Sony A7S II slog 3 noise at night.

[kamiiakbari]

I am experimenting a lot of noise with S-log 3. I just bought this camera with an Vario Tessar T Fe 24 - 70.

I have only tried it at night, but it should not be that much noise, I have followed a lot of different setups too, but it still does not work, is this an Production fail ? Or just something that you need to setup.

 

[remylebeau]

If you're really interested should watch Alistar Chapman's video on SOny FS5. In the middle he explains the gamma curves for S-log 2 and 3.

 

The short of it is there is a ton of noise in the darks when shooting S-log. You have to over expose by 1.5-2 stops, and possibly more if shooting at night. When you bring into your editor you drop the exposure by 1.5-2 stops which will hide the noise in the shadows.

 

I shot this at 12800 ISO with barely any street light: The noise is well handled: 

 

The thing with S-log curves is that the top 2/3 of the curve contain only highlight information, leaving only 1/3 with mid-tones and shadows. So you have to expose for the shadows to get as much detail out of that, then drop the exposure in post to hide the noise.

[pilsburypie]

With little scientific basis on my part, I heard s-log 3 wasn't great for low light. It is more suited to getting the most DR out of a fairly well lit scene.....