a7s III Chroma Noise

jonpais · Aug 19, 2020

Brandon Li, in the BTS (9:00) of the "Crossroads" video he made for Sony, says there's noise even at relatively low ISOs. Could it be that Sony is just using less aggressive processing than in their other less video-centric alpha cameras? Or is there simply no getting around the fact that oversampled 4K has finer noise? Not a few filmmakers complained in the past of not being able to lessen the amount of in-camera noise reduction, preferring instead to deal with it in post.

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The a7s III is not noise free. There is noise in the image even at relatively low ISOs. And you're still going to see this noise even if you use S-log 3. I believe you get the same level of noise from the sensor regardless of your picture profile so I don't know exactly what's causing this noise but I found that as long as the subject of your scene is not in the shadows then you can go to super high ISOs and it will still look great.

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But if your subject is in the shadows it's in the toe of that exposure curve you will have noise issues when you try to raise things up in post, so what I did in post was I added a luminance mask to my noise reduction so that it only reduced noise in the shadows of the image and I applied the noise reduction at the minimum amount to make the noise bearable to my eyes and the image ended up coming out looking very clean.

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pa_cu · Aug 20, 2020

Are very subexposed.

sybersitizen · Aug 20, 2020

Noise in deep shadow areas? Who'da thunk it?

Jon Jon · Aug 20, 2020

Blotches instead of fine grain.

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Voice of Reason

jonpais · Aug 20, 2020

pa_cu said:
Are very subexposed.

That’s what I’m thinking.

Jipson · Aug 20, 2020

none of these clips appear to be shot at "low iso"

jonpais · Aug 20, 2020

Jipson said:
none of these clips appear to be shot at "low iso"

This chap downloaded some sample footage from James Matthews' channel and says it looks super clean:

Let's have a look at the footage. First of all look how clean it looks. I don't know if you can see after the youtube compression but in the shadows there's barely any noise whatsoever and it's just such a clean image.

c87ba8cae6d94159a52659a6054078cd.jpg.png

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jonpais · Sep 1, 2020

jonpais said:
Jipson said:

none of these clips appear to be shot at "low iso"

Click to expand...

This chap downloaded some sample footage from James Matthews' channel and says it looks super clean:

Let's have a look at the footage. First of all look how clean it looks. I don't know if you can see after the youtube compression but in the shadows there's barely any noise whatsoever and it's just such a clean image.

To the best of my knowledge,Josh Yeo (Make.Art.Now) is only the second YouTuber to confirm what my eyes are already telling me - that there is more visible noise and some over-sharpening going on in a lot of videos:

So I will say in color grading this I did notice that there is some definite noise going on. I don't want to say that there's more noise [than] the a7 III but the noise is larger and I think it's just because the a7 III is a downsampled 6K image to 4k and so there's you know it there's a little bit of cleanup that's going on when you have that process happening. Most of the profiles look like there's a little bit of sharpening going on and we can see that in the noise and just what the style of noise is like. This is like a stupid little tiny problem to have. It's like someone who could taste the difference between a $250 bottle of wine and a $2,500 bottle of wine would probably notice this. Most people are not going to see this noise at all and in fact it cleans up quite nicely when you open DaVinci Resolve and you add de-noise, it takes care of it.

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Noah M · Sep 2, 2020

I am curious to see how much better the S5 will be at ISOs less than 12800. It oversamples 24MP which reduces noise and really helps detail. It appears because it can't oversample in a helpful way, the Sony applies too much sharpening. I wonder if there is a way to tone that down.

The S5 also looks to be a better tool for video. It has vector scopes, waveforms, shutter angle control, oversampled 4K, oversampled DCI/Cinema/Full 4K, etc. For $1400 less it looks more affordable too, And it should not have the oversharpening and noise issues. Plus it uses a great Sony sensor.

Jon Jon · Sep 2, 2020

jonpais said:
jonpais said:

Jipson said:

none of these clips appear to be shot at "low iso"

Click to expand...

This chap downloaded some sample footage from James Matthews' channel and says it looks super clean:

Let's have a look at the footage. First of all look how clean it looks. I don't know if you can see after the youtube compression but in the shadows there's barely any noise whatsoever and it's just such a clean image.

Click to expand...

To the best of my knowledge,Josh Yeo (Make.Art.Now) is only the second YouTuber to confirm what my eyes are already telling me - that there is more visible noise and some over-sharpening going on in a lot of videos:

So I will say in color grading this I did notice that there is some definite noise going on. I don't want to say that there's more noise [than] the a7 III but the noise is larger and I think it's just because the a7 III is a downsampled 6K image to 4k and so there's you know it there's a little bit of cleanup that's going on when you have that process happening. Most of the profiles look like there's a little bit of sharpening going on and we can see that in the noise and just what the style of noise is like. This is like a stupid little tiny problem to have. It's like someone who could taste the difference between a $250 bottle of wine and a $2,500 bottle of wine would probably notice this. Most people are not going to see this noise at all and in fact it cleans up quite nicely when you open DaVinci Resolve and you add de-noise, it takes care of it.

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The sensor is tuned for high ISO. But at the price we see. If it was a 24MP sensor the camera could combine pixels and remove the noise while increasing sharpness. It’s not possible with only 12MP. The only way to hide the noise is smooth out detail.

To my eyes because there isn’t the combining of pixels to improve detail, Sony is applying extra sharpening and that makes the noise more noticeable.

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Voice of Reason

jonpais · Sep 2, 2020

Noah M said:
I am curious to see how much better the S5 will be at ISOs less than 12800. It oversamples 24MP which reduces noise and really helps detail. It appears because it can't oversample in a helpful way, the Sony applies too much sharpening. I wonder if there is a way to tone that down.

The S5 also looks to be a better tool for video. It has vector scopes, waveforms, shutter angle control, oversampled 4K, oversampled DCI/Cinema/Full 4K, etc. For $1400 less it looks more affordable too, And it should not have the oversharpening and noise issues. Plus it uses a great Sony sensor.

Panasonic AF isn’t reliable enough for casual vlogging, let alone for paid work where you’ve got to nail the shot, whether it be weddings, product photography, automotive, photojournalism, events, music videos, real estate, fitness videos, documentary or anything at all involving gimbal work. Enthusiasm generated by the S5 among hybrid shooters is next to zero compared to Sony’s offerings.

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a7s III Chroma Noise

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