Pushing your camera to 3200ISO: Textured film look

[omar robles]

So I have heard from a number of cinematographers that pushing your cameras ISO to 3200 asa will get you a more textured look, and more film like highlights. My question is do you stop down on the lens afterward setting your camera to 3200, or do you put on a ND? The DP who mentioned this used an arri mini and his cinematography looked very film like. My F35 is native 450 iso so I am unable to try this with that camera.

Thanks

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Depends on the camera; but honestly you won't really get more "film like" noise; you'll get more noise-- which may not be what you want. As for the highlights; again it depends, but yes, it does generally move more of your dynamic range into the highlights at the expense of shadow information. The native of your sensor generally means that you have an equal amount of dynamic range above and below middle grey. If you up the ISO; you shift more stops into the highlights. if you lower ISO you shift more into the shadows. Pushing it results in more noise; generally, and lowering it can clip your highlights badly.

As for stop on the lens you'd set your exposure to compensate for you having changed the ISO. For example, if you were at a T2 @800ISO and went to 3200 ISO you'd close down the lens to a T4 OR use a ND.6 to keep your exposure the same.

[David Mullen ASC]

The image will be noisier at 3200 ISO -- whether that noise looks like grain or feels "film-like" is a personal taste issue. One problem with both noise and grain is that the visibility of that texture is dependent on display size. Probably real film grain is better in this respect since the grain sizes are more variable and random within the frame, and frame to frame, whereas noise is more of an electronic "shimmer" that varies less frame to frame, so probably drops out of visibility more abruptly as the display size shrinks.

[David Mullen ASC]

Noise comes from underexposure of the sensor (from using a higher ISO rating) combined with boosting the signal, whether in camera or by in post, so if your camera doesn't allow higher ISO ratings (though it probably then offers gain boosting, which is the same thing more or less), you could just underexpose and brighten in post for more noise.

 

The Sony F35 has a low-middle-high gain toggle switch and you can select in the menu how many DB's of gain each level gives you.

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/157942/Sony-F35-Cinealta.html?page=55