Noise in low light, Red One and Red Epic

[Ethan Ledden]

Greetings Everyone,

I just finished a 9 week feature film shooting for the first time on an Epic Scarlet double combo sharing a set of Red Primes between the cameras. I had a 1 ton tungsten kit supplemented by a 4k, 1.2HMI and a Joker 800 and 400. I honestly didn't expect to have much trouble with light, however I found myself fighting with noise levels and underexposure a lot of the time. For one thing it seemed no matter how much light I threw at the scene or how bright the scene was in general (could be daylight) my blacks and shadows were always full of noise.

At first I shot everything at 320 ISO because if I went any above that the noise just went up like crazy, I black shaded both cameras over and over, no improvement. Eventually I dabbled some with 500 ISO but 800 ISO basically appeared to my eye to be unusably noisy. I found this pretty baffling because that is reportedly red's "sweet" spot?

Now I'm going to be shooting a feature in LA on the Red One-MX and the director was wanting to use a much smaller lighting kit and was under the impression the Red One MX was pretty good in natural and low light, which seems pretty concerning to me. I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something entirely with these cameras before I jumped into this next film. Is the general idea since it's 4k resolution it doesn't matter if the screen is dancing like Mexican jumping beans because it's going to be down sampled to 2k anyway? A dark coat on a sunny day seems to have significant noise in it even.

Thanks for any pointers or tips on this,

-Ethan
www.nvisiblefx.com

 

[Timur Civan]

What were you monitoring on?

 

[Matt Ryan]

do you have any R3D grabs to post? Thats not normal at all. I shot an entire short with 3 1k pars and a couple kino's, all tungsten and no noise... If you can post samples we can give you some help, but thats definitely not normal.

None of these grabs below have had any noise reduction of any kind done.
I know this is a bit noisy but its only lit by the 80w (tungsten) household lamp at 1600ISO on the Epic with a superspeed at 1.3. But not bad for no lighting...

Heres a sceen grab from a music video I shot, tungsten lighting, and very low levels: (Shot on Scarlet in 3k)

This was also shot on the Scarlet at 800ISO, lit by one 4 bank kino as key, and 2x 1k pars through the windows (All tungsten).

Here's a shot on the Red One MX, 800ISO, t2, one litepanels mini as a key light and only source (tungsten):

From the same film as the shot above, but R1MX 800ISO, t2, 1x leko 500w through diffused frame as key, and 1k par as fill bouncing off the desk in front of him. Again no noise and all tungsten.

R1MX, 800ISO, Red Pro Zoom 18-85 at t2.8, 1 kino 4 bank above window, and one 2 bank for fill from camera back right all tungsten (you will see it hitting the back of her hair):

Same film, R1MX 800 ISO, 1 1.2k hmi key coming from camera is the only light:

A few more tungsten shots in low light on the R1MX at 800ISO (Pre color correction):

Scarlet 800ISO Ungraded:

 

[Adam Johnson]

Whatever sensor temperature you black shade your camera at is the sensor temperature you should be recording at. It is a pain in the f'n ass to be honest but that is how you get optimal blue channel noise reduction on the Scarlet. Not sure on the Epic as it is inherently cleaner at 5K already as it is not cropping the sensor as much as 4K. I swear on my life that the Red One MX is much cleaner than the Scarlet. If and when I get some damn time I will do a shoot out between the two cameras. But, the Epic is cleaner than all of them....so you must be doing something wrong :-/

Also, remember that all RED cameras have no internal denoting like the vast majority of other cameras on the market. It would be very helpful if you are experinceing to much noise in your shadows, etc. to do a noise cleanup with a tool like Neatvideo. I have not used it yet....I really need to buy the damn thing and I will, but I hear it does a great job of finalizing the image. And yes, down sampling always helps.

 

[Adam Johnson]

In my short film below I shot all of the night/ dark scenes at 2500 ISO on the RED One MX. I actually designed this movie around the MX upgrade. I wanted to see what it was capable of and I was very impressed

So this should give you an idea of what the MX sensor is capable of at least on the Red One MX and a little beyond on the Epic. But I would be WAY to scared to have done that on Scarlet without a de-noising program.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Sounds strange.

What wb you calibrate at doesn't matter at all, btw.

What shutterspeed you do, does.
But that is the only thing.

I shoot and support a lot of productions (close to 40 hours delivered over the last 2,5 years, all on red m, mx and epic) and noise hasn't been of any concern under any lighting. Highlights and redchannelcompression when wb'ing for tingsten has, though.

