue channel is "weaker" on all daylight balanced CMOS sensors... something to do with R, G, and B's wavelengths (which are different) all hitting one plane/sensor (whereas with triple CCD cams, there was an entire sensor dedicated to just blue light.)**

**take all that with a grain of salt, as it's just how I understood it (and I have a tendency to simplify things.)

Just a quick note - shooting at 400 ISO would actually result in a more overexposed image than one shot at 800 ISO, not an underexposed one. Think about it: you're gonna open up a stop more at 400 than you would at 800 to get the same exposure on-screen.

[Matt Williams]

Be careful white balancing... I find it really messes with tint and makes things look like shit

Do you mean be careful about white balancing in camera or cine-x? And as long as you white balance to the correct temperature, what should you be afraid of?

[Matt Williams]

But, yeah, the original .r3d looks like it's under tungsten (confirmed by Matt above), which doesn't help the blacks...

Why is that? Is it because the tungsten key light spills into the shadows (even though it didn't visually illuminate them in this case), and the sensor picked up that warm light in the shadows which inspired more noise (because the X sensor doesn't like tungsten)? Thanks so much for this feedback! It's really helping me out!

[Kevin Marshall]

Why is that? Is it because the tungsten key light spills into the shadows (even though it didn't visually illuminate them in this case), and the sensor picked up that warm light in the shadows which inspired more noise (because the X sensor doesn't like tungsten)? Thanks so much for this feedback! It's really helping me out!

No, it's because silicon isn't as sensitive to blue (as pointed out by Scott earlier), so you need more blue light to get adequate exposure to prevent noise in the blue channel - hence why daylight tends to be rendered cleaner than tungsten. When you try to balance to tungsten, you're essentially applying gain in the blue channel to normalize the image. The ideal WB would be around 500K (if I remember correctly).

That said, I've been working on a feature that's using a lot of tungsten lighting with the camera at 800 ISO, and that footage looks pretty fine. In my experience, it's only in darker situations (like your black background) that are affected adversely.

[Dan Kanes]

Follow my mantra:

Rate the camera at 800

Rate the Camera at 800

Rate the Camera at 800

Don't Rate the camera at 400

Don't Rate the Camera at 320

Don't rate the camera at 500

Rate the camera at 800

Rate the camera at 800

You will be able to make nicer pictures. Someone a few posts before mentioned why - and yes - you are right.

Rating at 800 will just open you up to a less dense negative.

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Just a quick note - shooting at 400 ISO would actually result in a more overexposed image than one shot at 800 ISO, not an underexposed one. Think about it: you're gonna open up a stop more at 400 than you would at 800 to get the same exposure on-screen.

Depends how you define the image and it depends how you define "shooting at ISO 400" :)

Is it the image the raw data or viewable corrected result? One could be overexposed and the other could be underexposed depending on the case. Is "shooting" exposing and adjusting the camera setting or just adjusting the camera setting for that value?

[Kevin Marshall]

Depends how you define the image and it depends how you define "shooting at ISO 400" :)

Is it the image the raw data or viewable corrected result? One could be overexposed and the other could be underexposed depending on the case. Is "shooting" exposing and adjusting the camera setting or just adjusting the camera setting for that value?

I guess more what I was getting at was, in an example: shooting an f/4 at ISO 400 would be more exposed than f/5.6 at ISO 800 - and so shooting at ISO 400 instead of ISO 800 would likely not be (on it's own) a contributing factor to noise in the shadows. I had taken Mike's post to be intimating that it would.

[Will Keir]

I can't seem to find the white balance key in the epic menu. My tint is 27!!! How do I do a proper white balance with my epic?

Be careful white balancing... I find it really messes with tint and makes things look like shit

[Michael Millichamp]

I can't seem to find the white balance key in the epic menu. My tint is 27!!! How do I do a proper white balance with my epic?

Hold down the white balance icon on the top of your lcd, then that opens up a sub menu where you can manually insert everything, including your tint.

[Björn Benckert]

I too would like to know what people are using for reducing noise. So far, I've heard that Neat Video is excellent and Resolve does well also.

Any demoniac or denoise filter will do quite well, most FX an CC packages has such a nodes/functions.