Wow. This is five years ago. I was working on something like this today with a film I'm in the middle of. Trying to get my low light shots to look the way I wanted them to look. This helped me a lot. Thanks so much. Videos like this live forever.... Thanks for your generous spirit.
This is longer than most "tutorials," but tell you what: This. Is. A. Class. What you don't get from most tutorials is actual critiquing of work, seeing what was wrong with the image and how to fix it with in-depth instruction, and how to do it next time so that you save time. This video has given me a lot to think about how to shoot my next project so that I'm not spending so much time "fixing it in post." Tom Antos, thank you for posting this style of video. Halfway through the video, and I've already learned tons. I will be applying your tips to the music video I just shot this weekend. :)
By the way, I did not use the V Log on the GH5 to get better exposure. I was just testing the performance of this flat profile. Since there is usually not much dynamic range in night scenes, I would normally not recommend using flat profiles in these situations.
Hi Tom, I just love your vids. You mentioned you wouldn't normally shoot vlog in a low light situation, but this one look great!. I would love to see a comparison between vlog and another picture profile in a future low light video.
Tom - Very informative. Learned a lot just from this tutorial. What profile would you recommend for night/low light situations? Thanks Tom and keep these great tutorials coming!
under low light i use the techicolor free profile for canon, kind of a log profile, it's called cinestyle, and i always expose one step up than the exposimeter says in camera, giving me a bit extra range on highlights and textures on shadows, it works great, i have been shooting with a canon 200D / sl2 (new entry level camera), and gives an amazing results on a 1 or 2 steps lower the maximum ISO, using magic bullet denoiser III for cleaning the noise, haven't tried the premiere denoiser with it, but must work just as good, try it out! i would recomend that profile under low light and high iso, it let me be creative by not using only fast apertures, used f5.6 on a club and it was great
It's amazing how we as low budget filmmakers try to replicate Hollywood budget films and are amazed how their skies are exposed perfectly with rich blues, etc., when in reality, it is composited CGI.
I was doing exactly opposite what you have mentioned here....As I wondered the noise gets more after post production process of my videos...Now cleared all the doubts..Ton of thanks Tom
OOOOOOHHH MYYYYY GOOOOOOOD THIIIIIIS IS AN AMAAAAZIIINNNG TUTORIAL. Since I have my GH5 I've always kind of regretted it cause of this. And I ALWAYS tried to underexposed my shoot AND bring up the exposure. with is the exact wrong thing to do !!! Cant wait to try this tomorrow !!! Thx you VERY MUCH !!!
Hi. In the first example (when you use your brother to ilustrate) you have 2 TIPES OF LIGHTS, in the final test you have soft light ( and the contrast is not that accentuate resulting less noise because you dont crash the black/shadow) . Aniway, good work. Thanks for sharing your knoledge!
I completely agree with this video. It was very enjoyable and refreshing. This is how exposure works in the real world. If you're shooting a dramatic seashore still life, maybe you should expose for the shadows and watch your highlights in the histogram. But where you aren't able to place lights (as routinely happens, e.g., for events), you aren't going to get really pretty shots unless you expose for what matters. That's reality; the alternative is long, futile time spent in post to produce a nice bowl of mush.
Re - O Brother look. Still would rather protect the highlights, The tree and the shadow under the cap are so small in the frame, and there's so much frantic action to grab my attention that I don't notice the noise - you have to freeze the frame and peek. But the white shirt, which dominates the frame, is completely blown out and distracting. Even with all of the movement, you can't miss it.
Tom's much more experienced than me and I've learnt so much from him. But, while the "exposed as intended" for O Brother definitely looks better, I feel bumping the exposure less and increasing the shadows. of the "incorrectly" exposed version wouldn't be so bad as no one would have noticed the noise in the shadows because the shadows are small in the frame. The shirt dominates the frame and looks like a huge white blob. I don't care about protecting highlights so much for say, background lights which always be blown out, but I definitely don't want the talent over-exposed. As for the night shots, I take Tom's approach and try and angle the talent towards the lights. I don't tend to use v-log for such situations because I don't need lots of detail in areas I would subsequently crush anyway - so for caucasians, I set the zebras to 70%. Darker skinned people are harder - 60% for light brown skin.
totally agree with you. you have to consider what's in the shot when you make those decisions. in this case not clipping his white shirt is much more important then dealing with the shadows which are way in the background.
