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Trouble getting sky and ground properly exposed with NX5U
Hello,
I went into NYC to shoot some b-roll to improve shooting skills with Sony NX5U and was disappointed with my results. I continue to come back with footage that has a lot of grain/noise. If you look at the first clip :00-:20 in Grainy NYC skyline video (below) in HD all the buildings are grainy. I then adjusted the f stop and had a better result from :20-:40, but lost the color in the sky.
Grainy NYC Skyline:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNR6FglZUCQ
In the second video of Grand Central, my sky was totally blown-out. If I exposed for the sky then the station would of been totally grainy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKu1V9xvCeI
Both shots were with gain at 0!
Any advice as to how to achieve better exposure/balance with the NX5U would be much appreciated. Could this be something in the camera settings? What would you have done to achieve a good shot?
Thanks,
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3 Replies
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1. Regarding the first clip, What were all of your settings. Not just the gain. Automatic, or manual, iris, etc, the whole thing.
2. Regarding the second clip, whenever you have a strong backlit subject you can either adust for the backlight or the subject, but you can’t really get both to be the perfect exposure.
3. However, you can simulate greater latititude by playing with the picture profiles. First try the presets, then experiment on your own. you can create a custom gamma curve that can both accomadate strong light and dark subjects.
John Lenihan
John Lenihan
LeniCam Video Productions
https://www.lenicamvideoproductions.com -
Anything above -3db gain on the NX5U is going to have some grain in the blacks.
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I would contend that anything above -3 will have grain in blacks, mid and highs. And honestly, I keep it at -6 as much as possibly possible.
Also, an iris above about 4 will start to give grain as well. Keep those things in mind and test again.
Post back your results.
I have found that shooting in -6db (even if a little too dark) and increasing the mids and highs in post looks better than shooting in -3 or 0.
Eric P
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