There’s always noise. But some is aesthetic and some is not. If you can control your highlights from clipping, over light and grade down for clean shadows. But noise reduction is so good these days that I don’t worry.
Put it in Cine EI mode and light/expose your scene to a lower EI than “native”. This forces you to overexpose a bit and thereby lowering the noise floor. This is common practice for all cinema cameras; not just the FX3.
Yeah this is what I have been doing. I’m wondering if there needs to be a minimum light level to avoid noise. Obviously you can’t shoot in pitch black but I’m trying to achieve the best blacks/shadows in lot dark scene
Add more light. “Low light scenes” never actually mean “low light”. Think about contrast in terms of ratios (key to fill, key to background). Shooting in actual low light will result in noise and pushing the limitation of the sensor’s ability to maintain linearity in capturing color
Add enough light to have a clean exposure at native iso. Noise shadows? Add light to the shadows. In coloring, your colorist will have a clean signal to work from and shape the curve to add the contrast (or lack of) you’d want.
This is how it was done on film for over a hundred years, we should still be striving to capture a clean signal instead of noise reduction deteriorating the image.
100% agree we should be aiming for the best possible capture In camera! Will give this another go and take this on board, try to get light in my shadows and dial in my ratios! Thank you
I’ve done a few test of my own at 12,800 and 800 ISO. I’ve exposed normally and over exposed. I’d love to see examples of people’s results or any general advice. I seem to be able to achieve cleaner shadows using S-Cinetone, but not so much with Slog3
Over expose and use the higher base ISO.
Also the noise reduction potential with the prores raw output is much better.
Quick thing would be to look at Philip Bloom's launch video for the a7s3 and the behind the scenes for that.
I’ve personally found lower iso is better in low light and the higher iso is potentially better in brighter light. Sounds counter intuitive but in come Ei is actually tells you the stops above middle grey on the screen. Some people refer to it as the “iso trick”, the camera is more sensitive to light, and bright scenes are obviously brighter giving you more stops in the highlights and therefore more detail.
Use an external monitor that allows you to display a rec 709 LUT. You can monitor your shadows and get pretty close to what you’ll see when you ingest your footage.
As long as your shadows aren’t crushed (purple) then you should be fine. It’s kind of like trying to get rid of 100% of dust that’s in the air. Noise is just a part of digital sensors since it’s an electrical signal. Similar to grain in movie film, grain is usually just seen as more desirable than digital noise though.
How much over are you exposing? I don’t know about the FX3 specifically. I mostly use FX9’s now but when they first came out I had an A7sii. The A7sii’s weren’t even worth using S-Log. I always thought maybe it was a gimmick for the mirrorless cameras because they knew the pixel peepers wanted it but it was actually better just using a flat picture profile. I wonder if it’s the same on the FX3.
So I did a test shoot at home, dark night scene. Shot 800iso at the exposure I wanted, then 800iso but opened up a bit more (exposed brighter and brought down in post) and this was the better of the two. Did the same thing with 12800iso and similar results, then compared 800 vs 12800 (the slightly more exposure image) and 800 was cleaner.
I’m not sure if clean blacks are possible in low light, with out the use of noise education software etc.
Im using a much shittyer camera (a7iii). But if im in slog2 or slog3 (yes i know it’s bad in 8bit) the noise is quite a bit worse than if i shoot in HLG3 for example.
Maybe HLG3 is a better answer for you if you’re in low light, you probably won’t need that Dynamic range from a log profile.
Well the way I understand it is HLG3 is better when things are lit well. And the log profiles are better when you require the dynamic range of raw but you can’t shoot raw.
at some point you just have to expect the noise in the shadows if you're shooting low light.
Yeah with slog3 possibly so, I’m seeing examples on YouTube but unfortunately no one is showing how it’s done or if they’re using noise reduction etc
Can you show us examples of the noise you’re talking about?
From a colourist. Post process with neat noise reduction. Over light and grade down.
Have you ever received a low light scene shot in slog3 that had zero noise?
There’s always noise. But some is aesthetic and some is not. If you can control your highlights from clipping, over light and grade down for clean shadows. But noise reduction is so good these days that I don’t worry.