Totally agree, re blown white shirt. Was thinking same thing...fast action all the highlights, shirt, draws attention to my eye, shadows insignificant in this scene at least, imo. To add further, even Roger Deakins states emphatically that he does not worry about blown highlights or crushed shadows IF those areas in scene are not important and the viewer would not notice. Deakins gave example of an interior scene where the window in background was smallish and so he let simply let it blow out, whereas a larger window in scene where it's important to see outside detail, he fixes it either by ND gel and/or increasing interior light. Deakins is the cinematograhper who shot Oh Brother.
i was pro photographer, i consider myself very experienced shooting at night, the true is most of time for a clean look in low light at night we need help of any artificial light that we can have at hand. if only what we have is a cigarette lighter there will be situations that desperately try to use that lighter, normally with little luck, either is true that a f/0.95 aperture lens can take advantage of the light of a cigarette lighter (in a very small area) :-) but i agree the cameras differencies are not as big than the light limitations are and a wise compromise is the key of a better success.
This is the only video that talks about this. Videography or photography. Everyone is using apps to reduce noise after the fact but nobody mentiones that while shooting you need to know what you want to get and by exposing exactly how you need it from the start you can get much much more from your camera.
to avoid "Too dark" shadows ..shot at a very flat profile..it gives more dynamic range than usual..try lessening contrast, sharpness and saturation..or use Log
It’s pretty confusing to shoot at night and trying to get a correct exposure. The waveform always looks like it is pretty underexposed. Thanks for sharing this video. It helped me to realize that actually you have to expose with your eyes!
Found this video and learned a lot. I've been struggling a lot with my low light video. I've learned that I have to reprogram my 30 years of photography knowledge and think about video differently. One thing I am still very confused about is the difference between a log profile and a flat profile, such as the flat profile included in my nikon. I can shoot N-Log externally on my Z6, but when I am not using my full rig, I would like to be able to get better quality in low light using flat profiles. I'm just having trouble figuring out if my problem is my footage (flat vs log) my exposure (because my brain is still hooked on photography) or if I am just horrible at color correction. Everytime I apply any kind of LUTs it just looks horrible. I think this video helps me understand better.... but still confused about if I should be over exposing.... but it sounds from this video that the key is to nail exposure perfectly.
Wouldn't it an option to use a reflection bouncer to get some environmental light to the subject (if it's a person)? That would fix a lot of dark shadows without bringing additional lamps and such (except for an assistent maybe or extra lightstand).
This is exactly what I was doing, trying to make shadows brighter and got plenty of noise! I was afraid to make dark areas even more darker! Thanks Tom, pozdrowienia dla Ciebie i Lukasza :D
In the "OBrother" you have to consider what's in the shot when you make the decision for exposer. in this case not clipping his white shirt is much more important then dealing with the shadows which are way in the background and much less prominent. your eyes is focusing on the character moving close to the camera.
Oh my god this is Such a big saver. Thank you Antos. Shot a museum scene that very dimmed down light, shot it at 3200ISO, 60fps, at 1/180fps (Yh I forgot to change it) but the scene are so good but the noise was killing me because of the low light, and I was trying so hard to to bring back the highlights... but from this video I get that Accepting it will actually make the shot better and if anything it adds some creative touch. So I did what you said, accepted the shadows and separated it from the subject faces to keep the original brightness and added some contrast to those faces and mannnnn they look great m. Thank you.
you do a great job Tom. this video really helped me, because I am buying GH5 really soon. and many people talking on RUclips that GH5 has very noisy shots. I will keep your tips in mind. thank you so much.
I use t3i aka canon 600D and it too produce high noise shots even after 800ISO, but noise can be remove with plugins in post-production. If you want I can do a Tutorial video on it. BTW Tom thanks for the demo, I am planning to upgrade and many people suggested my GH5, but also warned me about ISO issues.
