Too Much grian in lowlight...tips?

[Patrick Smith]

Ok so i have noticed that my film the other night came out a little too griany. i was filming cars driving down a lit city street at low speeds.

now the guy who i bought the camera had a custom preset that he said he used for low light, but i accidently erased that...

so i'm wondering what i should try and do to reduce the grain for those lowl light shots..

and what to do when i really don't have the time to get a nice white balance off something @ night...

all comments are going to be helpful... btw its a gl2. i also purchased a light vl-3 to maybe help...

[Rob Lohman]

A small light like the VL-3 will not help for wide/large shots. The
best thing to do is to add lights or shoot at dusk or dawn instead
of night. Camera's are far less sensitive than a human eye!

Make sure you are shooting in full manual to tweak everything to
optimum levels, beginning with:

- open the lens (iris) as much as possible (the maximum value is different at the wide and telephoto end of your lens!)
- reduce shutter speed (the acceptable level depends on the amount of motion in the scene or with your camera)
- increase gain (introduces noise)

Besides this, the only thing you can do is add light...

[Chris Hurd]

And if somebody out there has a custom pre-set they've devised for low-light shooting and feels like sharing it, please let us know!

[Brad Higerd]

Patrick,

Definitely shoot in manual mode in lowlight situations. Among the custom presets there is a “setup” slider that could improve your picture by increasing it +1 or +2 notches from default. In addition, shooting in 16:9 mode (anamorphic stretched) provides a minor improvement to colors in very lowlight.

My 2 cents.

Brad

[Darko Flajpan]

You can also set sharpness down in CP mode. This can also help a bit in low-light situations.

[Patrick Smith]

wow. thanks guys! time to experiment!

[Dmitry Yun]

there is a plug in for AE called grain surgeon try that see if that will do the trick.

Good luck

[Graham Bernard]

1/- Use more light

2/- Use of Setup as part of a preset

3/- Using a wide angle? This will take light from the CCDs

4/- I didn't see AE being spoken of in our friend's post? . . But while on the subject of post prod, I use Sony Vegas, I have "pulled" stuff off the editing floor by judicious use of Colour Corrector, Colour Curves and the like, inconjunction with the vector Scopes that you get WITH Vegas. All this post prod stuff can be done, and done very well IMHO, within Vegas - oh did I say Vegas is ALSO an NLE too? .. Plus a sound editor and will do 5.1 surround mapping, is mostly format and hardware agnostic? I didn't? Well I am!

Look, I've now come to the conclusion that if I can't see the stuff AND I have to have a well balanced evenly detailed picture I know now I can "pull" it back when I'm in post. If you expose to much you can loose the detail of the background - if you "grain-up" then you need to smooth out - as you've found. My thoughts are now to get as best a detailed picture and apply post-prod functions to lift the picture. While on the subject of grain removal, people out in Vegas-Land have been beavering away at many different plugins - mostly free! - to be used WITH Vegas .. kinda think that the Sony name MAY have something to do with it? - See? The picture coming into focus now?

Seriously, if PostProd aint an option, then truly consider more light. Grain=Pain! . . That is NOT to say that the recent - past 15 years - has seen a prevalence in Indie filmaking for the use of grained-up work - it's a style thang! - BUT, may not be what you want. Here's the other thing: While a lot of us are trying to upskill ourselves into making the best shot possible, others have said, "What the hell! - as long as it is in the can it is a video/film!"

.. . hooo .. did I just here the can openner on that tin of worms being eased round? Ummm, yummy, don't yah just love the smell of worms early in the morning?

Grazie