BMCC Low Light Noise

I've been playing with a lot of BMCC DNGs lately and I absolutely love the images I'm getting. The only thing that's keeping me from actually buying one is that I'm seeing some odd performance from the camera in low light situations when put into Resolve--at least from the few low light DNG images I've seen.

For example, when I open the low light images in Adobe Camera Raw I have a lot of latitude in the darkest parts of the image and can recover a lot of information. But when I open them in Resolve, I get a lot of color noise and posterization as if all the dark parts of the image are clipped and unrecoverable.

Is there a trick to working with these low light images in Resolve or is this a bug? I'd love to get one of these cameras, but this is really concerning me since I'd like to shoot in RAW.

Thoughts?

I've attached images of the DNG in Adobe Camera Raw and Resolve.

Here is where you can get the sample DNG from Frank Glencairn: http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/119 ... ight-test/

I tried for something in between Frank's grade that captured the lights well and your grade that captured the shadows. I just couldn't get the shadows to come close to your version before the image fell apart. Graded in Aperture. This is a great image from Frank as it really does present a challenge to get good blacks with some detail in the shadows:

Frame000060 603.jpg (897.79 KiB) Viewed 15344 times

So in Aperture you couldn't push the image as far before it fell apart? If you have it, try Adobe Camera Raw. It's available within Bridge or Photoshop. Maybe the Adobe Processing is better at recovering shadows than Blackmagic or Apple?

Yes I have Photoshop etc. By the way, I asked another person on BMCuser to post one of their grades that actually is close to your version and it was done in Resolve I believe. I guess this grading can be quite the art. I know when I hit some Auto buttons I wasn't getting results as good as my manual grade but I just couldn't get much out of the shadows in Aperture. So I went with blacker blacks and an outline of the light on the people in the shadows on the right side of the image.

tried both aperture and ACR (latest version just came out a couple of days ago)....ACR allows to "open up" the shadows more but it really achieves this by adding white noise or something like it (showing up at about shadows +60 setting)...completely unusable....both aperture and ACR really provide similar usable results (although the histograms look different?)....and afaik both use a generic DNG development....once blackmagic provides raw files to them and it isn't too much work they might tweak things a bit for better performance....

By the way, I asked another person on BMCuser to post one of their grades that actually is close to your version and it was done in Resolve I believe. I guess this grading can be quite the art.

I wonder if it was done in Resolve? I've tried everything I can think of to recover the shadows like in Camera Raw but I get a lot of noise and posterization. If it was done in Resolve I wonder what the trick is to get it right?

tried both aperture and ACR (latest version just came out a couple of days ago)....ACR allows to "open up" the shadows more but it really achieves this by adding white noise or something like it (showing up at about shadows +60 setting)...completely unusable....both aperture and ACR really provide similar usable results (although the histograms look different?)....and afaik both use a generic DNG development....once blackmagic provides raw files to them and it isn't too much work they might tweak things a bit for better performance....

What about using Resolve? Have you tried opening up the shadows?

Someone on BMCUser suggested I post this here. I did this in Adobe Camera RAW 6.4.

tried both aperture and ACR (latest version just came out a couple of days ago)....ACR allows to "open up" the shadows more but it really achieves this by adding white noise or something like it (showing up at about shadows +60 setting)...completely unusable....both aperture and ACR really provide similar usable results (although the histograms look different?)....and afaik both use a generic DNG development....once blackmagic provides raw files to them and it isn't too much work they might tweak things a bit for better performance....

What about using Resolve? Have you tried opening up the shadows?

haven't had time to play with resolve.....

I wonder if it was done in Resolve? I've tried everything I can think of to recover the shadows like in Camera Raw but I get a lot of noise and posterization. If it was done in Resolve I wonder what the trick is to get it right?

Sorry, Juluan; it was also done in Adobe Camera Raw. Certainly interesting to see how much better it handles low light compared to Resolve and Aperture. For a well lit image, no problem getting beautiful and varied grades. Let's hope BMD has some more improvements in Resolve 9 prior to the general release. I think Peter Chamberlain said there was another update coming very soon.

I think Peter Chamberlain said there was another update coming very soon.

I hope it has improved Raw processing.

Guys, raw isn't a divine tool. Yes it is very nice and i love to work on raw but when sensor doesn't record enough shadow data you cannot magicaly restore it in the raw files. Try shot the same location with raw and on dslr or other commpressed codec camera and you will see the real raw magic.

Guys, raw isn't a divine tool. Yes it is very nice and i love to work on raw but when sensor doesn't record enough shadow data you cannot magicaly restore it in the raw files. Try shot the same location with raw and on dslr or other commpressed codec camera and you will see the real raw magic.

That's the issue! If the data wasn't there I wouldn't be asking other people what's going on with the processing in Resolve. But when other RAW processing tools show that there is usable data in the shadows and can recover it and the rest of the image quite well, yet Resolve is unable to produce the same results with its own flavor of RAW that's what gives me pause. I start to question whether it is my RAW workflow/handling in Resolve or if its the processing that is not quite there yet? Or maybe Resolve's Raw processing capabilities are more limited by design than in other Raw tools?

I just don't see why Resolve would throw away so much useful data. Also, in other low light DNGs I've seen the potential for bad color noise to be introduced when the image is pushed in Resolve; yet when in Abode Camera Raw, the image is perfectly useable.

I just want to know if others are noticing this and if it is a bug or by design or a work in progress? I hope it's still a work in progress I really like the images from the camera and want to get one but not if I can't do anything with the shadows in my fav color grading app Resolve.

I think that the Picture looks very good. Consider that it is shot at F/4 and if you look at the Histogram of the Raw file you see that it is very underexposed because the shooter wanted to capture all the highlights. I had to push this up by 3 EV steps to make it a proper exposure which is, because the camera's native ISO is 800, equivalent to ISO 6400 and for that the result is pretty neat for a raw image without any noise reduction at all. In the attached Crop I didn't apply any highlight or shadow recovery.

To my eye the BMCC does a great job at recording very high-quality, relatively low-noise HD video when appropriately exposed.

To apply "intelligent" noise reduction to your footage with little or no loss of detail, in addition to or as an alternative to the NR features in Resolve, I'm also reading about and seeing excellent results by others using the Neat Video NR software. Especially when used sparingly/appropriately, it appears to be well-worth its approx. $100 US cost. Just an FYI. Cheers.
http://www.neatvideo.com

I have to confess, that this was one of the first shot's I done with the BMC, and I exposed it way to low.
I learned that you must expose till you almost hit 100% zebras.

It would have looked much cleaner that way.

I have to confess, that this was one of the first shot's I done with the BMC, and I exposed it way to low.
I learned that you must expose till you almost hit 100% zebras.

It would have looked much cleaner that way.

But we're grateful it was exposed this way as it's been an interesting exercise in how much room there is to rescue a shot. And it is a beautiful shot with several 'stories' contained in that composition including the main characters at the front, the young girl to the left and those people lurking in the shadows to the right. A feast Frank. Thanks for your time and efforts and creative approach even when testing with that lantern at night with your lovely model.

Frank any chance for a do over with that scene?
I really love your quite Carnival as well but the night ones Im more interested in

[CaptainHook]

I tried this in Capture One and Resolve. Similar results.. Capture One brings up clean detail from the shadows.. Resolve shows quite a bit of noise when opening up shadows. I tried turning off all default NR in Capture but it's still much cleaner.