Tom Antos thank you sir. I really appreciate your guestur, taking your valuable time to reply and I will us my camera intelligently. and I was surprised that you shot video for Akshay Kumar and snoop dogg.
theres also a big difference between the two shots. the test shot is in hard light wich gives you the strong shadows. it looks like its a little overcast in the second shot wich gives you even light most of the time
Basically get it right in-camera and control the light. Not everything can be fixed by changing your camera settings or applying a LUT in post. For the Oh Brother shot, I think it would be better to retain the details in the highlights of the shirt. If that makes the shadows under the cap or somewhere else too dark, then add a reflector to bounce light up into that shadow. That’s why on a movie shoot there is a whole department for lighting, it needs to be controlled… on set. Not everything can be fixed by changing your exposure and it’s not all in the cameraman’s hands.
QUESTION - I read that the VLOG upgrade should only be used during the day (proper lit shots) because you don’t need that extra dynamic range for night videos? Tom love your videos and channel!!!! So helpful.
Awesome information and greatly appreciated! My question is, in low light when shooting in like a Cine4 profile(Sony) where it's not as flat as log, should my histogram still look like yours where most of the info is around 50 and below? Thanks!
Ok cool thanks and if it isn't supposed to look mostly dark, without adding more lights, what should you do? I recently shot a wedding where the reception was outdoors under yellow lights and I had a blue fill light. after correcting the colors and getting rid of the yellow tint, I'm trying to get rid of noise but without making the shot look too dark/underexposed since the scene was relatively well lit. Thanks
Okay, no matter how much you try to measure light and colour with scopes and graphs, it all comes down to how it looks to the eye, and honestly, all I can think when looking at your final grades is Magic Bullet Looks circa 2012.
When doing *STILLS / PHOTOGRAPHY* IN RAW, I sometimes under expose so I can keep a faster shutter speed and recover light later. It's easier to deal with noise in photography than blur. any thoughts?
your doing it right ... raw images have at least 12bit of color information - against 8 bit most video has (with even less information stored by the codecs) ... also if there is enough light expose to the right for cleaner shadows ... if you shoot raw, as raw is not linear
Great explanation of how to expose and light your shots - something I've been thinking about. I'm wondering if you have any examples of the "lower" DSLR cameras (like my 600D/t3i) shooting well exposed short films (with good lighting)?
my image looks great when I see it in proxy but when I turn it to optimized it has some noise....do you do your color correction before before lots when you do vlog,what profile would you suggest for night shot
Hey Tom. Loving your videos. Could you do a video on the picture profiles you use in your A6300? And which ones really have the best low light performance?
great video very very useful. can i ask you one thing that i think many of us would like to understand better: its common practice to "normalize" a shot as the first stage of color correction (before color grading) to get properly balanced exposure, to get "proper" white balance. i've always thought that weird cuz, what if you deliberately have in camera overly warm, or underexposed, or overexposed. seems stupid to quote "normalize" it all, just to then go back and add a stylized look to in later. what do you think about that. i know denver riddle seems to suggest normalizing all shots before adding a look.
PostModern Filmmaking normalizing or balancing shots to neutral is usually done when you want to match shots that were shot on different cameras. then after that you can apply your stylized color grade and have all the shots look like they were shot with the same camera. Otherwise like you said there is no need to balance the shots first.
Tom I'm not sure if its me or something in camera but all of my shots seem to have a ton of noise even at 600-800 ISO. I'm shooting with a 18-35 Sigma Art f/1.8 wide open in CineD, NR set to 0. I can't seem to figure this out. All of my shots are really noisy... Any suggestions?
....Follow up on my last comment. I guess my question is if I were to buy your movie LUT pack, would they work on my "Flat" h.264 nikon video? or would I need to be shooting actual LOG, for example when I shoot Log through my Atomos I am outputting Prores in N-Log. I'm assuming the LUTs would work great on that footage. But what about 8 bit flat H.264 footage coming out of camera?
Tom! Greetings from India! how to get maximum in night shots using Black Magic Raw...? Does only shadow crushing works or any other tip you would like to share?
Wow Interesting! I was doing it all wrong ^^ i tried it not to exceed the iso 1600 with my gh5 ! A got a question what should i do when you don't have v log? Im using the cinelike d profile with everything all the way down. Any good luts for the lowlight?
