shot in night vision

jamcas wrote on 5/25/2004, 12:03 AM

Hi,

I have stumbled on a bit of work where an amateur wedding video was shot in nightvision.

Can you guess the first question I was asked ?

Can you restore the color ?

I saifd that wasnt possible but depending on the quality of the film I have an idea to perhaps convert it to black and white or even sepia and add some old film effects. I could possibly make it look like it was filmed in the 1920s which is more romantic than the cockpit of an apache helicopter over fallujah ....

Just wondering if you guys had any other ideas on things that could be done with night vison film ?

cheers
Jc

Comments

PigsDad wrote on 5/25/2004, 6:51 AM

> Just wondering if you guys had any other ideas on things that could be done with night vison film ?

Sell on the web as a Paris Hilton sex tape? :-) :-)

farss wrote on 5/25/2004, 7:44 AM

Well it must have been VERY low light, All night vision does is turn on the IR LED and wind the gain way up. So unless it's very dark all you get is fairly normal video but with lots of noise. So yes I have seen video pulled back after it was shot with night vision one. It took multiple passes through CC on some serious kit and the result was more 'colored' than color if you get what I mean.
If it really does look like something from a real IR nightvision system then I think your idea is the best way to go. Other issue you may also face is I think some of the cameras go into slow shutter as well so the footage may have lots of motion blur.

johnmeyer wrote on 5/25/2004, 9:22 AM

I have faced this many times. You will never get usable color because the normal color vectors just aren't there. IMHO, the best thing to do is use the B&W filter and go to pure black and white. You should also use the Histogram in the Vectorscope and then use the Color Corrector or Levels plugins to make sure your white and black levels are reasonable. Make sure you watch the output on a monitor while you make these adjustments.

jamcas wrote on 5/25/2004, 6:25 PM

I only have the ceremony and the reception tape and not the honeymoon one

JC

jamcas wrote on 5/25/2004, 6:31 PM

thanks farrs and johnmeyer for your responses, youve confirm that im on the right track.

Regards
JC

DVDeviations wrote on 5/26/2004, 10:59 PM

Hi Jc,

I had some waterskiing footage shot in nightvision (we were skiing after
the sun went down....). I tried all kinds of stuff and something that looks cool is using the "sunset" gradient map on Video FX tab (makes the gray a golden color). This also looks nice with a soft guassian blur.
Also try experimenting with some of the "glow" video effects (white highlights/white soft glow).

Hope this helps! colleen

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/3/2004, 4:38 PM

something that's interesting is that some of the cameras that use that have lenses that aren't coted to keep out the IR (this can be checked by pointing a remote at the lense and pushing a button, however, it helps to make sure the batteries are good) *IF* it all works that way, then, you can use it with a B&W filter and then work with some glow afterwards to get an IR B&W image. Very pricey for photographers in film. very cheap for video, and can be a very useful look.