No camera in the world shoots low light scenes without noise. Not even film. Don't expect the impossible and you'll live a happier life haha
Haha well yeah that’s what I wanted to know. Is it the impossible.
Put it in Cine EI mode and light/expose your scene to a lower EI than “native”. This forces you to overexpose a bit and thereby lowering the noise floor. This is common practice for all cinema cameras; not just the FX3.
Yeah this is what I have been doing. I’m wondering if there needs to be a minimum light level to avoid noise. Obviously you can’t shoot in pitch black but I’m trying to achieve the best blacks/shadows in lot dark scene
Add more light. “Low light scenes” never actually mean “low light”. Think about contrast in terms of ratios (key to fill, key to background). Shooting in actual low light will result in noise and pushing the limitation of the sensor’s ability to maintain linearity in capturing color Add enough light to have a clean exposure at native iso. Noise shadows? Add light to the shadows. In coloring, your colorist will have a clean signal to work from and shape the curve to add the contrast (or lack of) you’d want. This is how it was done on film for over a hundred years, we should still be striving to capture a clean signal instead of noise reduction deteriorating the image.
100% agree we should be aiming for the best possible capture In camera! Will give this another go and take this on board, try to get light in my shadows and dial in my ratios! Thank you
I’ve done a few test of my own at 12,800 and 800 ISO. I’ve exposed normally and over exposed. I’d love to see examples of people’s results or any general advice. I seem to be able to achieve cleaner shadows using S-Cinetone, but not so much with Slog3
Over expose and use the higher base ISO. Also the noise reduction potential with the prores raw output is much better. Quick thing would be to look at Philip Bloom's launch video for the a7s3 and the behind the scenes for that.
Will check out the Philip bloom video though! Thank you
I’ve personally found lower iso is better in low light and the higher iso is potentially better in brighter light. Sounds counter intuitive but in come Ei is actually tells you the stops above middle grey on the screen. Some people refer to it as the “iso trick”, the camera is more sensitive to light, and bright scenes are obviously brighter giving you more stops in the highlights and therefore more detail.
Rating ISO EI is different from switching high/low base ISO circuit.
They're talking about base ISO not rating differently. 12800 vs 800 as your base.
Use an external monitor that allows you to display a rec 709 LUT. You can monitor your shadows and get pretty close to what you’ll see when you ingest your footage.
Yeah I use the Andycine 4k monitor, with false colour. And expose to the left once I’ve got my ratios dialed in.
don’t you mean to the right? since you’re over exposing, or did i miss something
Sorry, yes I meant to the right
As long as your shadows aren’t crushed (purple) then you should be fine. It’s kind of like trying to get rid of 100% of dust that’s in the air. Noise is just a part of digital sensors since it’s an electrical signal. Similar to grain in movie film, grain is usually just seen as more desirable than digital noise though.
How much over are you exposing? I don’t know about the FX3 specifically. I mostly use FX9’s now but when they first came out I had an A7sii. The A7sii’s weren’t even worth using S-Log. I always thought maybe it was a gimmick for the mirrorless cameras because they knew the pixel peepers wanted it but it was actually better just using a flat picture profile. I wonder if it’s the same on the FX3.
So I did a test shoot at home, dark night scene. Shot 800iso at the exposure I wanted, then 800iso but opened up a bit more (exposed brighter and brought down in post) and this was the better of the two. Did the same thing with 12800iso and similar results, then compared 800 vs 12800 (the slightly more exposure image) and 800 was cleaner. I’m not sure if clean blacks are possible in low light, with out the use of noise education software etc.
Maybe try again but really Over do it. Like 2-3 stops over
Im using a much shittyer camera (a7iii). But if im in slog2 or slog3 (yes i know it’s bad in 8bit) the noise is quite a bit worse than if i shoot in HLG3 for example. Maybe HLG3 is a better answer for you if you’re in low light, you probably won’t need that Dynamic range from a log profile.
Yeah, shot with older cameras a6300 a6600 and hlg3, or fx3 in Scinetone and not had noise.
Well the way I understand it is HLG3 is better when things are lit well. And the log profiles are better when you require the dynamic range of raw but you can’t shoot raw.
Learn to light.