You don"t have to stick to exact 180 degree shutter rules. I like to shoot at higher shutter values when shooting at 60fps especially for slow motion for example, I'll shoot at between 120-160 shutter speed. So 60fps : 1/160. This is especially great for slow motion because the image is sharper, but all things considered, if you are dealing with a situation in this video where you are already pushing the ISO and need all the exposure you need then the lowest shutter speed is suitable.
interesting, i try to shoot with slower SS at night like 100 with 60fps, cause getting any light is important with lumix g80...i couldnt shoot 160 SS at night, would have to bump iso 6400 and even then be too dark, but i do have only kit lens F3.5 at the moment :/
When shooting on a flat profile like C log on a c100 mk2 do you think you should map out the tones differently on the wave form monitor? Should "white" live lower down the scale? What's your opinion on that?
Can u talk about the metering and exposure settings you used? My camera allows me Multi, Weighted Center, Average and Spot. For night shots, which do you advise and to where exactly in the image should it be (in case it's Spot metering)?
A beginner filmmaker question about video noise. Are cine lenses less prone to noise than the photo lenses? Thanks in advance. Excellent RUclips channel btw.
Mako Sports I am sorry Mako, you are right about the clipping but it is hard to believe that Tom's brother white shirt was not clipping when Tom exposed to the shadows on the rehearsal shot.
Tom Thank you for this as i have always struggled with Shooting at night with available lights. was wondering if you had any advice for shooting scenes like this on a Black Magic Production 4K (ie Settings in Camera) Again Thank you for always sharing and helping the next generation of filmmakers.
even though i am an amateur photographer at 80years old i learned a amazing amount my wildlife videos will be a lot better thank you so much.
Wow. This is five years ago. I was working on something like this today with a film I'm in the middle of. Trying to get my low light shots to look the way I wanted them to look. This helped me a lot. Thanks so much. Videos like this live forever.... Thanks for your generous spirit.
Two years on from your comment and I am in the same boat!
I'm halfway watching and already thinking this tutorial is gold. You acrually show how it doesn't work and then how it will work. Gold.
This is longer than most "tutorials," but tell you what: This. Is. A. Class. What you don't get from most tutorials is actual critiquing of work, seeing what was wrong with the image and how to fix it with in-depth instruction, and how to do it next time so that you save time. This video has given me a lot to think about how to shoot my next project so that I'm not spending so much time "fixing it in post." Tom Antos, thank you for posting this style of video. Halfway through the video, and I've already learned tons. I will be applying your tips to the music video I just shot this weekend. :)
By the way, I did not use the V Log on the GH5 to get better exposure. I was just testing the performance of this flat profile. Since there is usually not much dynamic range in night scenes, I would normally not recommend using flat profiles in these situations.
Hi Tom, I just love your vids. You mentioned you wouldn't normally shoot vlog in a low light situation, but this one look great!. I would love to see a comparison between vlog and another picture profile in a future low light video.
I was going to ask him for that too.. that's really a good idea..
Tom - Very informative. Learned a lot just from this tutorial. What profile would you recommend for night/low light situations? Thanks Tom and keep these great tutorials coming!
under low light i use the techicolor free profile for canon, kind of a log profile, it's called cinestyle, and i always expose one step up than the exposimeter says in camera, giving me a bit extra range on highlights and textures on shadows, it works great, i have been shooting with a canon 200D / sl2 (new entry level camera), and gives an amazing results on a 1 or 2 steps lower the maximum ISO, using magic bullet denoiser III for cleaning the noise, haven't tried the premiere denoiser with it, but must work just as good, try it out! i would recomend that profile under low light and high iso, it let me be creative by not using only fast apertures, used f5.6 on a club and it was great
@@SabasVlog but i think flat profile is not good for night scene ? someone said before to use neutral profile or faithful with 0 contrast and not-5
It's amazing how we as low budget filmmakers try to replicate Hollywood budget films and are amazed how their skies are exposed perfectly with rich blues, etc., when in reality, it is composited CGI.
I was doing exactly opposite what you have mentioned here....As I wondered the noise gets more after post production process of my videos...Now cleared all the doubts..Ton of thanks Tom
You made me reconsider how I approach exposure and how I colour correct. Thanks. Gerry in Calgary.
