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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 :)

What is the best way to brighten up a dark shoot

I will not discuss about the shooting any more.

And thanks so far to Yuval and Daniel.
They both found better solutions than with "Neat".
With "Neat" I got large spots... but there are other tools that works better.
The results are looking very promising... when i finish the video I will upload
some video on vimeo or so.... so anyone can check them.
 
What was the tool suggested by Daniel?
I could only see Topaz Enhancer as mentioned by Yuval.

TIA
 
I forgot the name of the tool..... he told me on the phone (only thing I remember is that
its seems to be mac only and cost around 500 Dollar). He send me some videos (he worked
on the red file that I postet) and the results are amazing. I asked him to email me detailed
infos but I did not get a response yet. ... I have to wait.
 
First, I would say, use RedAlert Build 20 and export what you need of the shot if you are doing this for your online. Most of the time when I have worked with any sort of grain reduction software of plugins with shots this dark, you end up with mush more often than not, and detail goes out the window. What are you using to do your color grade? From what you are saying above, it sounds like you are using After Effects. I would suggest going out to a program that is specifically build to do color grading, eg. Color, Pablo, Filmmaster etc. I know that working with a post house with that sort of equipment is costly, but you will end up with a much better overall image, plus these hardware/software systems are made to pull the most information out of an image without destroying it. Just a thought.
 
I do appreciate people who post solutions on this forum. Topaz looks wild - will be trying this out on some stuff in the very near future. Thanks for posting this.


Yuval Shrem said:
One more noise reduction solution to consider is the TOPAZ ENHANCE plug-in package.
It's a very powerful yet affordable set of tools for Adobe After Effects.

check out a comparison video of the denoise feature of TOPAZ compared to all other noise reduction solutions including NEAT.

check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSzdM62LHnI

I hope this helps...
Click to expand...
 
I tried "Topaz" and "Neat". "Neat" is better than "Topaz"...
and I will try "Furnace"... thats the one "Daniel" send me as PM.

Link: The Foundry: Furnace for Final Cut, Fusion, Nuke, Shake, ...

Daniel showed me videos... which looks amazing.
Much better than with "Neat."
 
comparison .. "neat" vs. "Furnace":
http://www.vimeo.com/6689722

the videocompression sucks, too. But "furnace" is a bit better than "neat".
Less "spots". Also a lot of details get lost... I have to check out some blende technics.
And I used 1k material. I think I will get better results denoising 4k.
Final output will be 2K.
 
Here some quick tests with Neatvideo. Processed in After Effects directly on R3D file. After effects doesn't do the new color science. File is processed as exposure +4 (that's iso 5120!) and Kelvin at 4200. Image at 100%.

Image 1: no noise reduction
Image 2: standard noise reduction
Image 3: standard noise reduction with temporal filter radius set to 5
Image 4: only chrominance noise reduction

Noise filter settings set to advance mode with 'very low freq' setting turned on. This reduces some of the blotchiness. Personally I like the only chrominance noise reduction one. It keeps the details but removes the blotchiness of the RED footage and gives the noise a more grain-like feeling.

What you can't see in the stills is how the noise is moving, which determines a lot of how viewable the footage will be. Overall I find Neatvideo to do a good job, but it is not a solution for all your problems. It is something that would turn footage from unwatchable to watchable - which is great in itself, but not something you want to depend upon.
 

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Will Keir said:
I found this quote interesting, what exactly do you mean here?
Click to expand...

Will... there is a basic formula that explains this scientifically, and it is where the term "foot candle" derives from. lm/ft2. In basic terms, if you strike a 2k and it's 20 feet away you get x amount of lumens at the subject if measured with an incident meter. If you move that 2k so it's just 10 feet away you get x2 lumens at the subject.

This is also why, if you use a spot meter, you need to take the reading from where the camera is, not between the camera and the subject, or your meter reading will be false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-candle

-bk
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
Will... there is a basic formula that explains this scientifically, and it is where the term "foot candle" derives from. lm/ft2. In basic terms, if you strike a 2k and it's 20 feet away you get x amount of lumens at the subject if measured with an incident meter. If you move that 2k so it's just 10 feet away you get x2 lumens at the subject.
Click to expand...

I was always under the impression that light fell off as the SQUARE of the distance.

So if you move from 20 feet away to 10 feet away, you will get 2x2 i.e. 4x the lumens. Not 2x.


Brandon Kraemer said:
This is also why, if you use a spot meter, you need to take the reading from where the camera is, not between the camera and the subject, or your meter reading will be false.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I don't believe that either.
The inverse square law only relates to point sources of light, not reflected light from an object.
If that was true, then distant mountains would appear black!!!
 
A reflection is a source point, think about it. If you measure a white card at 5 feet away with a spot meter, it's going to read brighter than if you took the same reading 50 feet away.
 
Stefan, you were upfront about being a student and new to the Red and I can totally understand that being new to the camera and all could lead to underexposed footage, etc. By the way, I doubt if there's anybody on this forum who's not still a student in some form or fashion, or they wouldn't be on the forum.

However, when people look at your original shot - the immediate reaction, for me at least, is - how could this happen? It looks totally black. If stopping down was to help with focus, how can someone judge focus if the LCD/monitor is pitch black. Figuring out how this happened can help people who are also new to the camera. In this vein, my speculation is that the in-camera ISO setting was raised very high, causing the image in the LCD to look re-assuringly bright as you continued to stop down to obtain a deeper focus field. Since changing the ISO only affects meta-data rather than causing the sensor to soak up more light - as it would in a still camera - you then ended up with footage that was way darker than you thought you had gotten. I know you don't want to talk about the shoot, and I respect that - but putting up a shot that dark and mentioning the fast lenses and significant lights - quite naturally begs a question.
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
A reflection is a source point, think about it. If you measure a white card at 5 feet away with a spot meter, it's going to read brighter than if you took the same reading 50 feet away.
Click to expand...

Don't think so. All that matters is the the light reaching the subject. The distance from the subject makes no difference in measuring the light. Well maybe in LA if you are a mile away you may loose a 1/3 stop from the smog :-)
 
Yes, Inverse Square law says if you move the light from 20 feet to 10 feet you will have 4 times the light.
 
Tyler Black said:
Yes, Inverse Square law says if you move the light from 20 feet to 10 feet you will have 4 times the light.
Click to expand...

Yep - but it's not as simple as that with real life light fixtures: a fresnel spot will lose much less of the light intensity over distance, because the beam is focused.
 
We did not change the in-camera ISO Settings. Second: We not only have to light up the actors, also the location. Some suggestion here... turn down the light distance, etc... of course.... but what about the environment. I wanted to see some leaves or grass... or something. It was not easy. And... on a computer monitor it might seems almost "black"... but in a dark theater... it might be okay. I testet it. And its only for a few seconds. Again: not all shots are that dark. Only 2 or 3.
 
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