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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 :)

HELP! Im getting alot of noise !

Jason beaumont

Jason beaumont

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I feel like I have been getting a lot of noise even in situations where I am using a good amount of lighting.
I use the exposure check on the monitor and I have no purple, sometimes there is a little green but that's it.
The goal post also doesn't show any noise, but when I bring the footage home, their is a ton of noise.

My ISO is 400, I had 3 kino flo's which I know was plenty of light. What did I do wrong?
2l1dtv.jpg

 
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Jason,

Looking at your R3D it looks underexposed at 400asa and is only reaching nominal exposure at 800asa. While the exposure check may not have been showing purple most of the exposure is too the left of the histogram. It is very hard to judge exposure in Redlog as it is so flat and I always use RG4 or RG3 when setting exposure by eye. It doesn't look like a ton of noise to me although hard to judge on a single frame. I do find computer monitors exaggerate the noise but when played out in 1080P on a TV screen the perceived noise level drops. I see in your metadata that you have a 90 degree shutter and unless this is required you can double the amount of light on the sensor by using a conventional 172 or 180 degree shutter.

Might be worth revisiting your exposure methods with the camera. Zebra and GIO scope are powerful and more exact tools that do not rely on monitor brightness. A common mistake is the Red LCD EVF and 4.7" LCD are set too bright giving a false indication on the exposure.

If you have plenty of light it never hurts to throw it at your sensor. A scene like this with the dark wood and shadows can only benefit from more photons .
 
Ill keep all of that in mind next time thank you so much for the feedback. So when you say under exposed, your basically saying I didn't have enough light? I should have went brighter with the Kinos?
 
Underexposed means not enough light hitting the sensor. Had you moved your histogram been in the center, instead of too the left, by opening up a stop or by shooting at a 180 degree shutter, then two things would happen, less noise and a fatter negative that you have more room to play with in post. You can always make it look darker and keep it cleaner with correct (fuller) exposure, as opposed to making it look brighter by adding gain later.

Next time you have this setup, roll three exposure tests, open up a stop, two stops, etc and then roll what you think it should be at. You might find that what you thought was overexposed will often get you the very best image or the image you intended. It's a matter of getting used to putting solid light values into the data whereas here you were under, then you make up for that by pushing the exposure. The type of exposure strategy you used here always increases noise because you work from an underexposed negative.

Hit the sensor harder (let in more light), you can always pull it back in post and keep a lower noise floor.


David
 
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What was your incident meter reading near the subject and what stop did you have your lens at?

Most of the time I underexpose something I'm just metering wrong or too conservatively. Brown areas will be noisy with even a bit of underexposure, the MX and Dragon are not particularly clean in the shadows, particularly in ruddy areas (before everyone snaps at me, neither is the Alexa).
 
Thanks for all the feedback, I wasn't using a light meter and I have one, I think I'm going to start using it more. I really only had 2 hours to set up, shoot and break down. So that had something to do with it too.
 
Well, just clean it up with neat video, you'll be fine. The trick is getting a good profile and then mixing it to like 50% so there's still a little noise. :)

I do find an incident meter helps a lot, even just for getting a good feeling for what the actual best ISO is for something. The cleanest Red footage I see is exposed close to 200-400 ISO than 2000 ISO, particularly if it's tungsten-balanced light. Brown areas seem to get particularly noisy.
 
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I've filmed with way less than kino's. If you do have them, it's more about placement of that light, as much as it is about power. Just train yourself to get that histogram in the middle somewhere.

Over the years, I realised that RED sensors love light, so use it appropriately, and well considered.
 
The Vimeo link looks spotless to me.

One thing I had to get used to when I bought my Red last year was look at the Raw before compression of shows some noise, even when well exposed, but the final output is generally pretty clean.
 
Black shading can make a difference here too. I've found that if I let my Red get a bit on the hot side before shading the noise levels drop even more.
 
As great as the exposure tools are, bust out that light meter. :) I recommend RG3 over RG4 as it does not crush black as much as RG4, which can hide a bit of noise. Also, the LCD is being scaled down and so noise is not as obvious.

You should also verify that your light meter matches your camera. Sekonic, for example, has a method to calibrate a meter to a camera.
 
I have the Sekonic, and I have the RED profile on there, I just didn't use it this shoot. didn't make time =/ but I used Reg giant denoiser and it seems to have cleaned it up pretty nice, let me know what you guys think.
 
I am an Amateur Red Scarlet-X user.
Faced same noise issue... Black shading helped me in fixing the noise issue.
Now i have multiple Black shading profiles for every 12C change in temperature and for different shutter speeds.

As everyone said, getting an optimum exposure on Red has a learning curve... i am going through it.

Thanks
 
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The main problem is using that 90degree shutter, why did you oped for that? did you realize you had it at 90? What for if its a sit down interview?

Secondly did you have daylight bulbs or tungsten bulbs in the kinos? RED and most CMOS sensors are balanced for daylight, and don't handle swinging fully to balance for tungsten.

Also no matter what anyone says anywhere, your images should always be checked in raw, which usually matches to around 400iso If you're shooting at 800, you're going to see noise. Personally I shoot everything at iso 400-640 and thats it, I never go above that. That is the cleanest image you'll get from red.
 
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