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Grain and noise in stills

J

Joshua Napier

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Hi Everyone,

I'm relatively new to the RED platform. I recently purchased a RED to shoot still and motion campaigns for internal clients who require both and are on a tight budget. I've shot two of these so far and have been very happy with the motion but less so with the stills. I'm getting grainy images that are also a bit noisy when zoomed in to 100%. I'm convinced it's something I'm doing in post but have yet to solve the problem. I usually shoot stills on a 5D MKIII and I'm used to seeing sharp, crisp images when zoomed in to 100%. This is important because I am shooting these wider frames with the intention of allowing the client to crop as needed for print ads and such.

I'm treating stills and motion separately. Shooting takes for each with setting that are appropriate for each medium (at least I think they are). I'd really appreciate any advice on best practices for this kind of shoot and how to solve this particular issue. I've got another one coming up in a few weeks.

Gear and settings for still takes:

RED Weapon Helium
Fujinon Premier 18 -85mm @ F4
12fps, 1/400 second, 1280 ISO, 3:1 compression
REDcolor4/REDgamma4


Link to TIFF:
https://ferguson.box.com/s/xc0t8yir61ac39lpayud6yq9venhnok9
 
Hey Joshua,

I would mess a little bit with the 'Sharpness, Denoise, and Detail' sliders in REDCINE-X PRO under the "Look : Image" dropdown/tab. What you are used to with your 5D MKIII, is probably internal sharpening and maybe some de-noising. RED doesn't apply any of these post effects to the R3D clip, so it would be best to mess with some of these settings. Great shot by the way! I would also wait for some answers from people who are more knowledgeable than me in this area ;) Hope you find an answer!
 
Yes, that's basically it. On the RED there's no NR or sharpening by default. Also, try the IPP2 Beta of REDCine-X which utilizes a new demosaic that extracts more details from the image. Try the DEB setting on the demosaic which will remove the chroma noise that's distracting you, and you can add some USM sharpening too. Or just stick a TIFF out into Lightroom or whatever and do a tiny bit of chroma NR and some sharpening and you'll be happy with the end result.

Graeme
 
I'd put in the STH OLPF and drop your ISO to around 500/640 if you can. I think you'll see a really awesome change there. You won't really lose much in your highlights that way and you'll end up with a far cleaner image.
 
Thanks everyone for the feedback.


Shaeden,

Thanks for the compliment. I'll try what you suggest.

Graeme,

I tried downloading the Mac version of the REDCine-X Beta with IPP2 from red.com without success. I think the link is broken. In general, that's exactly what I did with this file. Exported out of REDCine X and brought the TIFF into Lightroom. Added a little noise reduction in both chroma and luma, added some sharpness, etc. This made the problem worse. Started to look like a Seurat painting when zoomed in. I'm thinking adding sharpness and NR to the RAW file will give better results.

Brendan,

I used the skin tone OLPF. I'll try the standard on the next shoot and order bigger lights to get the ISO down.
 
I've asked for the broken link to be fixed. Thanks for spotting that Joshua!

Graeme
 
The DEB control will work a lot better than the Lightroom chroma NR which basically just blurs the chroma. Similarly their luma NR produces an oil-paint effect. Most of what you're seeing is chroma noise, so try the DEB first and see how you get on. The sharpening should be very similar in both environments.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
The DEB control will work a lot better than the Lightroom chroma NR which basically just blurs the chroma. Similarly their luma NR produces an oil-paint effect. Most of what you're seeing is chroma noise, so try the DEB first and see how you get on. The sharpening should be very similar in both environments.

Graeme
Click to expand...

While we're on this topic, will there ever be such thing as "HEB" for Helium sensors? Or is DEB just as suitable?
 
DEB works fine for now.

Graeme
 
Joshua Napier said:
Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Brendan,

I used the skin tone OLPF. I'll try the standard on the next shoot and order bigger lights to get the ISO down.
Click to expand...

Cool! STH is Skin Tone Highlight OLPF, so looks like you were dead-on there, I'd definitely continue using it. Just drop that ISO down a bit, even just to 800. That'll really help. That still does look great though! I'm sure you're noticing stuff when pixel peeping though.
 
Joshua,

Did you just do a shoot in Hampton Virginia with Dave Haycox for this same company?

C
 
Brendan,

Haha...I told you I was new to the platform. Thanks for keeping me straight with the OLPF. And thanks for the compliment. I think you're right on regarding the ISO. Come to think of it, the 5D stills that I'm comparing to were all shot with strobes at 100 ISO. I'm shooting another one of these with the RED in Minneapolis in a couple of weeks and I am planning on using larger fixtures to get the ISO down to 400. I think I'll see a big improvement. Also, can't wait to try the new IPP2.

Cheers,
Josh
 
Curtis,

I work with Dave Haycox pretty regularly. I'm the Senior Manager - Brand Photography and Videography at Ferguson (which is a corporate name for Creative Director/DP). I manage the internal production crew at Ferguson. We have a studio in Newport News, VA. We do a lot locally but also shoot all over the country. Dave's a great guy and very talented.

Yes, Dave worked a three day shoot locally last month with us. That was actually the first time I tried this workflow of shooting motion and stills with the RED. Those images are really nice as well but had a different issue. We where shooting exteriors mostly, so ISO is actually a bit lower than the TIFF I shared in this thread. However, we own the Cabrio 19-90 and 85-300 so I used those two lenses. That was a mistake. They are fine for shooting motion but don't have the resolution for 8K stills (I don't mind a bit of softness in the motion). So I moved to the Premier 18 - 85 (which is crazy sharp).

This workflow is new to me and has a bit of a learning curve, but I feel like I'm closing in on it. I really appreciate everyones help. Any other advice from folks who work this way would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Josh
 
Why would the STH OLPF decrease noise? Or is it just the lower iso? Is the ISO for finest grain a different value than the ISO for maximum dynamic range (in general - of course depending on highlight protection)
 
I'd like to add a couple of minor comments FWIW. Firstly, the only way to do proper chrominance NR is with a RAW converter (in this case, REDCine-X). You cannot do it right unless the software has a profile for the sensor.

Secondly, you can do decent luminance NR without a sensor profile in at least two ways. Some NR applications let you take samples from the TIFF or JPEG file. Ideally you would shoot a grey card at the ISO you are working with.

Alternatively, if you don't want to do that, you can use Selective Gaussian Blur in most imaging applications, including GIMP. You have to play with the thresholds a bit, but in general, this will not operate on high frequency areas of the image, preserving detail.
 
Mike Finegan said:
Why would the STH OLPF decrease noise? Or is it just the lower iso? Is the ISO for finest grain a different value than the ISO for maximum dynamic range (in general - of course depending on highlight protection)
Click to expand...

Shooting lower ISO gets you a cleaner image, but also less DR in highlights. Skintone OLPF helps with that.
 
Josh,

Small world, I'm a friend of Dave Haycox.
I'm in virginia beach and have an Epic-w helium.

Dave is a great guy, he just covered for me
on a TV show deal i have.

Your still looks great. great lighting and sharp.
I have found the Helium to be cleaner then
The Scarlet-X i had by a large margin.

We should do lunch at Rudee's and geek out
over Red cameras.

Curtis
 
Curtis,

Sorry for the delayed response. I've been traveling. Lunch at Rudee's sounds great. However, between a demanding job and three small children at home...I doubt I'll be able to make that happen anytime soon. But if you can make it over to this side of the water, we can grab lunch and I'll show you around the studio.

Cheers,
Josh
 
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