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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 :)

Epic/Scarlet and low light performance

Low light is to create perfect moody scene. there'S nothing more rich than using natural light in a film. that's the power of canon new camera. the c300 , mark 2 the low lights are crazy and it's beautiful I think red are behind on that but with the Dragon will probably fix that. we still have to pay more tho
 
But guys (and this is not to defend lowlight performance) photography needs light to be shaped. that is the pure fun of it.

Photo - Light
Graphy - Drawing

If you give up control over light (which you don't neccesarily in natural light, but easily do) you're basically left with technical capacity...

The Epic is so beautifull throughout its full range, that that compensates for allmost any issues I may have had with it.

Ok
Here comes Dragon, but that's not really a reason not to enjoy what is allready in the box.
 
In my humble opinion there is nothing worse than "overlighting" a subject, likewise "no lighiting" comes second. Professional crafted minimal lighting style, its there but you don't know it's there..... is Art.

Like all things somewhere between the 2 extremes lies the truth.
 
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Pretty much anytime I read "this camera sucks/rocks in lowlight", I immediately think "This person doesn't know how to light and is desperately hoping the camera will make up for it."
 
Graeme Nattress said:
I saw some low light tests of M-X to 5D2 for a movie. The 5D2 failed miserably as it couldn't hold skin-tone at high ISO. M-X could, and it was certainly not noisier.

Graeme
Click to expand...

I'd be interested in getting more detail around this if people here would not mind. To me this is a real decision point of whether to get a Scarlet or not; as I'm interested in using natural light and low light situations for some projects I want to work on.

What is I'd like to understand is can you really compare practical low light performance of footage that has to be corrected and graded for final output from a "1K" camera to a 4K camera. Shots don't always come out perfectly (esp when the budget is tight and time is very short). Correction is a necessity, and combining that with any kind of stylized look, then the CODEC and resolution also come into play. So, although I'm not near as expert as Graeme, and others here, I really have to ask how realistic just comparing close up low light shots with minimal correction and color changes is?

On the one had I was reading Phillip Bloom's blog entry seeming to say 5D is better in low light. On the other my own experience on a short I shot on 5D (generally around ISO 1000 / 24fps), was that skin tones tended to get reddish and blotchy in all but perfect exposure situations. In addition detail in shadows and blacks just sort of fell off a cliff at some point in the lower light shots.

I found a few other things as well. Correcting a poorly exposed shot (say off 2/3 stop or more) really brought out the worst in the footage. I had one shot done near sunset, overcast sky. It was a key shot so I had to use it; and correcting it was a nightmare. Getting both the luminosity and color back to match the other shots resulted in tremendous noise and detail loss. I actually had to add heavier correction to the good shots (and noise) to get a good intercut.

Secondly, I found that as you moved to mid shot and wide shot, skin tones (and as a result facial structure) really suffered at higher ISO. There just is not much data there to work with. And, I'm guessing that compression of the codec does not help much either.

Finally, latitude seems to me to play into making low light situations look good as well. But, this has not been addressed much in relation to low light. It's really rare the whole scene is just dark. Shooting in a city at night actors might have minimal light, but backgrounds can be full of bright windows, well lit billboards etc. Even in a "dark" room the actual ambient sources are often quite hot; even if the actors and parts of the room are dark. And, it seems to me that how this falls off or burns out plays in the audiences impression of the quality of the shot as much as anything.

If anyone here can quantify this in a more technical way I'd be very interested in hearing. Because it seems to me just comparing close ups of Actors lit by a match or other small light source as a test leaves out a lot of the elements that affect good low light Cinematography.

Thanks, Richard
 
My Epic is in the delivery schedule but I have been shooting with the 5D MK II for three years and this is what I've found

1) Shadow detail in the 5D is there in stills, but the compression and 4:2:0 colour space kills it in video. Line skipping and video compression artifacts make pumping up the gamma next to impossible in post without the image cracking up. The greys drop off into black real quick, which is part of the problem of the 4:2:0 colour space. The best results I have found are to take the original MOVs and transcode them immediately into Cineform's codec, but that's only half a solution.

