Grainy Footage, Please Help!

I have noticed that the footage on my BMPCC 4K has gotten much grainier than it used to be. I shot an event and some of the footage is pretty poor even though the lighting was good and I was at a low ISO.

Low-light it used to be amazing and now even with OK light I am getting grainy footage.

Please have a look at these test clips I just took for reference and let me know what you think/what might be happening. I know the first is real dark but still shouldn't be getting that kind of noise I believe. I've shot very dark footage in the past and it looked great. I have tried remapping pixels which didn't help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

**I am apparently not allowed to post URLs and the test footage is too large to attach so I'm not really sure how I can even supply you with the test footage. Please advise.**

Specs: Panasonic Lumex G 12-35 f2.8 lens.

Clip 1:
- Pro-Res HQ, HD. f2.8. 23.98 fps. ISO 2000

Clip 2:
- Pro-Res HQ, HD. f2.8. 23.98 fps. ISO 640

you need to do more post before you are allowed to unlock some feature.
The grain of camera is related to iso, light quantity in the scene, shutter angle.
with the variation of that you see a variation of contrast, quantity and structure of grain, but usually nothing that you cannot remove with a good denoiser, if you not lift too much shadows.
But until we cannot see picture, also a single frame, we cannot judge.
From resolve, from color tab, from camera section you can export a single braw frame, that is small enoght to be attached.
if you want export a frame from prores, you can grab a still like gallery and later export like dpx, the same like previous to judge the quality of picture.

Clip 1:
- Pro-Res HQ, HD. f2.8. 23.98 fps. ISO 2000
Clip 2:
- Pro-Res HQ, HD. f2.8. 23.98 fps. ISO 640

Conor, without being able to see your clips, this are just immediate thoughts looking at the specs for the clips.

1. Unless you are exposing with the correct aperture and shutter angle, shooting in ISO 2000 and 640 can yield grainy results.

2. Use ISO 400 and 3200 (if you need to get more light) instead. These are native ISO on the BMPC4K. SA @ 180 degrees.

You can upload your clips to WeTransfer and post those links here. If the forum software doesn't let you post links yet - you can strip them off the https://

Hi there, sorry about the delay was a busy week.

I have attached some screenshots at least.

Everything is shot in Pro-Res HQ (1080p)

Frame 2 is a test shot at night, obviously without much light, but still overly noisy especially in the dark areas.
Frame 3 is from an event I shot with lots of light but you can still see noise on his shirt.

Frame 6 is a shot I did earlier in the winter which I feel looks much better even though it also don't have very much light at all. Much less noisy, also ungraded.

Am I going crazy or is the image quality not worse then before and much noisier then it should be? I feel it should be a much cleaner image.

Thanks again for you help.

Hi there, sorry about the delay was a busy week.

I have attached some screenshots at least.

Everything is shot in Pro-Res HQ (1080p)

Frame 2 is a test shot at night, obviously without much light, but still overly noisy especially in the dark areas.
Frame 3 is from an event I shot with lots of light but you can still see noise on his shirt.

Frame 6 is a shot I did earlier in the winter which I feel looks much better even though it also don't have very much light at all. Much less noisy, also ungraded.

Am I going crazy or is the image quality not worse then before and much noisier then it should be? I feel it should be a much cleaner image.

Thanks again for you help.

it's better than you think. BMD cameras not have noise reduction in camera, and your mild noise is something that goes with very mild noise reduction in post.
at 6400 iso no other cameras give you so clean and at same times so dectailed picture, i attach a sample of another camera, with nr disable just to compare

6400 iso.jpg (737.08 KiB) Viewed 7897 times

Frame 3 (ISO 100) looks very underexposed. I would suggest going up the ISO scale to the native 3200 in that circumstance and exposing more fully.

Frame 3 (ISO 100) looks very underexposed. I would suggest going up the ISO scale to the native 3200 in that circumstance and exposing more fully.

Yeah, to me its just underexposed.

You're good, man. Just change your exposure.

Am I going crazy or is the image quality not worse then before and much noisier then it should be? I feel it should be a much cleaner image.

Thanks again for you help.

You are not creasy the footage is much noisier. The reason is the fixed noise pattern you picked up. But I don't think it's your sensor, as in it's broken.
I have a bmcc which is very prone to fpn. I can shoot in dark circumstances and have no fpn just the noise pattern that I love about bmcc and other times fpn is all over the place in seamingly similar circumstances.
I'm still trying to figure it out, but I'm sure light is somehow involved. If I point the camera at a light and next to underexposed area I get fpn. If I just point at the underexposed area I don't get fpn. If I point at the underexposed area and the light is somwhere in front of me but not directly in view ...I get fpn ...and then sometimes I don't. Maybe it's a flair picked up by the lens, I don't know yet.
But one thing stands out for me in the pictures you posted. The clean one hardly has any dynamic range, it's just simply dark with nice noise distribution. The house has some very strong contrast. The man with the kids, was there a strong light in front of you? the shadows and shiny floot suggest there was.
Take all this with a big grain of salt. Just my experience so far with a complete other sensor while I try to figure out what causing that dreaded fpn that pops up every now and then.

Frame 3 (ISO 100) looks very underexposed. I would suggest going up the ISO scale to the native 3200 in that circumstance and exposing more fully.

You can do what Ric is suggesting. My suggestion is that you can expose @ ISO 100 to reduce the graininess and adjust exposure by opening IRIS more, changing Shutter Angle, combination of those, or if you like to leave it at that, add light to suit. This will give you a wider DR too.

IMO, and I have said this many times before in other post, it goes without saying that cine camera's require that you should be lighting your set correctly.

ISO 400 properly exposed will also work. A high ISO does not mean you can get workable exposures with no to little light — you need light.
Cheers

Denny and Ellory are right. If you have enough light, use the 400 band at possibly ISO 200 or slower. I was assuming your light was insufficient in recommending to use the ISO 3200 band.

picture are in log space without cc
i tried a fast correction of

sampleCC men at work_1.2.1.jpg (89.92 KiB) Viewed 7596 times

house.jpg (152.36 KiB) Viewed 7596 times

obviously a Cc, a Noise reduction on compressed jpeg is not good as on Prores motion picture, but it's quite better than original.
attached you had drx to try to load yourself picture and correction on davinci resolve e see on your clips.
i used spatial NR, but in this kind of picture work better Temporal that eat less fine dectails.

Using LUT in camera can give you a better idea of what are you looking for.

picture are in log space without cc
i tried a fast correction of

sampleCC men at work_1.2.1.jpg

house.jpg

obviously a Cc, a Noise reduction on compressed jpeg is not good as on Prores motion picture, but it's quite better than original.
attached you had drx to try to load yourself picture and correction on davinci resolve e see on your clips.
i used spatial NR, but in this kind of picture work better Temporal that eat less fine dectails.

Nice grading Carlo. You're the man!