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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 :)

Noise on Epic-w

Milano Questa said:
Ofcourse it does, just not at camera level. Any amplification of ISO is digital gain. In post or in camera.
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If I understand your cryptic response - you are dead wrong. Changing ISO on a RED camera is just changing metadata. There is no digital gain applied.
 
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Terry VerHaar said:
If I understand your criptic response - you are dead wrong. Changing ISO on a RED camera is just changing metadata. There is no digital gain applied.
Click to expand...
I believe he means changing ISO in post, not in camera. The ProRes will have the gain applied as will the viewing display in camera.
 
I'll give it to you, that is some noisy footage.

A few problems right off the bat.

One and most importantly, your saturation is off the charts high in the meta data. That doesn't help one bit. With saturation set that high, you're gonna get noise no matter what at 1280

Two, you're under exposed even when ISO is at 1280, and it's very noticeably under exposed at 800 (which is the native ISO of the helium sensor)

Three, your in camera white balance seems off. It's more apparent when you correct your saturation to a normal level.

Four, use the color settings John Schick was generous enough to share for some better results http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?151259-Saturation-Rolloff-LUT

That will clean up your noise a lot. Also it is true that Helium doesn't have an official color science yet, so things are still going to improve in camera.

As for an FS7, I know a lot of people are going to say "well there is no way an FS7 could ever be better than an Epic" and to that I say, if you are trying to expose an epic like you do an FS7 and are very used to an FS7 and not other packages, then you will probably get better results from the FS7. Of all the camera packages I've worked with they are probably some of the most dissimilar.

An Epic-W behaves a lot more like film. It has more demanding exposure needs, at the same time it delivers MUCH better results when those needs are met than just about any other camera out there. Also if you are shooting on an FS7 in Slog 3, you can't do some of the things that contributed to the noise in your shot (like having the saturation at 200% in camera) and on top of that your native ISO is way higher.

Don't expect the two cameras to behave similarly, because they won't. They are very different tools, but once you figure out how to properly expose your epic you will definitely get way better results. Do keep in mind In many situations, Sony is pretty darn good at making low light sensors, especially when you have minimal control over lighting.

Last note, let's keep the calling other people Noobs to a minimum, the whole point of reduser is to answer questions and help everyone become better shooters.
 
Terry VerHaar said:
If I understand your criptic response - you are dead wrong. Changing ISO on a RED camera is just changing metadata. There is no digital gain applied.
Click to expand...

Come on terry, you're smarter than that.
Changing ISO *is* changing the gain level. The original signal gets amplified. With Red it just doesn't get baked in.
 
In addition to the other advice, in RedCine check the D.E.B box under the gamma curve, this does a lot of colour noise clean up which, for this footage, helps a lot.

Also view the footage in situ to see the noise across frames. Pixel peeping at 8K is of limited use, we'll find all sorts of 'things' wrong, especially lenses now.

In terms of changing the ISO. With some cameras this means to apply analogue gain to the sensor before any AD conversions, this will make changes that aren't the same as doing a digital push. The A7sII has very different noise patterns before and after a certain ISO as does the Varicam which even has an official setting. Doing this work in the analogue domain can make for better images.

cheers
Paul
 
I wish you had given some more details of how you shot this, lighting conditions, etc.
Yeah, the saturation doesn't help things. And, once you pull that back, it feels like it wants to live in the daylight side of things. Now, what is the reason to this being so underexposed? If it's daylight coming from windows, how come you had to go to 1280 on your ISO? Is the lens stopped down? Were ND's left in front of the lens?
We all have made these kind of errors before, so that's what it looks to me...
 
Thanks for your replies,

No ND on the camera and the lens was the Nikon 70-200mm @ 200mm and f:2.8.

The end of the afternoon and I have the daylight through windows in the living-room and some artificial light in the background.

Why the saturation is always at the maximum when I power on the Epic ? How can I change that please ?
 
Milano Questa said:
Come on terry, you're smarter than that.
Changing ISO *is* changing the gain level. The original signal gets amplified. With Red it just doesn't get baked in.
Click to expand...

It does not effect the recorded file, however, which means there is no noise actually introduced to the data or the image. If there is noise present anyway, pushing ISO will make it easier to see but doesn't create noise.

I am specifically contrasting this with what happens when typical analog gain is applied in other cameras. In that case, noise is most definitely introduced into the image file.
 
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In my opinion, the noise is due to under exposure at 800. And too much saturation create color noise.

So far I find the Epic-W with Standard OLPF to behave much similar to the Epic Dragon with LLO OLPF. I consider base ISO at 800. You can push more, but you will get noise, depending on the situations. You can still get a clean image, but I have been shooting at 800 and not moving much from there.

I am approaching ISO like film (or photo film), and it helps. http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?151655-An-alternative-approach-to-RED-ISO
That helps to answer the baked or not baked digital gain part. It is not baked. It is digital gain. It is metadata.
 
Alberto Guglielmi said:
In my opinion, the noise is due to under exposure at 800. And too much saturation create color noise.

So far I find the Epic-W with Standard OLPF to behave much similar to the Epic Dragon with LLO OLPF. I consider base ISO at 800. You can push more, but you will get noise, depending on the situations. You can still get a clean image, but I have been shooting at 800 and not moving much from there.

I am approaching ISO like film (or photo film), and it helps. http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?151655-An-alternative-approach-to-RED-ISO
That helps to answer the baked or not baked digital gain part. It is not baked. It is digital gain. It is metadata.
Click to expand...

I've had similar results. Weapon Helium Standard OLPF performing similar to Dragon LLO but with much better skin tones. Thats absolutely fine by me!
 
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