OOOOOOHHH MYYYYY GOOOOOOOD
THIIIIIIS IS AN AMAAAAZIIINNNG TUTORIAL.
Since I have my GH5 I've always kind of regretted it cause of this. And I ALWAYS tried to underexposed my shoot AND bring up the exposure. with is the exact wrong thing to do !!!
Cant wait to try this tomorrow !!!
Thx you VERY MUCH !!!
Hi. In the first example (when you use your brother to ilustrate) you have 2 TIPES OF LIGHTS, in the final test you have soft light ( and the contrast is not that accentuate resulting less noise because you dont crash the black/shadow) . Aniway, good work. Thanks for sharing your knoledge!
I completely agree with this video. It was very enjoyable and refreshing. This is how exposure works in the real world. If you're shooting a dramatic seashore still life, maybe you should expose for the shadows and watch your highlights in the histogram. But where you aren't able to place lights (as routinely happens, e.g., for events), you aren't going to get really pretty shots unless you expose for what matters. That's reality; the alternative is long, futile time spent in post to produce a nice bowl of mush.
Even this "noisy" footage is better then what I've been getting, that to say, this is helpful information
Thank you, so valuable. You are the 1st one I see who talking about the pros of overexposed image.
This is a great tutorial, but it's waaay too long, been watching for 2 days now.
Again, it's great!!
Have you finished it yet?
Re - O Brother look. Still would rather protect the highlights, The tree and the shadow under the cap are so small in the frame, and there's so much frantic action to grab my attention that I don't notice the noise - you have to freeze the frame and peek. But the white shirt, which dominates the frame, is completely blown out and distracting. Even with all of the movement, you can't miss it.
Tom's much more experienced than me and I've learnt so much from him. But, while the "exposed as intended" for O Brother definitely looks better, I feel bumping the exposure less and increasing the shadows. of the "incorrectly" exposed version wouldn't be so bad as no one would have noticed the noise in the shadows because the shadows are small in the frame. The shirt dominates the frame and looks like a huge white blob. I don't care about protecting highlights so much for say, background lights which always be blown out, but I definitely don't want the talent over-exposed. As for the night shots, I take Tom's approach and try and angle the talent towards the lights. I don't tend to use v-log for such situations because I don't need lots of detail in areas I would subsequently crush anyway - so for caucasians, I set the zebras to 70%. Darker skinned people are harder - 60% for light brown skin.
totally agree with you. you have to consider what's in the shot when you make those decisions. in this case not clipping his white shirt is much more important then dealing with the shadows which are way in the background.
Totally agree, re blown white shirt. Was thinking same thing...fast action all the highlights, shirt, draws attention to my eye, shadows insignificant in this scene at least, imo. To add further, even Roger Deakins states emphatically that he does not worry about blown highlights or crushed shadows IF those areas in scene are not important and the viewer would not notice. Deakins gave example of an interior scene where the window in background was smallish and so he let simply let it blow out, whereas a larger window in scene where it's important to see outside detail, he fixes it either by ND gel and/or increasing interior light. Deakins is the cinematograhper who shot Oh Brother.
Thank you for this video. It helped me figure out why I had so much grain on a well light shot.
Brilliant video, really useful tips that make so much sense. Thank you.
Great video Tom! Especially helpful to a lot of people in low light situations and showcasing that a micro 4/3 camera is very capable in low light!!
Another brilliant video. I can't stop watching your channel. So much quality information. Who needs film school 😉
i was pro photographer, i consider myself very experienced shooting at night, the true is most of time for a clean look in low light at night we need help of any artificial light that we can have at hand. if only what we have is a cigarette lighter there will be situations that desperately try to use that lighter, normally with little luck, either is true that a f/0.95 aperture lens can take advantage of the light of a cigarette lighter (in a very small area) :-) but i agree the cameras differencies are not as big than the light limitations are and a wise compromise is the key of a better success.
Am always learning from you materials and your shoots. Ur one of d film makers that has made me better today. Thank you so much
Crushing the dark areas will help mask the noise. Very nice
This is the only video that talks about this. Videography or photography. Everyone is using apps to reduce noise after the fact but nobody mentiones that while shooting you need to know what you want to get and by exposing exactly how you need it from the start you can get much much more from your camera.
