How much iso max ?

[Viel Jean Philippe]

Hello, I received my first Scarlet W. I want to know how muchoISO do you use in your footage ? I did some test shots, and I saw that until 800 iso the footage is correct, but more than 800 iso there is too much grain...What do you think about it ?

 

[Björn Benckert]

Taste for grain is subjective. And also it´s a lot depending on light temperature exposure and also very much downsampling, simply your ratio between capture and mastering resolution, the more of it the better. I normally add grain to stuff we shoot and we often shoot up to 6400iso... so again depends what your preference is.


And most important, you can not talk about iso if you in any way added light to the image in post. A lot of DP´s tell me 800iso is not good enough it looks grainy etc. Then when looking at their exposure and where their final transcoding ends up it shows that they gained the image severly, simply did not use the top part of the histogram when shooting but very much wanted their picture there when doing the grade. Such procedure is the same as lifting the ISO several stops so they are simply not shooting 800 iso but at a far higher value. If your histogram is rich and your image looks too bright at 1000iso and you then push it down to 800 to get the end result you want then I would be surprised if you where not happy with the grain levels.

So expose to the right, one stop under clip / one or more of your stoplights goes on and use enough fill so the left 1/4 of the histogram is not even in use. Then if exposed that way, I doubt 800 iso will look to noisy. But if your histogram is all slided to the left and or you need to gain in post to get the light values you want, sure then you look at the noise floor of the sensor quite quickly.

 

[Viel Jean Philippe]

I shoot in 4K Dragon NColor2 and REDgamma4 at 3200 ISO.

 

[Marc Wielage]

3200 ISO for me is way, way too grainy, even when you dump heaps of NR on it in post. I have dealt with it before on projects and it is not pretty.

 

[Aharon Rothschild]

Viel, your best bet is to shoot a over / under exposure test. Set up a actor and grey card (DSC labs is best but expensive) and set exposure to T8 at base ISO
(800? You might need to try a few) open and close the lens shooting each stop. Bring the results in to resolve or post the .r3d still here. We are looking to answer three questions in a realistic way:
1) how bright can we go at base ISO before overexposure on skin
2) what is base iso? Using the DSC labs makes finding this easier but we need to find the place where over and under exposure evens out above and below middle grey.
3) how underexposed can we go before hitting the noise floor. Not how many stops can we see on a xyla chart but how far up into shadows does the noise floor go? In other words how dark can we go on skin?

The benefit of shooting this test vs "ETTR and shooting a full histogram" is that you will have real answers to exposure questions on set and can dial in precise lighting on skin keeping your ratio tightly controlled and knowing what the tradeoff
In noise vs dynamic range in the highlight will be if for instance you choose to overexposed for cleaner shadows.

 

[Viel Jean Philippe]

Viel, your best bet is to shoot a over / under exposure test. Set up a actor and grey card (DSC labs is best but expensive) and set exposure to T8 at base ISO
(800? You might need to try a few) open and close the lens shooting each stop. Bring the results in to resolve or post the .r3d still here. We are looking to answer three questions in a realistic way:
1) how bright can we go at base ISO before overexposure on skin
2) what is base iso? Using the DSC labs makes finding this easier but we need to find the place where over and under exposure evens out above and below middle grey.
3) how underexposed can we go before hitting the noise floor. Not how many stops can we see on a xyla chart but how far up into shadows does the noise floor go? In other words how dark can we go on skin?

The benefit of shooting this test vs "ETTR and shooting a full histogram" is that you will have real answers to exposure questions on set and can dial in precise lighting on skin keeping your ratio tightly controlled and knowing what the tradeoff
In noise vs dynamic range in the highlight will be if for instance you choose to overexposed for cleaner shadows.

Hi and thank you for your help.

 

[Owen Rennie]

Don't raise your ISO whilst shooting to get more light... use more lights or open up that lens. If it's underexposed at 800, raising to 3200 isn't the answer. That's my understanding anyway. It can get confusing this ISO talk

 

[Adam Johnson]

Scarlet-W at 4000 ISO is plenty clean for me. But I can easily see myself pushing to 6400 and using some NR in post.

Going from Epic Dragon to DSMC2 has been a wonderful experience! If I were looking to buy a RED I would choose a new DSMC2 camera over a used DSMC1 kit. I know you can get a great deal on an Epic Dragon, but I would go Scarlet-W over Epic Dragon all day everyday. The image is better in my opinion. Hell, I'd probably go Raven as well!

 

[Nick Morrison]

If you want cleaner footage, shoot 5K, not 4K - you'll get smaller grain/noise.

 

[Michael Lindsay]

There are lots of good points here but the main one is just test and see what you like... the chip is the chip ....ISO is only how you map the output... and downsampling and destination screens really do factor in (also in low light you do also need low compression)

Bjorn is correct... often you see shots that have had the middle part of the image pushed the equivalent of 2-3 stops... then you have a moan about a tiny bit of noise in what is essentially a 5000asa picture..