Night scene settings in V1
 

Taking night scene footage could be tricky - gain levels, shutter speed, noise control, knee, etc.

I would appreciate if someone could post here a list of settings for good quality night shots (like city lights scenery) that could be saved as a "picture profile".
In DSP's V1 training video there is a part about such settings, however its a high color profile, not exactly the night scene I am looking for.

Thanks a lot!

Zsolt

Zsolt

Try a combination of low sharpness, compressing blacks with black compensation or cine gamma settings. I also reduce the saturation a little especially under sodium lights.

It depends how you set up the camera for a night scene whether you have a low contrast or high contrast scene to shoot. A high contrast scene you can really go to town with crushing the black and therefore hiding the noise caused by the gain.

I don't think anyone can prescribe you a setting and the best way is to get out and shoot some low light scenes changing parameters as you shoot then checking them when you get back on the NLE. See which ones in certain circumstances do best. You'll soon get a feeling how to set up the camera under different lighting condition with practise.

TT

Yes, but ...

While it would be nice to drop shadows to black -- I found with dark tone skin one is also crushing all the detail out of faces.

Basically, keep gain a 9db or lower and noise is not a big issue. Ideally at 6dB.

Yes, totally agree, how one deals with a low light scene is purely down to the content. No point crushing the blacks if that's where the important information is.

The trouble is when people start talking about low light I get the feeling it's going to be no-light! ;)

TT

Thanks, I will give it a try.

Actually this is what I plan to shoot:

http://www.fenyevolucio.hu/index.php

maybe this would give you the idea what setting I am looking for

I would disagree a bit with Steve on limiting it to 6db or even 9db. There are times when even 12db will not yield much noise but yet give you a more usable picture. Of course there are other times that the same 12db WILL yield excessive noise. As was said before, it's very scene dependent.

I agree, I used 12 and 15 at a night market, but I have not yet viewed it so I didn't want to assume it would be fine.

I've yet to find some "formula" that tells when noise will be "too much" because when I watch docs on Discovery or news on our HD station -- I often see noise. Yet, some folks find any noise to be be offensive.

So for me -- 12 is fine. For others, 6 may be the limit. I chose 9 as a compromise.