Thank you for your content you always put out some of the best video tutorials on the Internet seriously
Thanks for information now I know why I get much noise when using exposure to my videos
to avoid "Too dark" shadows ..shot at a very flat profile..it gives more dynamic range than usual..try lessening contrast, sharpness and saturation..or use Log
Thanks for the great tips Tom.
Tom, that's golden! Great information as always.
Thanks Carl!
It’s pretty confusing to shoot at night and trying to get a correct exposure. The waveform always looks like it is pretty underexposed. Thanks for sharing this video. It helped me to realize that actually you have to expose with your eyes!
Found this video and learned a lot. I've been struggling a lot with my low light video. I've learned that I have to reprogram my 30 years of photography knowledge and think about video differently. One thing I am still very confused about is the difference between a log profile and a flat profile, such as the flat profile included in my nikon. I can shoot N-Log externally on my Z6, but when I am not using my full rig, I would like to be able to get better quality in low light using flat profiles. I'm just having trouble figuring out if my problem is my footage (flat vs log) my exposure (because my brain is still hooked on photography) or if I am just horrible at color correction. Everytime I apply any kind of LUTs it just looks horrible. I think this video helps me understand better.... but still confused about if I should be over exposing.... but it sounds from this video that the key is to nail exposure perfectly.
I’m adding another comment here to hopefully help this video rise on the Utube search rankings Cheers
this is the video I needed, thank you!
Wouldn't it an option to use a reflection bouncer to get some environmental light to the subject (if it's a person)? That would fix a lot of dark shadows without bringing additional lamps and such (except for an assistent maybe or extra lightstand).
as always once again thanks for the knowledge tom...keep it coming....
This is exactly what I was doing, trying to make shadows brighter and got plenty of noise! I was afraid to make dark areas even more darker! Thanks Tom, pozdrowienia dla Ciebie i Lukasza :D
This is what i seek in one month, and finally i found nice and great video from you. Congratulations more subscriber for you !
great tips dude! Nice build up! Professional tutorial.
Amazing tips, tks for sharing!
Rename this whole video as "How to film night scenes like John Cassavetes". Love the technique here...
Thanks Tom! That's great info.
Hey Tom! THIS WAS A GREAT VID! Enjoyed watching.. 👍👍👍👍👍
Black Magic Tim (Filmmaker) thanks!
You’re a genius Tom! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. 🤘🏼😃 keep up the great work.
In the "OBrother" you have to consider what's in the shot when you make the decision for exposer. in this case not clipping his white shirt is much more important then dealing with the shadows which are way in the background and much less prominent. your eyes is focusing on the character moving close to the camera.
SUPER HELPFUL FOR ME!!!!! Thank Tom.
This is very helpful! Thank you so much Tom!
Oh my god this is Such a big saver. Thank you Antos. Shot a museum scene that very dimmed down light, shot it at 3200ISO, 60fps, at 1/180fps (Yh I forgot to change it) but the scene are so good but the noise was killing me because of the low light, and I was trying so hard to to bring back the highlights... but from this video I get that Accepting it will actually make the shot better and if anything it adds some creative touch. So I did what you said, accepted the shadows and separated it from the subject faces to keep the original brightness and added some contrast to those faces and mannnnn they look great m. Thank you.
Very good stuff! Learned a lot from it, man.
you do a great job Tom. this video really helped me, because I am buying GH5 really soon. and many people talking on RUclips that GH5 has very noisy shots. I will keep your tips in mind. thank you so much.
Manasvi Sharma Yeah GH4 & GH5 both perform great in low light. It's all about how you use it. Best of luck with your new camera!
It also depends greatly on which lenses you use in low light situations. A prime lens can get much brighter in low light than most zoom lenses.
I use t3i aka canon 600D and it too produce high noise shots even after 800ISO, but noise can be remove with plugins in post-production. If you want I can do a Tutorial video on it.
BTW Tom thanks for the demo, I am planning to upgrade and many people suggested my GH5, but also warned me about ISO issues.
