How to Shot at night ???
I used Canon XL1S, but there are grain in my video.

thanks
Sunarto

The best way to get good shots at night is to add light but this isn't always possible and it can go from a simple on camera light to complex multiple light set-ups. If you could give us a little more information on what you are shooting then we could probably offer more information.

Put simply, the grain is caused by the Gain level being greater than zero. Adding light should be a given, but you also need to switch the cam to manual and turn off the Gain if you want to remove the grain (also known as "video noise").

Turn off the Gain, if you want to remove the grain. I think I may have a song or something there.

I want to shoot candle light, so i can't add light. I want to take romantic scene.

Lighting a scene to look dark is one of the fine arts of lighting. Bounce and diffusion are the keys as well as carefully placed lights in your scene tht will add illumination but not obvious light. Chinese lanterns are great for this.

As Alex mentioned the gain is what's adding the noise in your shot. Anything over +6db and you'll start to notice the noise.

Unfortunatley, the XL-1 and XL-1S are light hogs. They cut a gorgeous picture in broad daylight but run for cover as the light goes down.

The chinese lantern is a wonderful light source. It is soft and not "sourcey". You can also add a subtle flickering to bring out your candlelight effect. A very inexpensive way to do this is with what is commonly referred to as an "emergency blanket". You would use the blanket as a reflector.

The emergency blanket can be purchased for about $5.00 at any number of stores that specialize in camping or outdoor sporting equipment. It is a shiny, copper color on one side and silver on the other.

When you combine these element with well placed "practicals" within your scene, as Adrian suggested, they should give you the desired effect you are looking for without having to resort to too much gain.

Remember that the best lighting is the lighting that is not obvious.

And one more thing: the automatic exposure can not deal with darkness, but tries to make it lighter than it should be. That's why you'll have to correct the exposure manually (to minus side) or try using the spotlight automatic exposure setting.

Yeah, for difficult lighting conditions stay right away from auto modes. Shoot from a tripod as much as possible, drop your shutter speed down to 1/30 (NTSC), 1/25 (PAL) and open the iris (f stop) wide. In auto modes the camera will set the gain to max, you will have no control and a lot of video noise.

I use a flashlight (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16281) :-p

You will need to experiment some to get the setting right. The idea usually is that you want the scene to look like it was shot at night.

The cam's EVF is not very good for making these judgements. An external monitor is far better.

Anyway, I took some shots with my XL-1 (not the S) in wine cellar. The EVF kept telling me it was a little dark. When I put my video on the monitor later it looked lots better and even had that romatic look about it (leaking light from the hallways).

Nathan,

I just recently had the same experience with my XL-1. I was filming at a party(using full manual) and the meter said low light. The image in the viewfinder even looked so dark that I thought the video would be useless. I didn't have the option to light up the scene so needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when playing back on a monitor and finding a fairly decent image for the amount of light I was working with (or without). I also kept my gain at 0 to keep noise out of the image.

regards,

G. Boston
Canon XL-1 and Pana PV-DV953

Or, if you have the background in visual effects that I do, you can film at day and give it a Day-to-Night correction.




Fig

Yeah. I'm very interested in seing the results of changing the time in post (with basic tools: afterfx, premiere, others). I herd that the fast food scene in American Beauty was changed from night to day, and I never noticed anything wierd looking, so It would be interesting to see some results in post (I'm sure there are alot, but I dont know of any).

teague i'm interested in a little tutorial for your day for night.