Night shooting
 

Does any one have any good tips for shooting night scenes (i.e. poorly lit street at night, night indoor shooting, etc). I find the noise/grain when shooting under low light conditions with the XL1s to be pretty bad. How dow you achieve those clear and crisp (yet dark) night shots that you see in movies? are they possible with the xl1s?

I've experimented somewhat with different light sources (different gels, distance, wattage, etc) but was not pleased with the results (I probably didn't do it right).

Hi,
Did a shoot this summer under orange street lights, yuk! We used a blue shirt to white balance( not dark blue but the blue color of sheets). Skin tones , the most important to me, turned out pretty natural looking. Try the gain to -3 might help the grain.

Hollywood usually uses powerful lights covered with blue gels, that color (blue) often denotes a night time scenario.

Bruce

Hey Bruce,

What do you mean by using a "blue shirt" (a blue filter?).

Thanks for your suggestions (I love how there's always someone with an answer to your questions in this forum).

Jordi

I'm speculating that Bruce means he used a real blue shirt...you know, with arms and a collar. White balancing can be done on colors other than white if you want to adapt to other color conditions. You can lie to the camera.

Jordi-san,

Ken-san is correct, I mean blue like in a light blue button down dress Oxford dress business shirt. Daytime clear blue sky

BTW if you point your camera toward the clear daytime blue sky and white balance for daylike , your video vill have a golden hue.

Wakarimasu-ka?

Bruce

so so...arigato.

I'll give that a go and see how it turns out. I'll let you know the outcome (to see if I get the results I'm looking for).

Thanks again

One thing I noticed that usually you can have your scenes a lot
darker than you think when looking through the viewfinder and
builtin light meter. A good monitor is very handy. Then you can
actually see what you get, which is usually brighter than you
thought. I once shot the moon at +12 db because I thought I
needed that. It turned out I didn't. Because the moon was
relatively small the builtin lightmeter that it saw almost nothing.
When I watched the footage back on a TV it was almost too
bright! I'm planning to shoot some more moon footage lateron
(for fun and learning) and I plan to have a monitor or something
with me to assess the image a bit better!

Btw, you might try getting a few huge worklights (halogen 500
or more watt?) from those construction markets (or what are
they called?) to flood the street with more light.

Perhaps you'll find this article interesting:
http://www.videomaker.com/scripts/article.cfm?id=9036

Good luck!

Re: Night shooting
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Jordi-San : I find the noise/grain when shooting under low light conditions with the XL1s to be pretty bad. How dow you achieve those clear and crisp (yet dark) night shots that you see in movies? are they possible with the xl1s?

No one seems to have addressed this part of the question specifically...
I would also be interested in the answer. Can you intentionally underexpose (subject moving in and out of dark shadow, for example) at 0db gain and expect noise free blacks? I haven't achieved it yet with my GL2, but I am very new. I know there are tweaks (sharpness, etc) but all other things being equal, what are DV cameras of this quality capable of?

I sorta answered it indirectly.... I'd stay at 0 or -3 db... .add light,
instead of noise.... And as I said above. Sometimes things can
be a lot lighter than you see through your viewfinder. Expirement.

October DV mag
 

I glanced at the October issue of DV. It looks like there is an article on night shooting. May be some good advise for 5.99...

My .02

WG

Bruce-san,

playing with the white balance and the light blue fabric worked under the orange street lights, but I'm still getting way too much noise. Reducing the gain to -3db helped somewhat but it also made the scene too dark to be able to recognize detail (I was forced to reduce the shutter speed to 1/15).

Any ideas to get a sharper low-light scene? anyone?

WG, I'll make sure to check out the article in DV...hopefully it will have some good pointers. thx

In my many years of film photography I have seen many wonders. The public has been put into a mind set as to what to expect on the silver screen. So the film manufaturers and labs have worked very close together and given us some really neet products and greatly improved the capabilities of their products.
They have increased the speed of their film( it's ability to record an image on the emulsion) increased the detail (reduced it's graininess) and mastered how to "push" and "pull" film.
It is my observation that video tape manufacturers do not have the latitude(s) in the video medium (tape) as does the film industry.
The film industry is over 100 years old, video 25+ maybe. In time there will be an explosion that will surpass film and film will go the way of glass plate photography.

