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Noise on dark areas


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Hello, 

I will shot a videoclip soon with a Red Komodo and Arri Ultra Prime lens. The lighting is similar to the following references. The main caracter is lit but everything around must be dark. So if I expose for the person, then the IRE levels of the darkness area on false color are 0 o less than that on set, would it be noisy? What should I do not to get a noisy dark area?

 

 

pescador-2.jpg

pescador-4.jpg

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Hi Nathaly!! 

Try setting the Komodo to a lower ISO setting to reduce digital noise, Perhaps 400 or lower and properly expose your skin tones at that ISO.  The more light you give the sensor the cleaner the blacks will look. 

Bellow is an older article that talks about RED and ISO noise levels . It might seem a bit counter intuitive but in darker scenes you actually want to lower your ISO. (unless your creative intent is to have lots of texture/digital grain in your blacks) 

Happy filming! 

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a tiny bit more controlled fill and then crushing the very lowest end of the blacks in post should do the trick.

you will want to be able to crush the very darkest tones anyway to be able to control the possible spill/bounce on the background which would show the background black box setup if watching the final material on too bright display.

so try to bring up the shadow areas on the subject just a little bit more than originally intended using some controlled fill which does not leak to the background and then just crush the blacks of the whole image in post to get those inky blacks and to hide the background completely. Withouth crushing the background WILL show in the final material on some displays so you'll have to do it anyway to hide all the moltons/other stuff there

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In the first reference image you can see that the front subject has lots more fill than the other ones. Foreground is easier to fill in this type of setup without compromising the background contrast and that kind of look would work perfectly anyway if done this way.

in post you will want to concentrate on the lowest about 10 IRE on the Curves to crush just the about 0 IRE to 5 or 8 IRE area to complete black. If the image needs it you can crush more but at least the very lowest tones need to be pitch black so have to at least crush them completely using the curve.

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