ISO & Post production question
 

What ISO do you film at and why?

I used to film at 2500 iso as I didn't see any noticeable grain on the footage captured. However, in post production if I were to use Colour Curves or Fill in Sony Vegas to increase the brightness on some ones face, if I push it too much I started to see a bit of grain.

Now if I do the same post work after capturing the same footage at 2000 iso and there isn't any grain ... why?

Also, is it better to use a Camera Profile that is BRIGHTER and then darken it / add contrast in post production rather than film something with a darker / high contrast profile and brighten it up in post ?

Re: ISO & Post production question
 

Hi James

Being old school I still work in gain but if you look carefully at dark bits of an image shot at 24db gain you will see a fair amount of noise in the low light areas whereas at 21db gain it's pretty clean.

Picture Profiles that are fairly flat like PP3 will actually make the image brighter BUT you will find there is a little more noise especially in the dark areas. I still use PP3 for weddings and just push the saturation a bit in post and I get a fairly nice result .. you might find that using a standard profile like PP5 the noise will appear to be less as the image is more contrasty ... a lot of guys are also shooting with the detail setting turned down quite a bit and then sharpening in post .... You might want to try the CineAble profiles that are listed somewhere here ..Noa swears by them!!!

I don't think there is really any perfect profile and it's purely a matter of what you think looks good or more importantly what your client is happy with. I found that no profile works well outdoors BUT indoors and under low light it's quite crappy and PP3 works better so I have gone the "middle of the road" route and use PP3 with the colour level lifted by 2 which gives a reasonable indoor pic but one still has to lift saturation of outdoor stuff. It's a compromise for me but I have had situations using outdoor settings and in the rush of a wedding gone indoors and have forgotten to change profiles. With PP3 it seems more error proof to me and safer!

Chris