Another boring Noise Question...

[Björn Benckert]

Exposing correctly with Red is not super intuitive so I meet many that get noise that could have been avoided.
In this shot it seems like there is ISO 800 and the histogram is still empty in a larg part of the top, this will introduce noise for sure, if it was exposed maybe 2-3 stops brighter there would be much less noise.

The way I do is I always stay as close as I can to clipping (but no clipping!).
In general I put the ISO at 320 and then I change the aperture so that that there it will clip, then I make the aperture slightly smaller so I will not get clipping for small light changes.

Something worth trying could be to use the low light olpf. It is about 1/3 stop better than the default. The main benfits with the highligh olpf is that brighter colors will be more saturated and you do not get flare from sun-strong lights. Standard will get flare and the low light will also.

Hope that helps

Also remember blackshading only helps with static noise. Not with moving noise. Many think that black shade will help with the normal moving noise but this is not true.
Andreas

I also follow some sort of similar porcidure.

Step 1: Increase exposure until the stoplights goes on, then close down a stop to have one stop of highlight protection.
Step 2: Think of whats Important in the scene. Gioscope can tell you where that lands. If its skin tone then its good if those land like 4 stops under clip.
Step 3: figure out how things looks in the low end. Basically try to avoid any unexposed pixels. So no left side goal post. Then try to to make sure the image floor lands someplace 3 stops above that.

The above to make sure the image lands far up in the color cube but still keeps the essentials a few stops from the top where the color rendition is the best. To get there I very rarely use a light meter but instead use the sensor as a measure stick Often find myself covering part of the lens with one hand while changing exposure with the other to see where the different parts of the image lands. I guess thats an old habit that I could get rid of if I got used to Gioscope. But this procedure of mine I find works well.

Another thing I find very important is to make sure all channels are exposed properly. Lot of times I see people shoot tungsten and they dont understand they really starve the blue channel as all looks good in the histogram at 3400K but in reality when looking at the real image which is actually 5600K the image is really starved in blue. So when shooting unbalanced stuff like that its even more crucial to get the exposure well spread and high in the color cube for all chanels. For example if shooting a scene that is floded in red light its way better to actually shoot it more balanced and then offset the temperature in post as you then use all 3 chanels for capture instead of one.

Part of the reason you have noise is also cropping in the sensor a little bit, which ends up making the noise more noticeable. It doesn't help also that the compression is 11:1, which accentuates it further. I totally understand though that there are reasons you need to jump down in resolution to achieve higher frame rates. Some organic noise is just a natural part of a CMOS image; without it the image might be too clean. You can alway apply Denoising (NeatVid, etc.), because none is done internally.

Just saying. To me an image can never be captured to clean in terms of noise. Noise is easily added in post and any kind of noise in camera can be easily mimicked all compositing apps today have very good tools for this. Removing noise is possible to some extent but not without loosing more or less detail. Detail can also be easily removed in post but not really added. So long story short always better to capture as clean as possible as things can pretty much only go south in post.

 

[Shaeden Gallegos]

I also follow some sort of similar porcidure.

Step 1: Increase exposure until the stoplights goes on, then close down a stop to have one stop of highlight protection.
Step 2: Think of whats Important in the scene. Gioscope can tell you where that lands. If its skin tone then its good if those land like 4 stops under clip.
Step 3: figure out how things looks in the low end. Basically try to avoid any unexposed pixels. So no left side goal post. Then try to to make sure the image floor lands someplace 3 stops above that.

The above to make sure the image lands far up in the color cube but still keeps the essentials a few stops from the top where the color rendition is the best. To get there I very rarely use a light meter but instead use the sensor as a measure stick Often find myself covering part of the lens with one hand while changing exposure with the other to see where the different parts of the image lands. I guess thats an old habit that I could get rid of if I got used to Gioscope. But this procedure of mine I find works well.

Another thing I find very important is to make sure all channels are exposed properly. Lot of times I see people shoot tungsten and they dont understand they really starve the blue channel as all looks good in the histogram at 3400K but in reality when looking at the real image which is actually 5600K the image is really starved in blue. So when shooting unbalanced stuff like that its even more crucial to get the exposure well spread and high in the color cube for all chanels. For example if shooting a scene that is floded in red light its way better to actually shoot it more balanced and then offset the temperature in post as you then use all 3 chanels for capture instead of one.




Just saying. To me an image can never be captured to clean in terms of noise. Noise is easily added in post and any kind of noise in camera can be easily mimicked all compositing apps today have very good tools for this. Removing noise is possible to some extent but not without loosing more or less detail. Detail can also be easily removed in post but not really added. So long story short always better to capture as clean as possible as things can pretty much only go south in post.

Great advice! Totally makes sense...

 

[chris ware]

This thread is helping me tons as well. When I was in reducation, the thought was to keep the camera at a fixed ISO to gain the highest dynamic range. I was told that the Helium sensor was probably a 1600 iso sensor. I was also told to flood the sensor, meaning, try to shoot wide open to max of f/8. So if I'm outside, I use ND to make sure my exposure if correct. However, I do find myself getting noise at times. Generally speaking, when I take the clip to post for a grade. The clips at times will fall apart when I add my creative LUT to it. I haven't yet started reducing my iso to decrease the noise floor. I'm going to play with this now, but I'm curious how it effects dynamic range of the senor?

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

This thread is helping me tons as well. When I was in reducation, the thought was to keep the camera at a fixed ISO to gain the highest dynamic range. I was told that the Helium sensor was probably a 1600 iso sensor. I was also told to flood the sensor, meaning, try to shoot wide open to max of f/8. So if I'm outside, I use ND to make sure my exposure if correct. However, I do find myself getting noise at times. Generally speaking, when I take the clip to post for a grade. The clips at times will fall apart when I add my creative LUT to it. I haven't yet started reducing my iso to decrease the noise floor. I'm going to play with this now, but I'm curious how it effects dynamic range of the senor?

Use Gioscope. it is the key to good exposure on the red.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Another tactic for reducing noise in low key scenes is to flood the shadow areas with blue light. A small, dimmable fixture through full CTB into a bounce is my go to.

The intension is not to light up an area that should be dark, just to feed the blue channel something to "bite" on. YMMV.

Cheers - #19

 

[Scot Yount]

Lots of really good advice here. That's why this forum so rocks.

 

[chris ware]

Good stuff, learning tons from this....

 

[Les Hillis]

Noise isn't something you avoid, it's something you place (even when you place it where it can't be seen). Looking at the scene and choosing whether it's visible in the shadows, mid-tones or highlights, or in none of them, or in all of them.

 

[Björn Benckert]

To me exposing a good ”negative” and getting a nice look on capture can easily both be done at the same tine with the luts, and meta data settings. However so fat I never worked on a project where the look in camera was ever use as a final look. So to me all that is just to convince people involved that whats beaing shot will look great.

Any how the look created in camera is very much somthing that can be altered later. The exposure on the other hand is permanent. Better to put the screens to black and white if there is to much discussion about color and looks when shooting.