AX100 - Best settings for low light indoortake the c

[Filippo Mulinacci]

Hi everyone,

I am new to the AX100, and I will very soon need to use it to shoot at a baptism in a church were there is not a lot of light.

I will be relatively close to the action, something like 5mt from the newborn, but I will not be able to use any led light.

Based on your experience, in order to have a good quality in 4K, and not too much noise, which settings would you recommend (ISO, aperture, etc...)?

Thanks,
Filippo

[Mark Watson]

It's not possible to tell you exact settings, but some suggestions are:

- If you can get close, shoot with the lens as wide as possible. This is because the aperture closes down as you zoom in, and you want the aperture as open as possible.

- I assume you are shooting handheld, in which case you will want to keep your shutter speed at double the frame rate or close to it. In other words, if you're shooting at 30 frames per second, you want the shutter setting at 60 (1/60th of a second). You could get away with 48, but the lower you go, as your hand shakes the camera, the video will look more blurry. Higher shutter speeds cause a darker image, so don't go higher than 1/60th of a second (60 setting). Now, if you are on a tripod, you can go with a much slower shutter, which will let in more light, say a setting of 30 or even less. The amount of blur depends on how fast the motion is in the scene. I think not too much action in this case, so if tripod-mounted you could go to 30 with no problems.

- As for the gain setting, you want to keep that as low as possible, but in a dark scene it will have to get cranked up some. I think the camera does well in low light, so here's my advice on that.... use the gain to get a proper exposure after you've made the other two adjustments of aperture and shutter speed. There may be some grain, but if you keep it under about 21dB I think you'll be okay. Leave your exposure compensation alone, should be set to zero. If you've got it set down to -0.5 or something, then you are making the image darker. I set mine down when shooting outdoors in plenty of light, but put it back to 0 when indoors.

- If shooting handheld, set the image stabilizing to "active" mode for highest level of anti-shake.

- Shoot in 4K mode and shoot wide. In your editing program you can crop in on the scene if you are delivering in HD or SD. If delivering in HD, I recommend you don't crop in all the way to 1920x1080, keep the frame at least 25% greater (2400x1350). This will give you a good quality video.

Good luck,
Mark

[Filippo Mulinacci]

Dear Mark,

thanks. I will make good use of your advices.

Best,
Filippo

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Mark Watson

but if you keep it under about 21dB I think you'll be okay.

@ Filippo, I would do some testshots to see what g(r)ain looks acceptable to you, eventhough the camera gains up easily the grain this camera produces at high gains can look pretty ugly, you can always use neatvideo but I consider this more as a last resort because it is so time consuming.

Originally Posted by Mark Watson

If delivering in HD, I recommend you don't crop in all the way to 1920x1080, keep the frame at least 25% greater (2400x1350). This will give you a good quality video.

Why? the image will look at it's best when downscaled to 1080p in post, cropping can be a good way to adjust framing mistakes or get get people out of the frame in post, like yourself if you use the camera unmanned, but once you start zooming in you will not see the detail difference from a normal viewing distance, as long as you don't go past the native 4K resolution, but if you pixel peep the image will start to get a bit coarser. Scaled down to 1080p will make any noise also smaller and less visible which will help you in case you need to apply high gains.

[Paul Anderegg]

The problem I had with the CX900 was the total lack of gammas. That too dark blacks combined with highlights that blow out at 90IRE, made many lighting situations very difficult. These cameras are pretty usable up to 24db.

Paul

[Filippo Mulinacci]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

@ Filippo, I would do some testshots to see what g(r)ain looks acceptable to you, eventhough the camera gains up easily the grain this camera produces at high gains can look pretty ugly, you can always use neatvideo but I consider this more as a last resort because it is so time consuming.



Why? the image will look at it's best when downscaled to 1080p in post, cropping can be a good way to adjust framing mistakes or get get people out of the frame in post, like yourself if you use the camera unmanned, but once you start zooming in you will not see the detail difference from a normal viewing distance, as long as you don't go past the native 4K resolution, but if you pixel peep the image will start to get a bit coarser. Scaled down to 1080p will make any noise also smaller and less visible which will help you in case you need to apply high gains.

Hi Noa,

thanks for the inputs.

Today I tried the AX100 (shooting at 100Mbit 4K 24fps) at the zoo in Zürich, and I also got some indoor footage in the aquarium areas, and close to the penguins. I used semi-manual settings, with just manual aperture (the widest possible), and gain below 18db. Image was pretty bright (the shutter speed was automatically set around 1/120....I could have set around 1/50 and decreased the gain to 15db or 12db even...), and very clean. Overall I am very satisfied (consider that I was also using a circular polarizer lens that, even if high quality product from Rodenstock, was still cutting some light...).

About Neatvideo or Denoiser II.....today footage does not require, but will still try to see how fast my pc can process /clean a 4K video...for a 1080p video was almost 10h for 1h footage....I hope that for a 4K footage the time would not be 4 times more :-)