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Tips and tricks for dealing with Low Light material?
I just shot a very cool wedding where the clients want an artistic look. First half was outdoors in daylight and no problem. Second half was very dark (in a Hookah tent for instance) I pushed the gain 3-6dB and shot mostly with the lens wide angle and wide open but it’s still way dark. You can see the detail if I push the whites in 3 way color corrector, but is there a better way?
Footage was shot on a Canon XL H1 in 1080i HDV but down converted to SD for editing (that’s another story from another post, but MAYBE I’ll be able to go back to editing in HDV in the future, right now i have to get moving). It will mostly be viewed on standard DVD any small web files…any suggestions and workflow ideas greatly appreciated.
Jeff
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11 Replies
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[Jeff Mueller] “You can see the detail if I push the whites in 3 way color corrector, but is there a better way? “
Try playing with the Middles more than with the Highlights and keep the blacks in place.
With Color you would be able to do something better.
rafael -
My experience with HDV is that it is better not to use too much gain in the camera as this is often noisier than pushing in the grade later. As Rafael said, use the mid gain as well as highlight gain in the 3 Way CC.
Check out Lyric’s shadow highlight plugin. It is free and does a great job of lifting detail in the dark areas.
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Thanks, i’ll play around with this and post my conclusions. You think 3 way color corrector is the appropriate tool?
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[Jeff Mueller] “You think 3 way color corrector is the appropriate tool?”
Among the standard FC tools yes.
Colorista could work better. Have an “Exposure” control too.
you may try to treat the gain noise with a bit of Horizontal Blur in the Green or Blue channel.
rafael -
Thanks, Gabriel, you angel. Good ideas. Let me play around, AND THEN,. IF YOU DON’T MIND, ASK SOME MORE. Sorry about caps.. I do feel that low light when shooting and in post, must be something a lot of us face. Once upon a time I got to go into an incredible color correcting studio with a guy named Sparkle who would fix everything I had fucked up with a little telecine magic. But those days are gone for most of us.
I MIGHT have been able to get the restaurant to turn up the lights at my last event, but at what price to the mood? A small increase in light level would not have effected my recording much.
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Also try applying Gamma Correction to the clip in the timeline and play with gamma. It can make a difference to dark clips.
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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India -
Jeff,
I use an A1, same chips as an H1, one of the biggest shortcomings of these are noise in low light. In addition to the good advice you got here, is try video purifier from Innobits. It takes some testing to get it right but it is the best noise reducer I have seen. After Effects comes in second.
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Lyric’s Shadow/Highlight for the win!
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Been there. Shooting with an A1 (same chips) I deal with the trade off between noise and brightness every shoot. There is a compromise with event videography because you don’t want to ruin the ambiance with your lighting but you still want a clean image. As has been mentioned working with a slightly underexposed source rather than using more gain in the field seems to give an overall better result with the right filters. If the shot is color-corrected properly I can do wonders with two filters:
Dominik’s Contrast (free) – adjust gamma and contrast with a built in cap on ire levels
https://tr.im/BUdaand Neat Video’s noise reduction plug-in ($99)
https://tr.im/BUecBelow is what Neat can do to a noisy shot.
The motion characteristics are very good too – the area with removed noise blend very well with detail areas.
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