A video demo of night time shooting with the Canon 700D. Very little noise, even when shooting at a relatively high 1600 ISO.
I use Premiere or Sony Vegas for shots like these, both are great and deal well with color correction and post production/cutting and finalizing.
Keep in mind this has been color graded for visual appeal.
This is what came out of the camera in terms of quality.
_______________Q&A___________________
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Q: How do you get it so noiseless? Any Pointers?
A:
Always keep in mind that film grain caused by shooting at night is heavily amplified by lack of light; If there is light, there will be little/no grain.
Shooting at night doesn't mean filming a pitch black street/scene and hoping your camera has night vision.
Basically, shoot where there's light, not pitch black streets.
It needs to be in a place where there is still some light for best results; Ambient lights etc.
Anything above 1600 ISO in low light can (probibly will) cause noise.
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Q:What about camera settings? Any pointers there?
A:
You'll want to change your cameras settings, by default it has contrast and saturation turned up within the camera itself, this destroys the quality of your blacks and whites in an attempt to make the footage and photos you take look appealing, although it can make things look a bit nicer, it permanently bakes in these changes and irreversibly removes details that you'll want to preserve.
Better cameras can detect more details in the shadows and highlights, you'll want to be trying to mimic that as much as possible.
Higher contrast is a feature designed for the common point and shoot user but not if you're filming.
Details on the settings you'll want to use are at the bottom of this post.
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Q: So what about the ISO, why does it cause grain?
A:
The ISO of your camera doesn't change the amount of light (photons) hitting your sensor, it changes the multiplication of it.
This is a big deal because its the AMOUNT of LIGHT we're trying to change NOT the MULTIPLE to light~
The Aperture and shutter speed physically allow more into the camera.
Only change the ISO if your shutter and Aperture wont allow enough light in.
For night shooting i would recommend a wide aperture lens, something around 1.8-1.4f helps let a lot of light in.
And remember, with "most" variable lenses, the more zoomed in you are, the smaller your max aperture will go, so if you zoom in while filming, the shots will get dark.
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Q:My Aperture is as open as it can go, but now everything is blurry?
A:
As you open the aperture more and more, allowing more light to enter, you're also creating a smaller and smaller depth of field.
Eventually you end up with a large blurry scene with only about a foot or so in focus. Now this is fine if you like that cinematic look, but it can be detrimental to your film if you have a deeper shot you need to cover.
For this i would go to around f6-f9, it creates a nice depth of field but still keeps some blur. You will have to either change the ISO or shutter speed if its too dark, as a larger f.stop (smaller opening) means less light can enter.
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Q: What settings should i use?
A:
The end result right out of the camera isn't as pretty, but remember, this is if you're going to bring it into your video suite later and make it look nice again, if you're not going to color grade later or don't know how to, ignore this step.
Go into Picture Styles, its the bottom button under the middle "Set" one.
Go along until you get to "User Def .1"
Hit the "Info" button or press the screen "Detail Set" button to customize its settings.
Heres how it should look to shoot a flat image.
Sharpness: Very left setting (0)----------------------------------o l l l l l l |
Contrast: Very left setting (-4)------------------------------------o l l l | l l l |
Saturation: Two clicks to the left from the middle (-2)-----| l o l | l l l |
Color Tone: Middle piece (0)-------------------------------------| l l l o l l l |
If you're even more serious about this you can get a "Custom Color Profile" that you can load onto your DSLR called "Technicolor Cine-style" for Canon cameras. Google it and load it onto your Camera, it creates even better dynamic range than this flat setting does and actually gives you almost 2 extra stops of range!
24fps
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Shutter Speed: 1/50
Aperture: f3.5
ISO: 1600
Song - Ronald Jenkees - Super Fun
