OT: cineframe 25 example extreme low light

dreamlx wrote on 12/13/2005, 9:14 PM
Hi,

Until now, I always posted videos shot in good conditions. Here one example shot in conditions where most camcorders have problems, extreme low light. Contrary to usual, this footage was shot handheld. Gain was fixed at 0db and set manually in post production afterwards, in order to have more control over it. In my personal opinion, I find that the result still looks acceptable, but would like to hear your opinions and experiences.

The footage can be found here:

http://www.luxmemories.lu/examples/nurnberg.wmv

Bye,
David Arendt

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/13/2005, 9:35 PM
David, nice bit of work. A notice of it being 100 meg might be a good idea for those of us that don't have lightning connections. The server side isn't all that fast, it keeps buffering up on my side, anyway.
The only thing I saw was where the very close light really blows it out, but there isn't much you could have done about that.
Super nice photography, like most of what you've done!
mark-woollard wrote on 12/14/2005, 4:30 AM
David, beautiful shots as viewed on my laptop LCD panel. How does it look blown up on a big screen?

Especially liked the shot of the horses and carriage at 1:44. Was the side light coming from car headlights or a street lamp?

epirb wrote on 12/14/2005, 4:55 AM
Very nice footage! A few questions if I may, I might have some similar night shots coming up.
Curious did you have to lighten it up much in post?
Just using gain and a little gamma or what.
And how did it look as you were shooting it thru the view finder under exposed?
Fixed iris?, it didnt seem like it was wide open as DOF was pretty deep.
BTW Pathligh looks great on 24 inch monitor full screen mode.
And great job again David!
dreamlx wrote on 12/14/2005, 8:48 AM
pathlight:

Well I looked here at it on a 1024x768 resolution video projector at a size of 1.5m and there it still looks very good.

There were also street lights, you can see one in top of the image, but I would say most of the light was coming from the car headlights.
dreamlx wrote on 12/14/2005, 8:59 AM
epirb:

Well to lighten up in post, I used the color corrector at the Reset to default preset and just changed gain varying between 1.0 and 1.5.

With the default viewfinder brightness settings, it was still possible to see enough to compose shots without any problem.

Iris was not fixed, but while capturing, I noticed that the cam always choosed 1.8 as expected. Shutter was fixed at 1/50. That the DOF is pretty deep is normal, as due to the fact this footage has been shot handheld, I was nearly always at max zoom out.
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/14/2005, 9:15 AM
Even though it's a wmv, it looks very nice blown up to 12', which is the size of our projected system.
Ben1000 wrote on 12/14/2005, 9:49 AM
Howdy everyone...

I'm assuming this was shot with one of the sony HDV cams. If that's the case, I thought everyone hated the cineframe 25 mode, and wouldn't use it to save the life of their grandmother...

This looked good to me, although a little under-contrast (I might have compressed the dynamic range a little using levels).

Would this have looked significantly better in cineframe 30?

Best,

Ben
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/14/2005, 10:04 AM
Personally, I prefer CF 25. It's CF 24 a lot of people have issue with.
CF 30 is great too, we just finished a shoot for an international software company using CF30
dreamlx wrote on 12/14/2005, 10:17 AM
Ben1000:

It was shot with the HDR-FX1E, the european model. In cineframe 25 as well as in cineframe 30 you have 25 resp. 30 progressive frames. I think you are confusing with cineframe 24, 24 frames are stretched to 30 frames. The people from Cineform have a very good description of the cineframe modes on the following page:

http://www.cineform.com/products/SonyHDVSupport/CineFrame.htm

The follwing is based in my own opinion and isn't proved to be correct, if I am wrong with my assumptions, please correct me:

When cineframe 25 is compared to cineframe 30, theoretically 25 should be better quality as only 25 frames need to be compressed to 25mbit where in cineframe 30, 30 frames need to be compressed to 25mbit. Therefore motion should be smoother in cineframe 30. Theoretically cineframe 24 should have the disadvantages of both.