HXR MC2000 Gain issues

[conorconan]

Hi Guy's,

firstly, thanks for this amazing forum. I have learned so much over these past couple of weeks reading this board.

I have run a search with respect to the above, and sadly, no results have been returned.

Therefore, I would be extremely grateful if someone is able to help me with this issue. When I am working in dark environments (weddings, birthday parties etc), I am picking up a lot of image noise with this camera. I am shooting in Manual settings, but no matter what I do, it does not help me with the picture issues that I am having. I have added an on board camera light to the system, however, it does not seem to help that much.

This is the funny part, when I lower the exposure of the camera, it darkens the images, however, it also reduces down the db count on the end product. However, this in turn is making the park much more dark.

I was wondering whether or not any of you good people know of a way to manually control the gain that I can achieve with this camera, or a set of setting that I can apply to the camera in order to reduce the gain?

As you can see, it is 01:27am where I am, should really be in bed, however, I got another wedding in 10 days, and need assistance with this issue.

Many Thanks in advance, and again, thanks for this forum.

Best Regards


Conor

[Stephan]

Hi, welcome!

There a 4 parameters that let a camcorder adjust to changing light conditions:
- Shutter speed,
- Iris aperture,
- Physical ND filters (neutral-density grey filters) that reduce incoming light,
- Gain (dB) - which is a digital algorithm that functions like a light amplifier.

Here's what happens when light conditions change, and how the camcorders deal with them in AUTO mode:
- Ordinarily shutter speed stays constant at 1/50 (Europe) or 1/60 (US/Japan). Camcorders will only change shutter speed as a last resort.
- When it gets brighter to very bright, some camcorders can engage internal ND filters, but they will also essentially close the iris, and then finally increase shutter speed.
- When it gets darker and darker, camcorders will open up the iris (to increase incoming light), and then when iris is fully opened up, they will start adding gain so as to "amplify" the light. Some camcorders (in auto mode) can also engage slow shutter @ 1/25 or 1/30 in order to further increase incoming light.
- When you adjust "exposure" on a Sony camcorder, what it actually does is adjusting all those parameters in sequence (one parameter at a time) in the way I explained. It is like AUTO mode (you don't have to check each parameter individually), except all you do is manually control the auto mode (if that makes sense).

What you see when adjusting "exposure" is probably the camcorder actually adjusting gain, because that's all it can to when it is too dark. Gain is the cause of noise. To reduce noise, you need to reduce gain.
=> To do this, assign function [EXPOSURE] to the manual ring, switch to manual and reduce "exposure".

2 other options:
- Best: more light. There's no substitute to good lighting - across the whole picture. If some areas stay too dark, they could have noise because somehow the camcorder doesn't necessarily apply the same gain to the whole picture.
- Engage manual shutter speed and try 1/25. Beware though, because all fast movement (or not so fast) will look blurred and jerky. But in some conditions, it can save your day (or night).

Hope this clears things a bit :-)

[acgold7]

This is the funny part, when I lower the exposure of the camera, it darkens the images, however, it also reduces down the db count on the end product. However, this in turn is making the park much more dark.

I was wondering whether or not any of you good people know of a way to manually control the gain that I can achieve with this camera, or a set of setting that I can apply to the camera in order to reduce the gain?

lower the exposure of the camera = darkens the images = reduces down the db count = making the [picture] much more dark = manually control the gain = reduce the gain.

These are all different ways of sayng the exact same thing. This is what you are doing by turning the exposure dial/wheel/ring.

So in other words, you are already doing all that can be done. Although if you set the cam to LOW LUX mode, the Shutter will default to 25 rather than 50.

[conorconan]

Hi, welcome!

Hope this clears things a bit :-)

Stephan,

thank you so very much for this very detailed answer. I am very grateful that you would take the time to respond. I will have to give this a go tonight, and see how it works out. I am starting to get there, but I have a good feeling about your answer.

Many many thanks.


Conor

[Doughie]

Although if you set the cam to LOW LUX mode, the Shutter will default to 25 rather than 50.

I myself am a fan of reducing shutter-speed to 1/25th (PAL area cams) if its necessary to do so. Reducing shutter-speed from 1/50th to 1/25th will allow you to use 6dB LESS gain and that will reduce image noise. Obviously you need good cam technique (steady, no fast panning or crash-zooming) and the subject would need to not be moving too fast, but reducing shutter speed can be v helpful in low light.

Note that on some cams, putting it into LOW LUX mode can do TWO things (unfortuantely) : reduce shutter speed but also some cams are programmed to ramp up gain to levels like +21dB in this mode. My XR520 does this. I would much much prefer to have the choice of raising gain or not, but I am forced to use 21dB gain (on my cam at least) if i want to use a 1/25th sec shutter speed).

in the end, try all options, shoot test clips, see what you prefer.

[conorconan]

Hi Doughie,

Many thanks for your response. I am going to give this a bash tonight and see what goes with this. It is shocking that gain can be programmed to go to 21db and upwards. Guy's, what is the best program that you guys use for Noise reduction in post production?

[Doughie]

Hi Doughie,

Many thanks for your response. I am going to give this a bash tonight and see what goes with this. It is shocking that gain can be programmed to go to 21db and upwards. Guy's, what is the best program that you guys use for Noise reduction in post production?

The main one i know of is NeatVideo which is a plugin that you can use with i think all the main software editing programs. I have used it with Sony Vegas, and i know it can be used with PremPro and other packages :

Premiere Pro (Win and Mac), Premiere Elements (Win and Mac)
After Effects (Win and Mac)
Final Cut Pro X / 7 / 6 , Motion, Final Cut Express (Mac)
OpenFX hosts: Fusion, DustBuster+, Scratch (Win, Mac), Nuke (Win, Mac, Linux)
Vegas Pro, Sony Vegas Movie Studio
Pinnacle Studio
VirtualDub (can also be used in AviSynth scripts)

Philip Bloom uses it too, he is quite well known.

Here's the website :
http://www.neatvideo.com/