Would be good to see an R3D to see what your issues are.

The red cameras love contrast.

That is an issue I often see that people ignore.

But that is part of lighting, isn't it?

 

[Matthew Scott]

Hey Matt, I'm a big fan of your work, but, posting stills to prove that noise isn't an issue isn't really accurate. Noise looks fine when it's not dancing.

Ethan, with my experience, I find the RED ONE less noisy than Epic and Scarlet. I also find that 800 ISO can be noisy in the blacks even when exposed correctly. People will absolutely shoot you down for saying that, but it's not uncommon and depending how you light, it can be a problem, and is definitely there. Like you, I've seen lots of noise in 800 ISO shots in full sunlight (in black areas). Normally though, it's nothing in the realm of unusable. Another thing people might advise, is that RED footage needs more post work than footage from other cameras because it doesn't have any sort of pre-processing like sharpening, denoising, etc. It's both a good and a bad thing, but like you're finding, may not be what you are used to.

That being said, it would be great if we could look at an R3D snapshot of (or a couple of seconds to see the noise dance) so that we can assess it more accurately. Clean footage is more than attainable with these amazing cameras, but you need to know it's weaknesses I guess.

* not looking forward "It's good enough for Ridley Scott and a Peter Jackson" posts....

 

[Pawel Achtel]

what compression ratio?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I am not saying that it is noisefree, just that noise hasn't been an issue. But usually we have ran a week of tests all the way to delivery before principal shooting, for the dp to be comfortable with how to get and light for the look he/she wants.

Agreed on the stills comment. Totally. And also on the pj/scott comment.

But there are some common things I have seen in shots that people complain about, that usually is fixable in post.


As to the R1 MX being "less" noisy...
The gamma/previewnsettings on the R1mx are for a number of reasons "harsher" which forces you to expose narrower and also brighten your darks a bit when exposing "by eye" . That can lead to a cleaner image as you can easily expose with a bit more headroom both in the top and the bottom. Still, when you come online, the Epic image has a ton of more stretchability than the R1 mx.

Have shot a few side by sides between the two with same glass on both into the same scene. And when it comes down to it, there is no question which cam I want to take the images home from...

And that is not the R1mx.

But they are both lovely cams in their different ways.

If you could give us a second of R3d, it would help tremendously.

Set in and out in redcine and export r3d...

 

[Matthew Scott]

Gunleik, I've seen your tests and am constantly learning from you, cheers Let's hope Ethan get's us a sample to have a closer look.

 

[Matthew Scott]

what compression ratio?

This is also a very valid point, nice one. I did some more tests today comparing r3d's and HDSDI out....zero compression is a LOT cleaner.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Gunleik, I've seen your tests and am constantly learning from you, cheers Let's hope Ethan get's us a sample to have a closer look.

Hi.

Most of my tests are in-house and thus not publishable. sometimes I have asked for permission to share, and often that has been agreed to.

sharing takes a ton of time, so mostly it has stayed production-internal.
Also the discussion on what one did "wrong" when testing for specific scenarios, can be a bit tireing.

I actually really try to "break" the cameras I test in many ways, to learn how they respond. That way I learn what I can do with them, and it doesn't mean dislike. Unfortunately a lot of people read that as complaints. Which it is not.

but thanks.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Hey Matt, I'm a big fan of your work, but, posting stills to prove that noise isn't an issue isn't really accurate. Noise looks fine when it's not dancing.

Ethan, with my experience, I find the RED ONE less noisy than Epic and Scarlet. I also find that 800 ISO can be noisy in the blacks even when exposed correctly. People will absolutely shoot you down for saying that, but it's not uncommon and depending how you light, it can be a problem, and is definitely there. Like you, I've seen lots of noise in 800 ISO shots in full sunlight (in black areas). Normally though, it's nothing in the realm of unusable. Another thing people might advise, is that RED footage needs more post work than footage from other cameras because it doesn't have any sort of pre-processing like sharpening, denoising, etc. It's both a good and a bad thing, but like you're finding, may not be what you are used to.

That being said, it would be great if we could look at an R3D snapshot of (or a couple of seconds to see the noise dance) so that we can assess it more accurately. Clean footage is more than attainable with these amazing cameras, but you need to know it's weaknesses I guess.

* not looking forward "It's good enough for Ridley Scott and a Peter Jackson" posts....

I'd post footage if I had it available. This is all I had.

