Shooting a Flat Picture Profile in FS700 means less noise? Thoughts?

[Scott Goldberg]

Question about flat profiles in the PP settings in FS700? I'm using the nLog v1.1 and I love the flatness of it. What are the pros and cons of shooting on a flat profile if not doing extremely heavy color grading? Will the flat profile ensure less noise than let's say if I use other ones that are less flat in image? Can anyone confirm this? I'd be using nLog v1.1 mostly on cloudy/overcast days and I know that usually the less light, the more dark colors can be noisy and muddy. 

[James_H]

I can't say if shooting flat will reduce noise in any way, this is one thing I'm not sure of.  What I do know is that shooting flat will help prevent clipping of the shadows and highlights.  In other words, it maximizes your camera's dynamic range.  In addition, from my understanding, shooting in log can help reduce compression artefacts in the darker parts of the image.  If you're shooting in log, you'll want to apply at LUT to the footage in post to get the right colours back.

[Scott Goldberg]

I'm not familiar with LUT....can you explain more? You learn something new everyday I suppose! 

 

I'll be using FCP X.

[see ya]

In this case the LUT is a 1D Look Up Table, basically for LOG an S shaped curve affecting R, G and B channels. The premise being that some one more technical than ourselves has created an accurate curve mathmatically to affect the LOG appearance and pull it into what is generally reffered to as a 'rec709' appearance and supposedly be more 'correct'.

This might be useful if you want to accurately reproduce some real world color in the shot like a logo and a premade 1D LUT can save time.

But you could could just use your color tools like curve and do yourself to suit your eye.

[MOONGOAT]

In theory, less saturation = less noise. In theory...

[jcs]

I believe sensor noise is constant. You can push down the amplitude of the noise and increase the apparent signal to noise ratio by using curves/profiles to push down the lower intensity output as with an S-curve (will increase contrast and push the blacks down, along with noise). Brighter source pixels hide noise better (higher signal relative to constant noise), thus raising the output of brighter pixels won't increase perceived noise as much.

 

When using a highly compressed output as with 24Mbps H.264, it's best to get the look as close as possible in-camera, with limited post-grading. This is because the output is 8-bit and the DCT quantizer throws away a lot of information during compression. If you need for example the blacks to be higher, you'll also notice more noise during recording. However, you can remove the noise in post with Neat Video and still preserve decent edge detail, with limited banding. If you shoot with a profile that hides noise during recording, and you try to raise the blacks in post, you might end up with large blotchy areas and banding. Using an external recorder with 422 and a higher bitrate can also help.

 

For the FS700, it's probably wise to create a few different profiles, one for each common shooting condition. You've got 6 slots, so that should be plenty.