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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Shooting nite exterior

Some things that come to mind.

Proximity: How close will subjects be to direct light of the streetlights?
Filtering: You may want to consider filtering if your blue channel is taking a hit. Then again, you may not have much stop to give up.
Tests: Shoot some tests and then see if you can get the desired results with just streetlights. Make sure to take this all the way through to the coloring stage and do test with full debayer to see just how much room you have to play with.

Will you have actors in these shots? If so, I'd advise to have additional lighting to give them some separation. Relying entirely on streetlights could be dicey. Certainly possible if you position them in places where the light hits just right for the scene. Keep an eye on color temperature. Sodium Vapor lamps can cause some strange color rendition. Again, this is why I suggest testing.
 
Ok, keep in mind that im regurgitating information that I havent actually tested myself.

Went to a demo recently where they suggested an interesting technique for shooting low light situations. It involved shooting at a scarily low ASA such as 250 or 320, then in post using a kind of photoshop technique where you overlay the footage on itself and use a blend mode such as "add" in order to raise the brightness of the clip.

Or use REDlog in Color, and choose colorFX > ADD. Which acts in the same way, but from the source R3D.

This might be an obvious trick, but I thought Id suggest it. Worth testing.
 
I would suggest having some super speed lenses T1.4 or T1.3!

Consider using the new build 20 beta with the new RedAlert. It has cleaner footage in the blacks...

Also watch for flicker if you get off-speed.

Have a good shoot.
 
Thanks Steve Andrew and Rich for all of your god advices.
We are going to do tests.
We will have lights for the shots with the actors, just the long shot of the street without actors will be with the available lights.
I will take my Leicas Van Diemen T1.6 or Zeiss H.S. T1.3 for the test.
I will strengthen the blue channel.
We will test it at different ASA such as 250.
The Photoshop technique, the build 20 idea and the Relog in Color are something we will add to the tests.
Anyone has more ideas?
 
There's a software program that magically reduces noise so you can push Red in night exteriors etc. I can't remember what it's called, but Evin Grant mentioned before.
 
Consider using a little hand held little light. If you are going to be using a Red and have a crew of more than 5 then you might as well throw in a little light into the mix. Even if only an LED mini. Perhaps you can work in 5600k?
 
Roberto Lequeux said:
Consider using a little hand held little light. If you are going to be using a Red and have a crew of more than 5 then you might as well throw in a little light into the mix. Even if only an LED mini. Perhaps you can work in 5600k?
Click to expand...
For the shots with the actors we are going to have lights. It is for the long shot of the street. It will take too much lights to light it and too set all these lights.
We want to use the street lights but we don't want to have noise in some areas were light is not available.
 
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Work the headlights of a stationary car in, if that is an option.

On the residential street you could use some household flood lights maybe, to light a couple of the facades down the street. It's not too time consuming and they are cheap. I'd shoot them both as early in the evening as possible and stop down to make it photograph darker. That way, you will have some ambient that you can work with, as well as control over how it appears.
 
Lithops said:
For the shots with the actors we are going to have lights. It is for the long shot of the street. It will take too much lights to light it and too set all these lights.
We want to use the street lights but we don't want to have noise in some areas were light is not available.
Click to expand...

Oh, I see. Good luck. Hehe...

If you are stationary, or if you can make it, or only have very slow movement in the camera and in the frame, then just crank up the shutter to the highest setting... which I am sure you already thought of. Just make sure to do a close inspection for motion blur by playing back on a good monitor before moving on.

Definitely try out the de-noising plug-in posted above, neat-video. It works very well with good fine tuning and it is super cheap.

And do not use anything but the new RedCine with the new color science because it is a huge improvement, especially on warm lighting.
 
It really comes down to exposure -- you need some if you want to avoid noise. The other issue is color temp, if these are sodium vapor (orange) streetlamps, can you live with them being orangey because trying to correct that by pumping blue into the image will also cause the noise to increase. Finally, a lot of noise is visible in the dark areas, so it helps if you can live with deeper blacks rather than trying to lift the low end to see detail.

So get the fastest lenses you can and shoot the wide shot wide-open... if possible, shoot at a slower frame rate and longer shutter time and make everyone move more slowly to compensate. Anything you can do to get more exposure onto the sensor is going to help with the noise.

Usually it sort of goes: first you open up the aperture all the way, hopefully on a good fast lens like a T/1.3 Master Prime... then you open up the shutter, keeping in mind that you are increasing motion blur and smear, so if 270 degrees is enough, use that instead of 360 degrees, and if 360 degrees is necessary, then don't have objects moving quickly in the frame. And finally, start to shoot at lower frame rates and have actors move more slowly.
 
anyway to keep the sky out of the shot ?
if yes, shoot those long street shots after the sun goes down/before it rises ..
or if no way to avoid sky - if shot doesn't pan/tilt shoot at dusk/dawn and replace sky in post ..
if you have to pan/tilt/move camera then you could track sky in post ....
all depends on the specific shot and the post fx BUDGET ....
 
Thanks everyone for the advices.
The long shots suppose to be with no actors an no movement.
Here is the plan for the tests:
Build 20
Sensitivity: 250 ASA and 320 ASA
White balance: Manual (reading a gray card), 3200K and 5000K
Filters: No Filter, IR filter, Blue filter (80D), both IR+80D
FPS: Bring down speed and adjust shutter to no flickers.
Files will be given then to our post magicians to do the magic.
 
Lithops said:
We have some night exterior shots with available light of the street lights.
It is going to be low key in some shots and we ask how can avoid noise in the blacks or even in all over the frame.
Click to expand...

Your Leica 1.6 will do nice, but I would much suggest a Canon 24mm 1.4L, if you can shoot with a 50mm then go to the Canon 50mm 1.2L, this is assuming that off course you can't afford the Mastr Primes, T*1.3 would be very nice.

One other thing is how long the shot is, meaning how many Frames would you have in total?

If the number of frames is reasonable, then my best suggestion to you is to import them in to Photoshop CS4, not as video but as Frames, and then you can correct/add/change anything you like just as you would with any still photograph, including adding any type of filters, exposure, levels, curves, Graduate filters, noise reduction, and make use of numerous Plug ins to individually work on the frames, if the shot is some what static then even better you can apply the settings to all the frame after copying form the first frame adjustment.

Best of luck with the shoot.

ciao
 
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