Shooting nite exterior

[David (dudi) Namir]

Consider using a little hand held little light. If you are going to be using a Red and have a crew of more than 5 then you might as well throw in a little light into the mix. Even if only an LED mini. Perhaps you can work in 5600k?

For the shots with the actors we are going to have lights. It is for the long shot of the street. It will take too much lights to light it and too set all these lights.
We want to use the street lights but we don't want to have noise in some areas were light is not available.

[Scott C.]

Work the headlights of a stationary car in, if that is an option.

On the residential street you could use some household flood lights maybe, to light a couple of the facades down the street. It's not too time consuming and they are cheap. I'd shoot them both as early in the evening as possible and stop down to make it photograph darker. That way, you will have some ambient that you can work with, as well as control over how it appears.

[Roberto Lequeux]

For the shots with the actors we are going to have lights. It is for the long shot of the street. It will take too much lights to light it and too set all these lights.
We want to use the street lights but we don't want to have noise in some areas were light is not available.

Oh, I see. Good luck. Hehe...

If you are stationary, or if you can make it, or only have very slow movement in the camera and in the frame, then just crank up the shutter to the highest setting... which I am sure you already thought of. Just make sure to do a close inspection for motion blur by playing back on a good monitor before moving on.

Definitely try out the de-noising plug-in posted above, neat-video. It works very well with good fine tuning and it is super cheap.

And do not use anything but the new RedCine with the new color science because it is a huge improvement, especially on warm lighting.

[David (dudi) Namir]

I will be tomorrow night at the location for test.
The street lights there suppose to give some exposure, we are just don't want the image to be noisy muddy or milky.
Images are from the storyboard.

[David Mullen ASC]

It really comes down to exposure -- you need some if you want to avoid noise. The other issue is color temp, if these are sodium vapor (orange) streetlamps, can you live with them being orangey because trying to correct that by pumping blue into the image will also cause the noise to increase. Finally, a lot of noise is visible in the dark areas, so it helps if you can live with deeper blacks rather than trying to lift the low end to see detail.

So get the fastest lenses you can and shoot the wide shot wide-open... if possible, shoot at a slower frame rate and longer shutter time and make everyone move more slowly to compensate. Anything you can do to get more exposure onto the sensor is going to help with the noise.

Usually it sort of goes: first you open up the aperture all the way, hopefully on a good fast lens like a T/1.3 Master Prime... then you open up the shutter, keeping in mind that you are increasing motion blur and smear, so if 270 degrees is enough, use that instead of 360 degrees, and if 360 degrees is necessary, then don't have objects moving quickly in the frame. And finally, start to shoot at lower frame rates and have actors move more slowly.

[donatello b]

anyway to keep the sky out of the shot ?
if yes, shoot those long street shots after the sun goes down/before it rises ..
or if no way to avoid sky - if shot doesn't pan/tilt shoot at dusk/dawn and replace sky in post ..
if you have to pan/tilt/move camera then you could track sky in post ....
all depends on the specific shot and the post fx BUDGET ....

[David (dudi) Namir]

Thanks everyone for the advices.
The long shots suppose to be with no actors an no movement.
Here is the plan for the tests:
Build 20
Sensitivity: 250 ASA and 320 ASA
White balance: Manual (reading a gray card), 3200K and 5000K
Filters: No Filter, IR filter, Blue filter (80D), both IR+80D
FPS: Bring down speed and adjust shutter to no flickers.
Files will be given then to our post magicians to do the magic.

[David (dudi) Namir]

Forgot to mention my Leica Van Diemen T1.6 will join.

[KETCH ROSSi]

We have some night exterior shots with available light of the street lights.
It is going to be low key in some shots and we ask how can avoid noise in the blacks or even in all over the frame.

Your Leica 1.6 will do nice, but I would much suggest a Canon 24mm 1.4L, if you can shoot with a 50mm then go to the Canon 50mm 1.2L, this is assuming that off course you can't afford the Mastr Primes, T*1.3 would be very nice.

One other thing is how long the shot is, meaning how many Frames would you have in total?

If the number of frames is reasonable, then my best suggestion to you is to import them in to Photoshop CS4, not as video but as Frames, and then you can correct/add/change anything you like just as you would with any still photograph, including adding any type of filters, exposure, levels, curves, Graduate filters, noise reduction, and make use of numerous Plug ins to individually work on the frames, if the shot is some what static then even better you can apply the settings to all the frame after copying form the first frame adjustment.

Best of luck with the shoot.

ciao

[Tony Brown]

just the long shot of the street without actors will be with the available lights.

Recce the street at the time you intend to shoot. You'd be surprised how much stuff can be on timers..... 11pm can look a lot brighter than 3am !!

Been there.