I think sometimes it's more compression noise than actual sensor noise.
I posted the stills just because they are shot at 800ISO+, and with minimal lighting. I assumed since he had a bigger lighting package and was even having noise in daylight, it may be good to see examples to compare his stills to. Especially if hes seeing noise in daylight at 320ISO or even 500ISO for that matter. Something seems off if the footage is noisy in the blacks at 320ISO. I'm curious to see his samples so we can try to diagnose it. On a shoot we rented a Scarlet on, regardless of how many times we blackshaded, the image was noisy, even at 320ISO lit with daylight balanced fixtures at 6:1 compression. Next shoot, rented a different kit, and no noise even at 800ISO in tungsten. So it very well could be a camera issue. I'm still racking my brain as to why that one Scarlet was so different compared to the next one.

Yeah hopefully this doesn't turn into one of those PJ/Ridley Scott arguments. Just trying to help so he can view the pics in full res next to his to profile and check out the noise. I'll remove them if they aren't helpful.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Matt. Your input is allways appreachiated! It is constructive and well done!

 

[Matthew Scott]

Yeah man, all good, was just making a point about stills and noise That first shot BTW, is beautiful.

 

[Ethan Ledden]

Wow guys thank you for the speedy and helpful responses! I'll try to address them.

Timur Civan
Actually I didn't really see the noise problem on set unless I punched in for focus, because I lit with the red touch monitor and the histogram. It's only when we looked at the dailies that it really showed up. And the few times I used 800ISO the data manager came over and said "you might want to look at this".

Matt Ryan
Your stills looks fantastic! I like a lot of your lighting. Though granted it is a bit hard to see how much noise is actually happening in a still and downressed, thank you for posting those and your helpful stats on them, it certainly gives me an idea of what should be possible.


Adam Johnson
At first I was balancing at 2700K for night, putting half CTB on my HMI's and that was moon, and planning to shift the blues to greenish in post. But I discovered that it added a lot more noise changing from the sensors "native" 5000k color temp. So I started shooting everything at 5000k and planned to do all color correction in post. That helped some, but only enough for me to want to shoot 400-500 ISO in a pinch. The whole film I think I shot 4 shots at 800 and I cannot even IMAGINE shooting at 2500ISO!!!


Matthew Scott
And all i'm working on getting some very short R3D clips to show you guys, I have to get clearance. Those should be coming right up in a day or so here and that should give you a much better idea what i'm getting. The few Red guys I've showed it to seem to think it doesn't look "that bad" for Red footage. So I have this feeling that I'm supposed to somehow get used to WAY more noise.


Gunleik Groven
I have seen a lot of your stills on the forum and you get great images out of these cameras.


Pawel Achtel
I used 6:1 compression for the whole film except some shots which were HDR-x

Working to get you guys some clips as soon as I can thank you!

-Ethan
www.nvisiblefx.com

 

[Timur Civan]

Ethan thats exactly what i mean! what were you looking at it on? on my MBP, my footage looks grainy, but on a TV, or properly calibrated monitor is flawless. Also, if you were viewing in RCX were you viewing in 1/8? 1/4? 1/2? etc... That can exasperate noise. double check on full, then do a render test to your editing codec. See if it carries over.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Wow guys thank you for the speedy and helpful responses! I'll try to address them.

Matt Ryan
Your stills looks fantastic! I like a lot of your lighting. Though granted it is a bit hard to see how much noise is actually happening in a still and downressed, thank you for posting those and your helpful stats on them, it certainly gives me an idea of what should be possible.
-Ethan
www.nvisiblefx.com

If you right click the images and open in a new tab you can view them full res. Reduser limits image size on threads.

Like Timur said, if your not on a calibrated monitor, or your monitor brightness is up, your images will look much more noisy.

If you go to vimeo you can watch these in HD full screen: another reduser limit.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Thanks Ethan.

He states 6:1, which would be good for most situations. And noise isn't really what is added at higher compression rates, lack of detail (wow, that is 4k counterproductive, isn't it?) is an issue though, in complex scenes...

 

[Matt Ryan]

Thanks Ethan.

He states 6:1, which would be good for most situations. And noise isn't really what is added at higher compression rates, lack of detail (wow, that is 4k counterproductive, isn't it?) is an issue though, in complex scenes...

Yeah, I've had compression issues in detailed scenes before. Really bugs me and looks nasty. I wasn't sure if what he was seeing is the blocky compression noise or the sensor noise.