I wasn't planning on filming this, but I was giving my friend a DJ lesson and I figured what the heck, let's roll with the F3 and see what it looks like. There was no lighting plan or setup for this one. The lights in my house were complete turned of so it was dark.

The light sources are as follows: iMac on my desk, behind my friend. The screen happened to be on. The DJ equipment has small lights and LEDs, there is a MacBook Pro in front of the DJ gear providing some glow. There is a lightpanels mini off to the left with a CTO and 1/2 white frost wrapped over the front (sapping more than half the light from this tiny fixture).

Please remember people, this is footage STRAIGHT FROM THE CAMERA, zero tweaks in post, no color grading whatsoever and it's purposely balanced warm. I don't own any SxS cards to record onto, so I used my Cinedeck, recording to ProRes 422 HQ. You can download the H.264 right from Vimeo. If you guys want the entire raw ProRes, just as it came out of the camera, please let me know.

The lens is the Sony 50mm if I recall correctly. I was wide open at T2. Surprisingly, the gain was only at +6db. Remember +9 and +16 are also available and have ridiculously low noise.

The mattebox was taken off the lens on purpose, hence all the flaring.

I really had no intent to post this when I decided to roll camera, but then I remembered how much people love footage, especially footage taken in the dark that really shows how ridiculously sensitive and low noise this camera is. If I had intended to post it, I probably would have been thinking to nail the focus better and faster :-)

Love it or hate it, comments are welcome.

PASSWORD is winning

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Very nice low light footage. Pretty clean gain there. Thanks for sharing

I actually redid the test with ZERO lights. None, two candles only.

I look forward to you posting it.

An absolute torture test really. Zero lighting. 2 candles only. Zero grading. This is straight from the camera.

http://vimeo.com/20846003

+6db gain?

The 2 candle test was max gain, lens wide open. The tiny bit of noise I could easily kill in post but I wanted to show the unmodified look. The high quality H.264 can be downloaded right from vimeo, I can link anyone to the source file who really likes pixel peeping. I will say though, at viewing distance on my 50" plasma it looks clean. I know people inspecting footage don't do that though.

I know people inspecting footage don't do that though.

Indeed. A working ISO800 is FAR more than enough speed, i'd be surprised if on a job you ever went above 800, unless it was magic hour and you need one last shot... i mean, I have Panchros, a T2.8 set of lenses, and i find myslef stopped down to a T5.6 @ ISO800 after turning on one lamp. Infact i wish i could drop down to ISO100, with no penalty in the highlights. Though i suppose thats what the built in ND is for, though it would be nice to have perfectly spotless footage with no highlight penalty.

could someone post what the settings you guys are using for low light? I'm having major noise issues with my camera and wondering what it could be.

Did you black balance? I'm also using CINE1, which helps I think. I actually haven't tested the noisiness of the different curves. I should. I'll check my settings and post back.

I did, I am actually tempted to do it again. I switched my settings and reshot some stuff and it looked much cleaner, just learning the matrix and settings is a pain with no info to go on.

i keep mine in Cine2, Detial OFF. and black balance everytime you turn the camera on or off.

Cine 1 and 2 put your grey point fairly far down the curve, great for highlights but not leaving that much info in the low light area. I suggest Cine 3 or 4 in low light spaces. Cine 4 puts the grey point around the same level as you get in 709 (Std5).

I actually redid the test with ZERO lights. None, two candles only.

Can you please post what settings the camera is at?

Cine 1 and 2 put your grey point fairly far down the curve, great for highlights but not leaving that much info in the low light area. I suggest Cine 3 or 4 in low light spaces. Cine 4 puts the grey point around the same level as you get in 709 (Std5).

Does Cine4 still offer a decent amount of highlight protection? I dont have a waveform, only False color on my monitor, i cant really tell.

Cine 4 takes the same 460% dynamic range as the other CG's and squeezes it into 109IRE, it's just the distribution of the mid range that's modified from one gamma to the other. CG2 is only 100IRE so slightly fewer bits of data to play with in post and the image looks a bit darker on a monitor but still has same dynamic range.

Cine 1 and 2 put your grey point fairly far down the curve, great for highlights but not leaving that much info in the low light area. I suggest Cine 3 or 4 in low light spaces. Cine 4 puts the grey point around the same level as you get in 709 (Std5).

Hi Andy. My gamma setting was CINE3. I read the manual the first day I got the camera and CINE3 sounded like what I wanted. I didn't do any testing to see for sure.

Well said Alister, and thanks again for the class!

Cine 3 is a good setting in general still has that 460% range and 109 white clip. Really the only difference between 3 & 4 is the mid range area is pushed up higher in 4. This may give you a little more ability in post to make adjustments. Cine 1 is your best bet for highlights because it does the opposite, a lower mid range for more highlight space. Cine 3 is right in the middle.