HELP! Grainy/Noisy footage A6400

[mowdee]

Hi everyone! We need your help...

This is the link to show you the problem: LINK (please look at the footage at the highest quality)

All the footage we've recently shot with our A6400 + Tamron 17-70 looks grainy, noisy, dull and flat, especially in the darker area's of the video. I've shot footage with the same lens and ND (which we try to use as little & as low as possible) on an A6000 without any problems. I'm talking about footage we've shot in daylight outside... We use zebra's (100) and we expose for the highlights, ISO is at 100, tried different colour profiles (neutral & standard), we don't shoot with any picture profile and we're shooting 1080P XAVC (our laptops can't handle 4K yet). I also tried AVCHD which worked fine on the A6000 but on the A6400 it also comes out grainy. Is there something we miss, a certain setting perhaps?

Thanks in advance 🙏

Edited March 4, 2023 by mowdee

[mowdee]

Anyone? 😊

[Pieter]

Not sure if this entirely covers your observations, and unfortunately I can't find a proper reference with actual facts and numbers, but it is known that the a6000 shoots better 1080p than the 4k cameras that succeeded it. Apparently has to do with how the footage is sampled: the a6000 samples the full sensor and downsamples this to 1080p, whereas later models apply pixel binning or some other sampling method which causes loss of detail and dynamic range. You actually get better 1080p footage from the a6400 by shooting in 4k and then downsample the footage to 1080p in lost, but I guess this is not an option for you.

[Veres Deni Alex]

Pieter is right! the a6000 will render cleaner HD videos.

and One way of approaching this problem is limiting the details level in the shadows, or even the whole image.

I know you mentioned not using any picture profiles but i highly suggest doing so because we can control how much noise you are getting into the image itself by tweaking some settings, and I will help you.

Check your Inner menu or custom buttons for picture profile menu, usually it's assigned to one of the custom buttons.

After you found the picture profiles, you can enter the deeper menu's option by hitting right on the dial wheel.

after you accessed the PP menu the first thing i recommend it setting the Gamma to Cine1, that will give you the cleanest image of them all with a creamy contrast. You can also decrease the black point to meet your contrast needs and to reduce color grading in post process.

For a simple base choose Color mode to Still and increase the saturation on your liking.

Final step to reduce grain, is to control de level of detail we want in out shot. Sony give us a lot of option in the picture profile so we are fortunate.

I recommend the following settings for a soft but clear look in your images

Detail between 0 and +4 depending on your personal liking.

Adjust Manual

V/H Balance -2

B/W Balance Type 5

Limit 0

Crispning 7

Hi-Light Detail 4

 

Basically, this will reduce the in camera crisping going on, reducing the grain but also maintaining the level of detail in your shot.

This is a very basic Picture profile you can create using sony's picture profile, but I've made a couple complex Film Simulation for Sony cameras for improved color and film like contrast if you wanna check them out.

You can find them on my channel

hope this helps!

 

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Veres Deni Alex