Extreme low-light hand-held night video with f1.4 lenses and the M6ii

Larry Rexley wrote:

I've shot another railroad video this week, entirely at night on a fairly dark, Moonless night.

This time I took the EF-M 32mm f1.4 lens instead of the Sigma 16mm f1.4, along with the Rokinon 135mm f2 speed boosted with the VIltrox SB (making it a 100mm f1.4), and 2 M6ii cameras.

I am finding the Siggy 16 is so wide that the train looks too a bit 'stretched out' as it passes, and it was much smaller before the train gets close and when it goes away. With the 32mm I took care to find shooting spots where I could step back to still fit the train top-to-bottom in the frame --- the result is a much more natural-looking perspective where the train doesn't 'grow' so much into a distorted shape. But we knew all along the 'nifty fifty' perspective is a more balanced one... Finally I'm finding more uses for the amazing Canon EF-M 32...

I spent a lot more time this time post-processing the video clips with Adobe Premiere, carefully adjusting the white balance, exposure, and tone curves to bring out as much color and contrast as possible which trying to keep the noise low.

White balancing was really tricky - in some spots there was bright orange sodium-vapor lighting --- mixed with greenish lights. I found that a good strategy was to balance by trial-and-error.... in some cases I balanced a 'good white light' area, then an awful 'monochrome' lighted area --- noting the color temperature and tint values for both areas, then averaged the values and setting the temp and tint manually. This seemed to work very well, and gave me the first decent footage I've achieved in those mixed-lighting spots.

Much of the video looks like it was shot in 'good' lighting, more punchy than the usual washed-out grainy night video. This is some of the best 'night train' footage I think that can be found anywhere...

https://youtu.be/yyrfjTEjAdw

Wow ! Nice work !

I like the 32mm for car shows. Have to stand back and wait for people to pass and such but I like the way cars look when using the 32mm.

I have tried many different Canon crop lenses at car shows and the ones I did with the 32mm came out the best. Sharpest with great colors.

Group photos too. Have to get back but so very little distortion and fast and sharp wide open.

No IS no playing.

Sold all my zooms except my 11-22mm I use for ebay and Craigslist photos.

I like Photolab 6 and like working on my M6II 32mm raw files. I kinda think Photolab likes the 32mm too.

If I had to have just one lens it would be the EF-M 32mm.