Terrible noise 5DIII

[David Slingerland]

I am having some problems with noise. I have not seen this bad noise before. The footage added was shot in Costa Rica. But if you look at the blacks, you can see banding flickering.. Does anybody here no what is the cause? Off course I was shooting at an high ISO, possible 3200 maybe more. And as I am shooting for a realityshow I have been using the camera quite a lot.

link

test1 on Vimeo

[David Slingerland]

PS Don't pay any attention to the all of sudden blacks, caused by insects attracted to my cameralight..

[David Slingerland]

test2 on Vimeo

[Warren Kawamoto]

Try playing back the original file. Is it less noisy? If it is less noisy, then the issue is transcoding.

[Michael Bishop]

What aperture was set on the camera? I don't have a 5DIII. I got a 70D and found that if I shoot with a lens with a 1.8 aperture in downtown with the street light and light from the building. I can keep the ISO down to 1600 and get good video. If I shoot with a 2.8 aperture I get more noise that you got.. I can clean it up with Neat Video. Looking at the shots you show the one my the pool you had more light, The other one not has much light.

[David Slingerland]

I shot it with the 24-105 at F4 its lowest setting.
With test 2 I was also having problems with the street-lighting....
And I did a check on all the original footage... the same.

[Daniel Epstein]

Actually on my laptop the shots looks quite good overall. Lens is very slow so you are using ISO to compensate which will give you an increase in noise. You don't get everything for free.

[Michael Bishop]

Test one I just seen noise on the back of the chair.
Test two I see a little noise in the back of chair and had camera moving up. I don't know if that was a showing out a window.

[David Slingerland]

On the original footage you can see more noise. Its probably because I used a strong codec that you can not see it well. However i do get strong reactions from certain types of streetlight. Ideas on how to tackle this?

[Chris Norman]

What frame rate and shutter speed did you use? Cost Rica is an NTSC country - power cycle 60hz. You might need to shoot in NTSC mode and shutter at 60 to avoid flicker from lights.

[Daniel Epstein]

If you are shooting in 50hz Pal you should have the shutter at 1/60th to limit flicker if in a 60hz country and artificial light. You don't need to shoot NTSC to avoid flicker. Just match the shutter rate to the electric frequency or a multiple of it.

Originally Posted by Chris Norman

What frame rate and shutter speed did you use? Cost Rica is an NTSC country - power cycle 60hz. You might need to shoot in NTSC mode and shutter at 60 to avoid flicker from lights.

[David Slingerland]

Thanks people that has been really helpful. Any thoughts on the following, I got off another forum:

"I downloaded the footage, imported into FCP X, and checked the video scope (Window->Viewer Display->Show Video Scopes). It appears to be underexposed, which will increase noise issues. See Expose To The Right: Exposing to the right - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If exposed "to the right" you can lower the exposure in post, restoring the original darkened ambient feel, while retaining the better noise characteristics of a brighter exposure.

Of course there are elements in the first scene (light in background) where you've already "burned out" the highlight, but there's no meaningful detail there anyway. Protecting non-meaningful highlights can lead to a darker exposure which hurts noise performance.

It actually doesn't look too bad as is from a noise standpoint. I doubt a $20,000 field production camera with a smaller sensor could have done better if exposed similarly. "

[Dave Sperling]

A couple of basic suggestions..
Use a faster lens -- maybe switch to the 24-70 2.8 ? I do some behind-the-scenes shooting on occasion, and when the movie or tv show is being shot with an Alexa and they're shooting at a T/1.8 or lower, I can't afford to lose more than 2 stops by using a slow lens, so I need to use only 2.8 or preferably faster glass to avoid needing to push my ISO too far.
If you have footage that's just too grainy, run it through a grain-reduction plug-in at the end of post. I've been very happy with the results from the Neat plug-in -- though the rendering can be slower than molasses depending on how you set it up. (I tend to have it compare grain over several frames as part of its process, so I expect it to take a long time -- so only fix what you really need to!)
Many of the higher end large sensor HD cameras are remarkably noise-free even at high gain settings. You might find that if you're shooting available light at night in dark areas, your best bet would be an F5 or an F3 with a fast lens.
Or if you have control of the lighting, boost the level a little more...

[David Slingerland]

Thanks everyone.. I have come to the conclusion, watching later work, that the heat and the intense use of the camera was part of the blame. Also there was the issue of the streetlight working at 1/30 where as i was shooting at 1/50 th (pal) The two got mixed together. But without your feedback I could not have done it.

[Marius Pavel]

Do you have the general settings in DPP (under Preferences) on High Speed rather than High Quality, because Noise Reduction is switched off when you have it set to High Speed.