AC90 - Low light

[Phil Gadd]

Hi Guys

Does anyone know what the best settings would be to take some footage in a pub (tomorrow night for a friends 3rd anniversary as pub manager)

Any tips would be helpful

[Colin Rowe]

In a pub, its likely to be low light, so, before the shoot take some low light footage using various gain settings to determine an acceptable gain limit. Steer clear of auto, this will ramp up the gain to get what the camera sees as an acceptable image, (it wont be). Same with white balance, manually set it. Auto can be easily fooled in lower light situations. Its just a matter of getting to know your camera, and being confident of being able to adjust any settings, to enable a good shot, as and when conditions change. Take a light, must have for any low light situation, A small LED would be enought to enable an otherwise immpossible shot.
Good luck with the shoot

[Chris Harding]

Hi Phil

If you have an on camera light that you can use just to highlight people you are filming that works well on the Panasonics...on my HMC82's I used to leave the iris wide open and lick the gain at 12db and then use the on-camera light to expose..that way I had clean noise free backgrounds.

On the 90 with it's smaller but backlit sensors you could probably almost double that figure and get clean video but I still wouldn't go anything higher than 21db and then use a video light so you light your subject nicely!!

Chris

[Phil Gadd]

Thanks Guys, I will try the manual settings an hour before starting (I am not overly confident with manual settings, especially the use of manual WB and when to press it i.e. every time the camera moves etc)

Ironically I dont have an 'on-camera' light so I will check out the local stores today (although its thick snow in Liverpool today!)

[Chris Harding]

Hi Phil

Good luck even getting there! Our national news was showing pics of "Spring" with deep snow and cars spun off the motorway!! Hopefully Summer will be better!!

Chris

[Phil Gadd]

Thanks Chris, never known a year like it, this time last march it was 21o and sunny!!

Well i could only find a manfrotto mini led light at a local retail park, not ideal but it will light up to a metre away which is ok for tonight.

Will publish the results, its a chaotic pub!!

[Andrew Maclaurin]

I'm looking forward to seeing the results. It should be a good test for the camera.

[Paulo Teixeira]

One advise I'll give is to shoot it in 24p and to use a shutter of 24. You just got to make sure you don't pan too fast. If you want slightly smoother motion at the expense of slightly worse low light quality, you could shoot in 30p and have a shutter of 30.

It's probably too late but I'll get it out their anyway.

[Phil Gadd]

Thanks Paulo

Unfortunately it was too late as I already filmed in 50p. But I will test out your suggestion another time.

As for the on camera light, it worked well although i had to keep altering the light adjustment as some times it would light up the faces too white (maybe I can get a small colour gel) plus I had no way of angling the light which made it awkward too.

PS I used the manfrotto mini led

[Colin Rowe]

Phil. For smooth motion, stick to 25 or 50 fps. Your lighting level and exposure simply needed adjusting to stop the overexposure on faces, gels wont make any difference to this. it will all come in time. Hope the shoot went well.

[Phil Gadd]

Thanks Colin

Yes the shoot went well, but it resembled a scene from that classic film "Animal House" so I am not sure I can post it on here lol

Initially I started on manual settings and panicked slightly and put it back on auto..... whimp

[Steve Varnell]

In lowlight tests I did I confirmed keeping the gain under 20db. I think I remember around 17db noise/grain starts to grow considerably, so I like to keep 18db in my head and not 20db. Yes if you can get away with 24/25fps and a 24/25 shutter speed that helps too. Finally -3 detail settings, +7 detail coring, 5 master ped, 3 drs, high gamma, and norm matix will get you about as far as you can without on camera lights. There is another setting for low noise with -4 7 chroma -1 mped -4 a.iris 2 drs off cine-d normal1 skin tone detail on. These 2 setting are on my presets and produce substantially different results. Thinking of changing settings like this to me is quite amazing. Especially the skin tone one.

I am editing some footage shot by some coworkers on other cameras and the noise/grain they were getting on a low light shoot was very significant, I hate to even use it - but I might not have choice. Fortunately is mostly for 3 second clips. I really like the idea of the noise filtering this camera has. Yes it can lead to some bad footage (hair blending), but to me seeing all that grain was not desirable (and probably more noticeable) for the corporate type of shooting we are doing.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Phil Gadd

Thanks Paulo
Unfortunately it was too late as I already filmed in 50p. But I will test out your suggestion another time.

I haven't been reading these forums lately and I wish I would have seen this thread earlier but anyway, I should have paid attention to your country since yes, in your case, it would be shooting in 25p with a shutter of 25.

That's what I do (24p and 30p for my case) and usually it's only for situations in which theirs very little light such as clubs and concerts that I've shot in.