Question about noise.

[harmonica44]

In my experience, when I try to light a shadowy scene, the dark parts come out noisy. However I watched my new DPs work, and he does the same thing, but there is no noise in black parts, and they are pitch black, but clear, and we both shot at 800 ISO. He says he has not had a problem with noise on the shadows, and does not know what I am doing differently. What am I? My guess is that he has better exposure on the part of the shot, that is actually lit, but that's just a guess and not sure if that's the cause.

 

[lightcameraction]

Maybe you just show him what you do and then he tells you where you are doing wrong ?

 

[FernandoAndre]

The same camera? The same lens? At the same aperture? Without any post work? With the same shutter speed?

 

[harmonica44]

We tried it on my camera, same settings. It works now on my camera too, since he did it, but not sure what he does differently. We are using different lights though, and putting them closer together, but still creating black shadows. They come great on mine now, but still haven't figured out what is different. He doesn't know. No post work.

 

[FernandoAndre]

Hm... Which camera, which lens and which settings is this?

 

[harmonica44]

Canon T2i, 18-55mm. 800 ISO, Aperture keeps changing, depending, and we have done different ones. I have gotten noise with different apertures, he has gotten none. Shutter speed 1/50 on all of them.

 

[FernandoAndre]

Do you have a still from each one? This is really strange, since this lens is a f3.5 max aperture, using a 800 ISO, is unlikely get free of noise with this shutter speed in a low light ambient.

 

[harmonica44]

Maybe not completely free but lower for sure. I will try to upload some later. We actually did a test with it set to 100 ISO. The shadows were completely black but the lit parts had no noise. Where as if I tried shooting before at a low ISO there would even be red noise in the lit parts.

 

[FernandoAndre]

Yep, thats why we need lenses with wide apertures. I'm using an old Minolta f1.4 in low light. It's amazing and I paid just $90.

With a f3.5, it's a true challenge get low noise in a dark place using a so high ISO.