CleoTv I'd like to see ur tutorial
Tom Antos thank you sir. I really appreciate your guestur, taking your valuable time to reply and I will us my camera intelligently. and I was surprised that you shot video for Akshay Kumar and snoop dogg.
Great tutorial man! Thanks a lot! Greetings from Argentina!!
Thank you for the great info, I like how you clearly explain your shots and how you tweak the settings here and there, excellent!
Your simply one of the best youtubers Thanks
I.C.E. Entertainment thank you!
Very helpful! Do you have any videos like these on white balance?
theres also a big difference between the two shots. the test shot is in hard light wich gives you the strong shadows. it looks like its a little overcast in the second shot wich gives you even light most of the time
Basically get it right in-camera and control the light.
Not everything can be fixed by changing your camera settings or applying a LUT in post. For the Oh Brother shot, I think it would be better to retain the details in the highlights of the shirt. If that makes the shadows under the cap or somewhere else too dark, then add a reflector to bounce light up into that shadow. That’s why on a movie shoot there is a whole department for lighting, it needs to be controlled… on set.
Not everything can be fixed by changing your exposure and it’s not all in the cameraman’s hands.
Beautiful. Focused on the quality of my videos this year. Thanks, great video.
Very good video and info, what is the editing app?
QUESTION - I read that the VLOG upgrade should only be used during the day (proper lit shots) because you don’t need that extra dynamic range for night videos? Tom love your videos and channel!!!! So helpful.
really, really really good video. thanks!
AWESOME Tutorial, Tom!!! Thanks for the great info!!! 👍👍👍
Dope. Tom u was in Brooklyn. Your my hero. Love your work. Hope to meet u some day.
Really useful
Thanks Tom
Very helpful info! Thanks
Really nice tips, and it makes sense!
Awesome information and greatly appreciated!
My question is, in low light when shooting in like a Cine4 profile(Sony) where it's not as flat as log, should my histogram still look like yours where most of the info is around 50 and below? Thanks!
Brett Anthony Bryant yes if the final image is supposed to look mostly dark
Ok cool thanks and if it isn't supposed to look mostly dark, without adding more lights, what should you do?
I recently shot a wedding where the reception was outdoors under yellow lights and I had a blue fill light. after correcting the colors and getting rid of the yellow tint, I'm trying to get rid of noise but without making the shot look too dark/underexposed since the scene was relatively well lit.
Thanks
Thank you so much, I some cases I could almost eliminate noise, in some other cases not, but IQ got much better.
Okay, no matter how much you try to measure light and colour with scopes and graphs, it all comes down to how it looks to the eye, and honestly, all I can think when looking at your final grades is Magic Bullet Looks circa 2012.
This was such a great video & thank you so much for the info.
When doing *STILLS / PHOTOGRAPHY* IN RAW, I sometimes under expose so I can keep a faster shutter speed and recover light later. It's easier to deal with noise in photography than blur.
any thoughts?
Eric Lefebvre This is a Fact
your doing it right ... raw images have at least 12bit of color information - against 8 bit most video has (with even less information stored by the codecs) ... also if there is enough light expose to the right for cleaner shadows ... if you shoot raw, as raw is not linear
Great explanation of how to expose and light your shots - something I've been thinking about. I'm wondering if you have any examples of the "lower" DSLR cameras (like my 600D/t3i) shooting well exposed short films (with good lighting)?
my image looks great when I see it in proxy but when I turn it to optimized it has some noise....do you do your color correction before before lots when you do vlog,what profile would you suggest for night shot
what profile do you recommend for canon for night shooting and daylight shooting?
Hey Tom. Loving your videos. Could you do a video on the picture profiles you use in your A6300? And which ones really have the best low light performance?
great video very very useful. can i ask you one thing that i think many of us would like to understand better:
its common practice to "normalize" a shot as the first stage of color correction (before color grading) to get properly balanced exposure, to get "proper" white balance. i've always thought that weird cuz, what if you deliberately have in camera overly warm, or underexposed, or overexposed. seems stupid to quote "normalize" it all, just to then go back and add a stylized look to in later. what do you think about that. i know denver riddle seems to suggest normalizing all shots before adding a look.
