Coot,
Watching the below sepia images, I have a question regarding Red if you see this post.
As everything is built on metadatas and therefore non-destructive, my doubt remains on the isos.
Let's take this scenario shoot on Red: if one decide to shoot pushing the isos to extreme levels on purpose (and not because it lacks light)
for ex to get a 16mm grain, and after that you give-up with the idea and want to revert to a clean image to do something completly different,
are the isos also non-destructive?
So for ex, can you take those high-isos images on RCX and going back to 800 the typical high-isos grain would disappear?
I ask this question because never had very high isos Red footage on edit.
Uh, well . . . gosh Fred I wish I knew.
Really, I'm sure someone from RED knows more about this than me.
The thing I've noticed with digital noise in all cameras, still and motion, the more light you have, regardless of iso, the less noise you have.
Shoot a Phase back at 800 ISO with a lot of studio flash and the noise is pretty minimal. Shoot it with very little available light and the shadow noise can be fairly severe.
Same with the RED.
Now these images were shot with a small light panel, either handheld or mounted on a stand.
All I did was go into the R1, move stuff around until I liked it and shot it.
Crazy right?
Anyway, once in Cine-x, there is 4 ways to make a scene brighter. Exposure slider, ISO, Flut (which stands for something like Floating point) and obviously brightness.
Each one looks different, so in post I did a combination of all, including contrast to get the look I wanted, then made a still, then went to photoshop to match and finish out.
But, to answer your question, if I dropped the iso down to 800, and moved the exposure way up to compensate the noise was still there, but it depended on the original exposure and voume of light more than anything.
When I shot this I also tried a few images with more light and less iso and obviously less noise. Then I tried less light, opened up the Fstop to match and though the noise should be equal I saw more noise.
In post processing I also thought it would be better to kill the denoise filter and put it in later in photoshop, but that made the blacks clump. You really can't see the clumping in a motion image, but a still it's very evident.
So the best was was to shoot it the way I liked, look at it in the computer, make some adjustments, shoot it and then process it out with no noise killer and just move a combination of iso and exposure where I had the base image I wanted.
Does that make sense?
I don't know, but it did what I wanted.
Though the real answer is, if time permits and you know the look you want, test it, test it, test it and then shoot it.
I really only had time to shoot it, look at it, guess at the adjustment and shoot it.
BC
BTW Chris, loved that image, but it would have been great with a half eaten sandwich. You know, human it up man.