2) If you use the native ISOs rooted from 160 (320,640,1250) the noise is acceptable, but once you go over 1250 the noise gets ugly. It's a nasty multi-coloured (not even monochromatic) mechanical pattern that doesn't look good like film does.
 
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Paul Russell said:
My Epic is in the delivery schedule but I have been shooting with the 5D MK II for three years and this is what I've found

1) ... the compression and 4:2:2 colour space kills it in video ... I have found are to take the original MOVs and transcode them immediately into Cineform's codec ...

2) If you use the native ISOs rooted from 160 (320,640,1250) ...
Click to expand...

That is great info and nice idea about using Cineform. I like your description of the pattern as mechanical. I had noticed it was "off" but def see what you mean.

Can you detail why ISOs that are multiples of 160 are better?
 
Paul Russell said:
Because the Canon's 'root' ISO is 160, so natural multiples of it work better.
Click to expand...

That makes total sense (that the support electronics and software will do a better job of scaling ISO in natural multiples). Wish I'd known that before; but, glad to know it now.

Thanks
 
Paul Russell said:
My Epic is in the delivery schedule but I have been shooting with the 5D MK II for three years and this is what I've found

1) Shadow detail in the 5D is there in stills, but the compression and 4:2:2 colour space kills it in video. Line skipping and video compression artifacts make pumping up the gamma next to impossible in post without the image cracking up. The greys drop off into black real quick, which is part of the problem of the 4:2:2 colour space. The best results I have found are to take the original MOVs and transcode them immediately into Cineform's codec, but that's only half a solution.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify - the 5D MKII video is 4:2:0, not 4:2:2
I'm not disagreeing with anything you said about it - just wanted to clarify that point.
 
Paul Russell said:
My Epic is in the delivery schedule but I have been shooting with the 5D MK II for three years and this is what I've found

1) Shadow detail in the 5D is there in stills, but the compression and 4:2:2 colour space kills it in video. Line skipping and video compression artifacts make pumping up the gamma next to impossible in post without the image cracking up. The greys drop off into black real quick, which is part of the problem of the 4:2:2 colour space. The best results I have found are to take the original MOVs and transcode them immediately into Cineform's codec, but that's only half a solution.

2) If you use the native ISOs rooted from 160 (320,640,1250) the noise is acceptable, but once you go over that the noise gets ugly. It's a nasty multi-coloured (not even monochromatic) mechanical pattern that doesn't look good like film does.
Click to expand...

My recent short was with the 5D and although the DP did a wonderful job with the images given all our constraints, I had NO latitude in post to do ANYTHING with the images. A little push in DaVinci threw them into the multi-colored/mechanical pattern (nicely characterized btw). Its one reason I completely scratched that short and am looking forward to shoot a next level version of it with the Scarlet.
 
I've never understood this obsession with ''low-light performance.'' 800 ISO in and of itself is quite a good starting point and you can stretch smaller lighting units to light for this base ISO quite easily. A lot easier and cleaner than pushing 5219 a stop. I also don't understand this penchant for ''natural light.'' Sure, sunlight is rampant with complexities and variances that make it very difficult to recreate 100% accurately. So when the right natural light is there and it's beautiful for the scene of course we want to use that! But when you're on a tight budget and tight schedule, if the right light simply isn't there than you have to make it or live with how it looks. Natural light does not mean lack of light.

Night exteriors still need to be lit. We should not equate ''low-light performance'' to no need for lighting. If you do, you're taking away the second major half of our craft, our ability to shape and light an image. Whether that means taking some light away from this storefront or blacking a certain streetlight from interfering with another source on the subject, we're still making a creative lighting decisions regardless of how sensitive the camera is.

I think it's important for many to stop focusing on pixel-peeping this or that camera and instead focus more on expanding their knowledge of lighting. If you know how to light, you can make any medium shine.
 
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