problems with noise shooting with super 16 mm zoom lenses at 2K

[Juan Martín]

Hello there,

I am Juan and am a filmmaker student who is graduating this coming July and I am working as a DoP for one of the graduations short films.

The film is literally set on a beach and the director wants to achieve the look of the film Pride and Prejudice

We are using the RED ONE camera with two S16 mm zoom lenses (one of them is a Cooke) and shooting at 2K.

We had a test shoot the other day in the beach at sunset: I shot at 2K 2:1, ISO 320, shutter 1/50 and colour temperature 5000° ( factory settings), I experimented with ND .6 soft edge grad filters and also with a sunset colour grad filter in order to achieve this kind of golden look saw in Pride and Prejudice.

The colours looked OK, nothing amazing though. The thing is that once we captured the footage at uni, the image looked terribly noisy and grainy, mainly when I shot against the sun... I am aware that this is one of the disadvantages of shooting at 2K...

Do anyone has any advice to give me in order to get a cleaner picture (less noisy) and also in order to achieve the Pride and Prejudice look?

Thanks very much,

Juan

 

[Stephen Williams]

Shoot 4K & avoid 2K if you possibly can

 

[Sidney L. Plaut]

its the underexposed areas you are referring to as noisy? "towards the sun.."

you have to "expose to the right" to avoid noise especially in 2k. - meaning bring up your exposure for the shadows (pull them down in post), control you highlights so you avoid overexposing them too much.

also what are your "view" settings - in my opinion when working in REDSPACE you have a tendency to underexpose your images because of the curve applied - this could also be why you have noise in your images.

Colors: again depending on what you are previewing in - REC709 colors look horrible. RAW . ofcourse hardly has any color - until you pull them out in the grading.

to sum up: avoid noise by exposing more for your shadows. control your highlights. now you image will be rather "flat" - then in color grade set the proper gamma and saturation - and you should be good to go!