cinematography Too noisy footage on Canon XH A1

Sang Hee · Mar 23, 2010

Hi,
I've got XH A1 just recently and was trying to do some greenscreen in 1080p.
I've shot some footage and recorded it into Vegas but the problem is that the quality is really poor and there is so much noise as you can see even in the still pic that I've included - especially the black areas.
This is a huge problem for me because if I want to increase the brightness on the talent the noise is even more visible.
I've seen people making a great greenscreen footage with cameras on this level but I just can't get there.
Any tips on how to improve the footage or should I have my cam serviced?

JerrickG · Mar 23, 2010

What is your gain set at?

Sang Hee · Mar 23, 2010

At zero. No gain at all.

mplayer · Mar 23, 2010

set your gain to -3
that will kill the noise brought on by gain.

Ernest Worthing · Mar 23, 2010

try lowering the gain like they said. that should help.

Sang Hee · Mar 24, 2010

Ok, I tried putting the gain to -3 but even then I get the same results.
This is exactly what I get into Vegas when capturing. Could it be a problem with lighting?

JerrickG · Mar 24, 2010

And you have your auto gain setting to off?

NuclearHamster · Mar 24, 2010

Random question, do you adjust gain only with the G trigger thingy on XH A1 or is there more advance options?
another question, can you adjust the amount of motion blur?

timgray85 · Nov 16, 2013

My XH A1s footage looks the same way. All my gain settings are correct. Low is selected and set to -3. AGC is OFF. I also suspected it was the "Super Fine" image quality setting, so I turned that back to "Normal." No difference. I'm running out of explanations here. Help!

baoliun · Nov 16, 2013

I have no exp with this camera,but usually digital cameras have some sort of native iso/asa rating,at which they perform with the least amount of noise. You shouldn't have much noise unless you try to push exposure in post,meaning you underlit on set. Try shooting various exposures and see if the problem remains

A.D. · Nov 17, 2013

Doesn't that camera allow manual control of the exposure triangle settings then? (shutter, aperture, iso)

I've no idea about that camera tbh, but it would suck if all you could do was effectively run it in a program auto mode, and just fiddle with the iso/gain setting (which from the posts in this thread is what I gather it does).

There's a lot of blur in that first pic. Unless you were waving your arm really fast, the blur implies that a slow shutter was used, and makes me think that the cam is trying to allow even more light in to compensate for poor aperture control and low scene lighting.

I'm guessing you don't have this noise problem when shooting outdoors in daylight?

EDIT - nvm. I just noticed the OP's post date.