At this point I believe you are limited by a tapes capability and must suffer like the rest of us till you can buy different speed tapes like you can film ( I bet you the military has them now!)

Everyone has the same problem, we see it on film, those low light level shots and say " why can't I do that or why doesn't it look just like the movies do?" Till then we just have to do our very best. The public bought "Blair Whitch", I 'll bet you could produce better with your lens cap on the lens and your camera turned off

Just my opinion
(please excuse any typos, had cataract surgery 3 days ago)
Bruce

Just for reference, 2 inch Quad Video was commercially released in 1971 (I think) but other similar formats were in use in the late '60's. They were never released for commercial use. When I first got started in video I edited 2 inch tape. It was done like film. It was cut with a blade and bonded back together.

Jeff

I'll correct myself, 2 inch machines came out in 1966. Ampex had working units sold for broadcast in 1956. The first video broadcast was November 30, 1956. Douglas Edwards and the News, CBS.

Jeff

I'm not sure but wasn't Kinescope a form of video?
Bruce

Just a side note: In my experience, any grain present in the picture is most visible in the darker areas. Therefore, in a night shoot situation, with lots of shadow, you will more than likely see some grain at even 0 db of gain. Maybe it's not grain precisely, but what I like to call "swimmies."

The October issue of DV magazine does have an excellent article on night shooting with video.

The idea is to shoot like you would with film. That is, use plenty of light, filters, and patterns to achieve a "nighttime" effect, without losing the image.

By the way, Kinescope was a way of preserving LIVE television shows by FILMING television screens. This was before video tape. (That's right - video transmission preceded video recording)

Yeah, I was in television from 74-76. A cameraman. We were using HUGE studio cameras on location at football and baseball games here in Houston. Still shot some film for news... I left just before ENG cameras came in.

(I remember the razorblades...!)

When shooting on location. Look around to find something that would be your "source" of light. In other words, if there are street lights in the background then the viewer will assume that there is a street light around your subjects somewhere. Then you light the scene with the viewer assuming the light is coming from the "streetlight". If you are in the middle of the woods then assume there is a full moon. Wrap 1 or 2 600 watt lights with diffusion paper and make it as soft as possible and as high in the sky as humanly possible. Don't forget to subtlely backlight your subjects. Alsodeflectors work well at night, they gather only the light you allow to be deflected into areas you need and it doesn't look as though there is a "hard" light on those places.

Bill
thanks,
All I remembered was kiniscope looked like real grainy stuff, I thought it might have been degradeing video, but now I know better.

thanks again, shows we never stop learning.

Bruce

After reading all the advice given in the thread and the forementioned article in DV mag, I did some indoor night light experimentation and got some super tight results!

I set for 4 different scenes/moods: 1) moon-light, 2) TV glare, 3) computer monitor glare, and 4) candle light (got the idea from DV mag article for this one). All situtations included a model to experiment with the level of detail that could be attained and the amount of noise in the darker areas. As I said, the results were astounding. There was very little (if any visible) noise and the amount of detail was comparable to a feature film (not trying to brag).

Playing with gels and white balance was critical to achieving the results I wanted. If anyone is interested in seeing the results, let me know.

I'd like to. Since we're all on the quest for the film look, to see what you did would interest me.

okay, let me clarify that I was not after a "film look," but after getting the amount of detail and low noise level that you would see in any night scene of any typical movie.

I'd be very interested in some footage of this indeed! Especially
with some explaining next to it. Thanks!

Jordi-San, post them results! :)

Aaron

DV Magazine
 

WG, in an earlier post, referred to an article in DV Magazine. Yes, you can buy it on newstands, but you can also subscribe free of charge. On the inside there is a full-size page (card stock) that you tear out, fill in, then mail or fax to them.

How easy can it get?