PostModern Filmmaking normalizing or balancing shots to neutral is usually done when you want to match shots that were shot on different cameras. then after that you can apply your stylized color grade and have all the shots look like they were shot with the same camera. Otherwise like you said there is no need to balance the shots first.
THANKS
Tom I'm not sure if its me or something in camera but all of my shots seem to have a ton of noise even at 600-800 ISO. I'm shooting with a 18-35 Sigma Art f/1.8 wide open in CineD, NR set to 0. I can't seem to figure this out. All of my shots are really noisy... Any suggestions?
Griffin Productions what camera?
BlackEagle352 same for my 700D
Great video 👍
Hi, should we film in log or a picture profile when shooting at night? Trying to avoid getting a digital looking image.
....Follow up on my last comment. I guess my question is if I were to buy your movie LUT pack, would they work on my "Flat" h.264 nikon video? or would I need to be shooting actual LOG, for example when I shoot Log through my Atomos I am outputting Prores in N-Log. I'm assuming the LUTs would work great on that footage. But what about 8 bit flat H.264 footage coming out of camera?
Tom! Greetings from India!
how to get maximum in night shots using Black Magic Raw...? Does only shadow crushing works or any other tip you would like to share?
Wow Interesting! I was doing it all wrong ^^ i tried it not to exceed the iso 1600 with my gh5 ! A got a question what should i do when you don't have v log? Im using the cinelike d profile with everything all the way down. Any good luts for the lowlight?
Looks very nice. Could you please include what lens you used for this? I'm sorry that you must receive this question for every video.
he used the Sigma Zoom 17-50mm f/2.8
Lukasz Antos thank you very much for answering!
You don"t have to stick to exact 180 degree shutter rules. I like to shoot at higher shutter values when shooting at 60fps especially for slow motion for example, I'll shoot at between 120-160 shutter speed. So 60fps : 1/160. This is especially great for slow motion because the image is sharper, but all things considered, if you are dealing with a situation in this video where you are already pushing the ISO and need all the exposure you need then the lowest shutter speed is suitable.
And the need for sharpness is subjective to the camera guy. Not an axiom
interesting, i try to shoot with slower SS at night like 100 with 60fps, cause getting any light is important with lumix g80...i couldnt shoot 160 SS at night, would have to bump iso 6400 and even then be too dark, but i do have only kit lens F3.5 at the moment :/
Tom, amazing, thank you!
Thanks for the helpful explanations!
Great video Tom
this was really cool and super informative! got a new sub
thanks my role model Tom Antos
Very good info! Are there any LUTS that can be used with Final Cut Pro?
Pura Vida yes all the luts can be used in final cut. you just have to install a free plugin
When shooting on a flat profile like C log on a c100 mk2 do you think you should map out the tones differently on the wave form monitor? Should "white" live lower down the scale? What's your opinion on that?
Can u talk about the metering and exposure settings you used?
My camera allows me Multi, Weighted Center, Average and Spot. For night shots, which do you advise and to where exactly in the image should it be (in case it's Spot metering)?
Thanks for this.
Hey Tom. If you are going for a low key look or image. Would underexposure be some ypu would do knowing your end result?
A beginner filmmaker question about video noise. Are cine lenses less prone to noise than the photo lenses?
Thanks in advance. Excellent RUclips channel btw.
Noise has nothing to do with a lens. It only comes from the sensor!
ETTR (Expose To The Right).... great video......
Thank you for that awsome Content!!
Tom, do you use the zebras on your camera? Are they a really big deal?
I think the zebras are actually making me expose bad the shadows...
Mako Sports I am sorry Mako, you are right about the clipping but it is hard to believe that Tom's brother white shirt was not clipping when Tom exposed to the shadows on the rehearsal shot.
13 stops!
Mako Sports ah yes you are right. But even in log, I think the shirt is overexposed...
i hit a like because you showed the settings thanks bro
Tom Thank you for this as i have always struggled with Shooting at night with available lights.
was wondering if you had any advice for shooting scenes like this on a Black Magic Production 4K (ie Settings in Camera)
Again Thank you for always sharing and helping the next generation of filmmakers.
Thanks, helped me a lot
Good demos! Thanks
Really great sound you got on your commentary, what kind of microphone are you using ?
Adel Raziar rode USB mic