How far would you push the ISO at night? ( Street Lights )

[Mohamed Younis]

I was thinking of how beautiful Cairo looks at night when everyone ( finally ) goes to sleep. I was wondering how should I push the iso on the streets with no lights.
I have fast lenses ( Ultras and REDs ).
Share your experiences
Any footage is also greatly appreciated

 

[Nick Gardner]

1600 Asa should be no problem at all. I have never really been anywhere dark enough that I couldn't get a decent exposure with speeds and an ASA of 1600.

Nick

 

[Mark Toia]

http://www.zoomfilmtv.com.au/tvcs/frisianflag.html
This was all shot using low wattage touches, with ND gel to stop making then so bright... and some back light for ambience was used.

800 asa... Lens Master primes, shot at f 1.3
Some shots were dark, so in RCX pushed the ISO curve upto 1200... A little bit of noise, but by the time we pulled the images back to 2k from 4k... the grain sort of disappeared...
This was the MX sensor in the RED ONE, I'm finding the EPIC is a little cleaner again.

(the banding in some shots is from the quicktime compression for the web)

But really the secret is to shoot bright lenses.. F1.3 Super speeds / Master primes etc. They are both life savers.

 

[Mohamed Younis]

Mark I think the streets would be too dark for me to shoot at 800. All the footage I took with the Epic was shot at 800. I always wondered if I should do 320 in daylight or just keep it at 800...

BTW, I shot a clip recently and exported to 1080 h.264, I noticed a lot of banding. I dont know what to export to when I give it to the client. What do you Export to?

 

[Mohamed Younis]

http://www.zoomfilmtv.com.au/tvcs/frisianflag.html
This was all shot using low wattage touches, with ND gel to stop making then so bright... and some back light for ambience was used.

800 asa... Lens Master primes, shot at f 1.3
Some shots were dark, so in RCX pushed the ISO curve upto 1200... A little bit of noise, but by the time we pulled the images back to 2k from 4k... the grain sort of disappeared...
This was the MX sensor in the RED ONE, I'm finding the EPIC is a little cleaner again.

(the banding in some shots is from the quicktime compression for the web)

But really the secret is to shoot bright lenses.. F1.3 Super speeds / Master primes etc. They are both life savers.

Do you use some sort of noise reduction plugin, neat video, magic bullets, etc?

 

[Mark Toia]

Do you use some sort of noise reduction plugin, neat video, magic bullets, etc?

No plugins... no noise reduction... straight off the chip.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Mark I think the streets would be too dark for me to shoot at 800. All the footage I took with the Epic was shot at 800. I always wondered if I should do 320 in daylight or just keep it at 800...

BTW, I shot a clip recently and exported to 1080 h.264, I noticed a lot of banding. I dont know what to export to when I give it to the client. What do you Export to?

Try adding a bit of noise and see if the banding goes away. Also use quality downsampling.

 

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

http://www.zoomfilmtv.com.au/tvcs/frisianflag.html
This was all shot using low wattage touches, with ND gel to stop making then so bright... and some back light for ambience was used.

Very nice commercial, Mark.

 

[Mark Toia]

Try adding a bit of noise and see if the banding goes away. Also use quality downsampling.

There is no banding on the master..., no noise on the master... You cannot expect to much from a 12meg quick time ))

 

[SeanBrown]

Great commercial.. 1600 ASA has some noise but can be handled. But that is the MAX i found

 

[Andrew Walker]

I remember that Leo Test for the RED MX was shot at ISO 2000 and it looked pretty amazing.

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

I was thinking of how beautiful Cairo looks at night when everyone ( finally ) goes to sleep. I was wondering how should I push the iso on the streets with no lights.
I have fast lenses ( Ultras and REDs ).
Share your experiences
Any footage is also greatly appreciated

From my background as a stills guy... as far and as fast as it takes to get the shot. You can always fix grain or noise to a degree; you can't fix blur. So unless blur is the effect you want...

Mike

 

[Craig Weeding]

If you are dealing with noise issues because of high ISO settings, I recommend that you try the noise reduction in Resolve.
It works well with out adding visible artifacts.
Especially in dark night footage, it can clean up a lot of noise up and leave the deep shadows looking natural.

I agree with Mark a fast lens make a big difference in keeping the ISO lower.

 

[Wes Williams]

Here's a shoot we did in Chicago with the EPIC and an FS-100 on the aerial stuff. Most everything I shot at 1600 ISO, but had the lenses (Zeiss CP.2 primes) as fast as they would go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJGQy-j3Nx4&feature=channel_video_title

I was very impressed on how good it turned out for the small amount of lighting we had.