Issues with my new 7D (grain and noise in video)

[Steve Crow]

Try this as an experiment and I think you will be quite pleased:

1. Put your camera in full manual mode for video

2. Go outside

3. Select 1080p 24fps as your video shooting mode

4. Set your shutter speed to 1/50

5. Set your ISO to 200

6. Set your aperture to 2.8 or below and focus on something.

7. Now use the exposure compensation dial to get the exposure indicator in the middle of the scale. (If it still too bright and your indicator is off to the right, then either move to an area outside that has more shade or attach an ND filter to your lens.)

I can almost guarantee you that there is nothing wrong with your camera. I haven’t addressed custom picture style settings here only because I assume that if you have turned your camera sharpness down manually then you would already be aware of that and know that you can turn it back up but that gets us into a whole other topic.

Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com

[Ali Hassan]

Thank you so much for your time and answer.

I tried what you said, and I got good results. What would you recommend for low-light shooting? However, I didn’t quite understand what you meant by exposure indicator, I know what it is and I know it is below the battery icon on the information screen on top. However, it didn’t move at all even when the scene was too bright. I changed the shutter speed to decrease the over exposure.

(My wide angle lens can’t go below 4.0 in AP.)

Shutter speed
One other thing I noticed was that the shutter speed stopped at 60, but could go lower if I was in a brighter environment. I didn’t know this was possible.

Focus
Another problem that I don’t understand is focusing. Why do I need to focus at all? What If I don’t want a shallow depth of field, but want everything in the image to be equally detailed and focused on? I know the aperture must be higher, but what then do I need the focus for?

For example, I am highly inspired by this video and will hopefully learn to master these kinds of projects in a couple of years:
https://vimeo.com/22439234
I know this timelapse is made up of individual photographs and not video, but still, even in the photographs he had to focus on something? My point is that the entire image in this video is equally detailed.

I know this all sounds incredibly noobie, and it is. I will try uploading my videos as soon as I get time and show you more precisely what I get.

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[Steve Crow]

“(My wide angle lens can’t go below 4.0 in AP.)”
I don’t understand your acronyms …what do you mean by AP? Are you meaning aperture priority? How far open or “low” your lens can go is a matter of how it is constructed, not by what mode your camera is in. The less expensive kit lenses will often only go down to an aperture of 4.0 – that’s part of what you are paying for when you buy more expensive, “faster”, lenses – they will have apertures that can down to 1.4 or in some extreme cases even lower.

“I know what it is and I know it is below the battery icon on the information screen on top”
Judging by your description of the information screen and where the exposure compensation meter is it sounds like you are talking about being in still photography mode, not “movie” mode. In movie mode the exposure compensation meter is more in the bottom middle, right after the aperture indicator (I am talking about viewing the LCD screen not using the smaller viewfinder window closer to the top of the camera).

See page 152 of your user manual.

” I changed the shutter speed to decrease the over exposure.”
For a more filmic look , it is highly suggested that you KEEP your shutter speed at twice the frames per second, so if you are shooting 24fps video then the shutter speed should be KEPT at 1/50 which is as close as you can get to 48 (2 x 24=48)

I consider my shutter speed LOCKED at 1/50th and never move it…I don’t use shutter speed to control exposure but rely on ISO, aperture and ND filters to do that. Newbies always want to do what you did…changing the shutter speed for video is only done to achieve special effects – like what was done for the movie “Saving Private Ryan” – but save that for later, right now stick with the basics is my advice.

“shutter speed stopped at 60, but could go lower if I was in a brighter environment.”
This indicates to me that your camera is not set in full manual mode for video, read page 153 and make sure your mode dial is set to M

“Why do I need to focus at all?”
In theory if you set your aperture to anything higher than 22 you would have pretty deep focus and everything should be more or less in focus…however that is one of the major hallmarks of what separates old school video of the 80’s from cinematic style videos which are more like movies. The reason to focus is that it tells the viewer what in the frame they should be focusing on and plus it makes for a more pleasing image in most cases. Since you are just starting out consider it a firm and fast rule that can never be broken that you must focus your camera on something…trying to use a DSLR like a handicam / camcorder is not the way to go.

“…even in the photographs he had to focus on something?”
Yes, yes. Not focusing is like learning to drive a car and saying to the driving instructor “well why do I have to turn the steering wheel, if I keep to straight roads can’t I just keep my hands on my lap instead?”

Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com

[Ali Hassan]

Hi again, and thank you so much for your time.

I tried your recommendations, and it worked out very good. Thank you so much for your advice. The quality overall is great. I didn’t change the shutter speed from 1/50 and only played around with the ISO and aperture to get the right exposure, and switched to manual focus on the lenses.

I do have some questions though, for example, why would you recommend shooting at 24fps 1080p instead of 30fps 1080p? If i shot at 30fps on 1080p, then I should set my shutter speed to 1/60, but when would I choose to shoot at 30fps instead of 24fps?

Why I wanted to shoot in 720p at 60fps in the first palce was because of a super slow-motion effect I wanted to apply to the clip later and because the file sizes are smaller. Would you not not recommend shooting at 720p 60fps, 125 shutter speed on the entire project, instead of cropping the 1080p clips to 720p afterwards? In terms of image quality itself, there should not be any too noticeable difference between 1080 and 720p should it?

One other thing I would like to know about, is shooting in low-light outdoors and indoors, and how much of a difference these picture styles make. I know both of these subjects are quite heavy.

[Ali Hassan]

Thank you.

What I meant by picture styles was, does these affect the image quality itself? I really like the Cloudy option in setting the white balance, but this same effect can be applied in After Effects if your original shot is taken with auto white balance.

I noticed that you turned everything all the way down without tone. I tried this, and I thought the difference was not that huge. I might just be too inexperienced to notice the differences. So far, I have the impression that you could change a shot taken with standard picture style and Auto white balance to anything of the other picture styles and white balances that are available, in After Effects later. Is this true?

I have some experience with After Effects, so my priority first and foremost is to get the best video quality possible and least amount of grain and noise. Changing the looks, warmth, contrast, color and so on of the picture would be easier for me to do in After Effects.

[Steve Crow]

Yes, since what you are talking about are the white balance options they do change the quality of the captured image. Picture styles are a separate control and so are not the same thing. You can change the white balance in editing as you point out. I often use automatic white balance but I have also on occasion done custom white balances.

The custom picture style that I wrote about (which was first highlighted by Philip Bloom and other well known DSLR video gurus) are intended to create a “flatter” image, with less noise that color grades better in editing. So the desired outcome is to give you the best possible footage to work with in After Effects or whatever editing/color grading tool you are using.

The in-camera sharpening algorithms in particular are considered to be too aggressive and once that in camera sharpness is “baked in” to your footage, it’s hard to work around that. You may or may not notice any differences if you are relying on the LCD screen, on your computer monitor the differences should be much more noticeable.

Steve Crow
Crow Digital Media
http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com

[Ali Hassan]

I tried shooting at night time today and got pretty bad results. It is kind of strange, because there is more noise on the blue sky than on the darker trees. I have uploaded the videofile so you can see here:
https://f1.creativecow.net/6156/lowlight-shoot

Videofile information:
Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF-S 55-250mm
1920×1080 24fps, Shutter 30, ISO 200, Aperture 4.0

Picture
The photographs also had noise. Link to one of the photographs: https://tinypic.com/r/33b1tax/5

[Matty Films]

I Recently shot some clips in a dark room with vague lighting for a boxing scene, I have a Canon Rebel T5i and used a Canon 70-300mm Lens. I uploaded the files to my computer and watched them and there is noise, how can i get rid of the noise if I shoot it again in darker to almost black setting with vague lighting?

[Steve Crow]

You are having noise because there isn’t enough light reaching the sensor. You can try raising your ISO but I assume you are doing that and high ISO itself can also introduce noise. So if you want to shoot in a dark setting like that then you have to get a camera with a sensor designed for low light situations….the Sony A7s is a very good example of that, you could shoot that camera in a cave lit only by a candle and still see something.

If you have to stick with the Canon I would suggest shooting the boxing scene under more well lit conditions then seeing what you can do in post to bring down the overall exposure – that will get you around the noise problem, but it’s not a perfect solution.

Steve Crow

[Matty Films]

Thank you, That can definitely explain it, I appreciate your help. Also what are good settings to shoot with for my Canon Rebel T5i? I noticed some noise in well lighting? Such as when I shoot Scenes in a house with good lighting or outside during the day?