Hi all:
I recently shot our city's lighted boat parade. First time to do much with the EX-1 in the dark. I must say I am very pleased. Thanks to Paul and others who helped me with the setup. I shot, voiced and edited the event in Final Cut Pro and the video is native. Hope you enjoy it.

Indian Rocks Beach Lighted Boat Parade 2008 By Phil Hanna On ExposureRoom (http://exposureroom.com/IRB_Boat)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Nice voice, but the pictures are too dark in my opinion.

I appreciate the comments. I did not take any measures to change the video. I will run a test clip through Apple COLOR and see if I can enhance the quality.

Phil

Right on, good stuff! What gain setting did you use? Very clean footage!

Buck Phil shot at -3 gain.

-3db was the gain.

Phil

-3db limits the maximal output to a sub-100IRE-value. It's not a good choice in a high-contrast-scene with a lot of tiny shiny highlights.

First I must say that I have never seen something like this before! Nice idea this lighted boat parade.

The footage is really noise free but -3 is maybe too much. Would be interesting to see this in 0db maybe +3db, but not with more gain, because then you would have a much brighter and noisy picture. And when you really would see the boats very bright the effect of filming at night will be not so nice as now!

I have experimented with -3, 0, +3, +6, +9 gain shooting over cities at night in a helicopter. Once we took the footage back to a TV station they would only accept the -3 gain footage for HD broadcast saying all the others had too much noise. Looking at the same footage on my monitor I agree. So on the next 5 shoots we used only -3 with great results. That is why I recommended -3gain to Phil.

What gamma-settings did you use?

Dominik not sure if you mean you or Phil. I use Cine4 for those shoots.

Paul set me up for this shoot. I did what he said to do and it looked great to me.

Personally I think it looks great! Since it was a dark night I don't see how bumping up the gain would be effective because your settings show the rich darks of night and the boat lights look great to me. Very vivid, like you're there. You have a great voice talent as well.

Thanks Phil and I am glad it worked out to your liking.

I am sure with all the great knowledge on this forum we can tweak the settings more and improve the setup for future night shooting.

Dominik what settings have worked for your night shoots?

Dominik what settings have worked for your night shoots?
I totally switched to the workflow to use cine2 in all situations and keep all other settings neutral, because with those settings I know I'm capturing the most amount of data. All things concerning the look I do in post.

Interesting I have never had good results with Cine2.

So you are saying you use a Picture Profile with Cine2 picked and everything else in the fields left as 0? Do you use gain in your night shots? Do you have some examples we can see to learn from you results?

Hi,

Great shots.
I'm really supprised you set gain to -3, except if you only wand to get the boat's light, and not the boats themselves.
I made some great shots on light (candles) in the night with 0 or +3 gain.
If you think everything excpet -3 is too noisy, I really think your camera is having a problem or you should have mistaken another setting.
EX1/3 camera are known to have less noise and better low light capability at default preset.

Interesting Sebastien you are saying if I read your post correctly that 0 and +3 have less noise then -3?

Interesting Sebastien you are saying if I read your post correctly that 0 and +3 have less noise then -3?

No, you're not reading correctly, or I miss explained :)
I said that the EX1/3 should be able to shoot at night, in low light, without gain, and giving a (almost) noise free image. Even +3db gives far less noise than lots of camera, even a lot more costly.

If you have too much noise when shooting at night with 0db, your camera must have a problem. OR, you are personaly way too sensitive to noise, and in that cas, use -3db, but you will lack a lot of details.

Of course, it all depends on what you need and how much noise you can handle. But, again, if you think you have too much noise a 0db in the night with the EX1, sell it, and any "small" camera you have, and go for a 100k$ Sony F900 or more :)

Sebastien sorry I thought I was not reading you correctly that is clearer. I agree 0 and +3 are nice pictures but I do notice the difference. I agree it is not much but enough to push me to shoot -3 when ever I can. If Phil wanted to have more of the boats in the shoot then adding gain would make sense. But having been to years of boat parades the lights are the feature so it is better to not see the boats.

I am always looking for the least amount of noise and the clearest picture. Not ready to sell the EX1 but I am in the market for a 2/3" HD camera to add to my kit for the better detail to please the clients who do see the difference.

EDIT:
Also this is the reason I added the Convergent Design Flash XDR to my kit. It greatly helps the detail of the EX series cameras.

I think it looks pretty good. But I've seen other night shots that look better for some reason. Maybe boost the black (gamma)? Dunno

Here's some examples of some good night shots:

Halloween in Vegas:
Trick or Treat 2008 on Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/2275499)

Fireworks show:
Brooklyn Bridge 125th Anniversary Grucci Fireworks on Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/1066619)

So I wonder what the difference is between your settings and theirs?

Do remember that if you do shoot at -3db you have slightly less dynamic range than at 0db.

Here's the settings for the fireworks video: (copied from his Vimeo page)

Shot with Sony PMW-EX1 XDCAM camera. Gain -3db, Iris F1.9, Matrix Hi Sat, Cine Gamma 4. 1080p30. Exception near the end where I used Slow Shutter 8 frame accumulation and closed down the iris to compensate. Raw video. Unedited.