Gemini Low Light Best Practices

[Robert Piantanida]

Hi, New on here so making a couple posts, apologies if this is posted elsewhere.

I'm a new Gemini owner looking for any best practice tips for both shooting low light and processing low light footage from the cam.

 

[Alexander Sutton-Hough]

Hi, New on here so making a couple posts, apologies if this is posted elsewhere.

I'm a new Gemini owner looking for any best practice tips for both shooting low light and processing low light footage from the cam.

I have owned the Gemini for year and half and have taken full advantage of the low light mode on many shoots. I aim for 1600 iso to get the cleanest image in the low light mode and 3200 is the max I will go. If you go to 6400 it wont hold up for a clean image and will have de noise it in post.

Do a black shading before your shoot. Select Low light mode in the ISO menu and that's it.

1600 iso low light is similar to 400 iso and 3200 iso Low light is similar to 800 iso in regards of dynamic range and color. Overall the image will be grainier (not nosier) and not super clean like at iso 400 and 640. But once the image is compressed or denoised a little bit, the end results will looks very close. I just looked back to my camera ISO test in Resolve. Don't go past ISO 3200 then it will start to be a noisy image and color shift. Also nail your exposure correctly.

Dynamic range little less in the highlights.

In post nothing is different compared to shooting at 400 or 800 iso. The R3D files will auto set it to the ISO you recorded it at and go about your day. Add little denoise if needed.

 

[Ignacio Aguilar]

My advise is to blackshade properly and be very serious about it. I have found different results from different temperatures, with the best always at 38c. How far to go with the low light mode depends on the project. For cinema or TV (UHD) applications I wouldn't use an ISO beyond 1600 or 2000 ISO. If you have plenty of shadows and enough light levels, you can even set the camera at 1600 ISO -1 exposure compensation (which equals 800 ISO). You just have to be careful with the highlights and get richer and cleaner images. If you're aiming for a lesser medium, you can probably go as far as 3200 ISO if your clips are well exposed and you don't go below 3200k or beyond 7500k. A bit of denoise and use the chroma noise reduction tool in Davinci helps a lot in any case.

 

[Nick Morrison]

We've shoot 3200 ISO low light no problem.

 

[Robert Piantanida]

Good practices

Good practices

Thank you all for the reccomendations.

I had shot a short before this post and went as high as 4000... but the short is experimental and can have some heavier noise reduction happen.

Good ideas I think to stick to around 1600 ISO.

Happy new year to you all!

 

[Generoso Ventola]

I shoot with 3200 too with no problems