Shooting in the dark / candle lit without noise. Possible?

[Will Keir]

Hey guys, I'm trying to get some candle lit scenes and on my 17-50mm Red Zoom F/3 I'm not able to avoid noise. There are been a few post where people use just a candle and get a nice scene noise free.

I am going to have to add extra light to this candle scene to avoid the noise correct?

I also tried filming at sunset and found my footage to be quite noise in the fading light. Shooting 5kWS, 6:1 24fps - 1/48 shutter.

I believe natural lighting can be the most magical in the world, I want to capture these difficult scenes for their beauty and power, with deep blacks and little noise. Is my answer going with faster glass?

 

[Phil Holland]

In my opinion your answer might be Neat Video. If you're in a situation where you need to go up to ISO 3200-6400 you can make your material look very good. 12800 is still okay, but is on the edge personally.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Faster glass will help a lot, though...

MP/Supers/Elites are more than 2 stops faster.
That would reduse the 6400 ISO need to around 1000, and maybe only 640 if you use RLF for a base.
Light (and thus faster glass in this case) is kind of in the essence of exposure...

 

[Will Keir]

I thought I noticed RLF increasing my light. Shooting RLF in low light situation is a method to avoid the noise?

Faster glass will help a lot, though...

MP/Supers/Elites are more than 2 stops faster.
That would reduse the 6400 ISO need to around 1000, and maybe only 640 if you use RLF for a base.
Light (and thus faster glass in this case) is kind of in the essence of exposure...

 

[Will Keir]

Faster as in a f1.2 or something similar?

Any recommendations specifically?

I was hoping for a good low light zoom, but most zooms are slow because of this feature?

Faster glass will help a lot, though...

MP/Supers/Elites are more than 2 stops faster.
That would reduse the 6400 ISO need to around 1000, and maybe only 640 if you use RLF for a base.
Light (and thus faster glass in this case) is kind of in the essence of exposure...

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Cheapest you can find (PL) is probably a superspeed or optica elite.

As to stills glass, I am not the guy to ask. But yes. F1.2 would make a world of a difference.

Shooting with RLF enabled, doesn't change the exposure, but it gives you a realistic view on what you can develop from the image. If you think the noise is ok at RLF, then probably the image works, you just need to learn to handle it...

 

[Álex Montoya]

What's RLF?

 

[Erich Ocean]

What's RLF?

RedLogFilm

 

[Werner Jauch]

Just in case you didn't already know this, but Hollywood uses special candles with thicker wicks, that produce more light than a typical candle. On Google I found this: http://www.wicksandwax.com/movie_candles.htm

 

[Christopher Mills]

The Special Candles (also used on Vampire Diaries... who shoot a *VERY* dark set) have double wicks in each as standard... they are a very good product... but will burn twice as fast as non photo application candles..
Also, i worked with the gaffer Danny Eccleston (who worked on the crew of Barry Lyndon) who explained to me that his prep included some pretty exhaustive charting of a set with candles in known positions and distances from the camera, and metering them..

If you know any artisans who make candles near you, you may be able to have them make some for you.. I might even try triple wicks in such a case..
but get double or triple as many as you need for your shot, you will use a lot of them.. and if you have at least one person assisting with 'candle management,' including duplicate holders on hand to rotate with burn outs, you'll have an easier shoot.

Also, remember oil lamps with a wick for bigger and brighter sources..
... and for an off camera source.. liquid fuel double mantle coleman lanterns... though they wont flicker...

Lens wise... at 5k area coverage, I don't think you're going to find a fast zoom at all.. at least probably not under t2.5....
Superspeed lenses tend to have VERY shallow DoF wide open.. if you have some still lens mounts on your camera, there are some exotic f 0.95 still glass pieces you may be able to rent.... I think they are all in the 45mm to 55mm focal length area...
for ease of availability, I think the Canon EF L series fast primes are going to be cheaper than Zeiss t1.3 cine glass...

Now, if you would consider some artificial light to help out your shoot (almost all the stuff I deal with that yields dense blacks is in very controlled lighting setups), perhaps its worth looking at Party City for the battery powered LED tealight or votive fake candles...
also, for a fill light, I bought a $6 string of LED outdoor lights from target recently .... kept the bundle tight out of the box, clamped in a stand on a lamp dimmer, and used it as a fill.... I didnt try to make that bundle flicker, but could have...

Oh... another usefull tool is a flicker generator, plugged into a tungsten low wattage sources..... very reasonable to rent.. havent priced one to own...

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

Try experimenting using mirrors.

 

[Christopher Mills]

+1... esp "dirtied", or flexible mylar ones, hand operated/manipulated in the beam from a tungsten source on a dimmer.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Hey guys, I'm trying to get some candle lit scenes and on my 17-50mm Red Zoom F/3 I'm not able to avoid noise. There are been a few post where people use just a candle and get a nice scene noise free.

If you were to post a frame folks might get a better understanding as to where your issues lie.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Hey guys, I'm trying to get some candle lit scenes and on my 17-50mm Red Zoom F/3 I'm not able to avoid noise. There are been a few post where people use just a candle and get a nice scene noise free.

I am going to have to add extra light to this candle scene to avoid the noise correct?

I also tried filming at sunset and found my footage to be quite noise in the fading light. Shooting 5kWS, 6:1 24fps - 1/48 shutter.

I believe natural lighting can be the most magical in the world, I want to capture these difficult scenes for their beauty and power, with deep blacks and little noise. Is my answer going with faster glass?

Noise is dependent on the ASA rating and your exposure, so what ASA rating where you using and did you underexpose the image and have to bring it up?

You have to start with the ASA rating you want to work with to get the noise level you want, and that is determined by testing. Once you pick that, you would know how much light you need for a given f-stop and shutter speed. Certainly you can work at a lower ASA rating if you have faster lenses and/or more light. If available low-light shooting is your particular goal, fast lenses are an important tool.

 

[Matt Ryan]

Here are some shots from a short I was using the Red 18-85 exclusively. This is wide open at 800ASA with one 4 bank kino above the window and a bounce board for fill. That green light out the window was coming from the building across the street (practical).
Of course without any light I wouldn't have an image.

Here's the reverse at the beginning of the scene:

Here's another shot from the short with the same Red 18-85 with just the lamp as a light source. Shot at 800ASA wide open. No noise reduction was used on the film whatsoever. There was no noise...

Now the thing is with low light images your going to underexpose a lot of the image, so you have to remember to bring those areas down aka crush those areas in color correction so you don't get any noise. The problem is when you underexpose and try to bring those areas up ("brighter"), instead of bringing them down properly, that is where your noise will come from.

Having shot on film helps with exposure because you get used to the idea of careful exposure and an understanding if you dont expose it, you can't get it back... Same with overexposure, you blow it out, you can't get it back. You have to learn what is important in your images and what you need to expose for while at the same time learning what in the image to let go (underexpose/overexpose). Exposing is always a compromise unless you have the tools and the skill to get it perfect.