Flat picture control question

[alfaholic]

Hello everyone,

I have few flat picture control presets, and all of them are good in a sense that dynamic range is better, but almost in all situations other than bright sunny day my footage is very noisy and my D7100 shows some nasty banding in the shadow area, even at ISO100.

Even in the studio when lighying is good, in all areas without bright light there is so much noise and banding. For example, yesterday I made some music video and singers shirt was all with noise and banding.
I can post some examples.

My question is about flat preset, is it suitable for use in situations with low light, at night, im the studio, or it is made to be used only in scenes with high dynamic range?

Is there any general rule which picture controle preset is used in what situations, because I am starting to think that flat preset is not so good at night or with scenes without enough light.

 

[Derrel]

I think we would like to see some examples, yes. But a question: are you exposing adequately? Banding on a D7100's sensor is usually the result ONLY of under-exposing, and then "lifting" shadow ares to a brighter exposure. And the thing is, the exposure time in cinema/video is not that long, so the lens aperture needs to be reasonably wide (meaning a big aperture opening) when shooting in shadowy places. What looks like good lighting to the human eye is, many times, quite dim to the camera's eye. MANY indoor video light type setups are NOT all that bright, and will require very wide lens apertures, like f/2 or so, to give good exposure to shadowy scenes.

 

[alfaholic]

As you can see on his face, highlights are almost blown, so I suppose it is well exposed.



You can see on the left, darker side of the face there is noise and bending, it is not terrible but still visible.
It is at 50mm f2.8 24fps 1/50 of a second shutter speed. I have similar shots with f2, and still there is the same banding at ISO100.

I understand that flat preset raise shadows in order to achieve the best dynamic range, and that is why I have this noise, but I am trying to figure out is this noise and banding always there but hidden with too much contrast in Standard and Neutral, or flat preset somehow changes raw data before codec and compression?

 

[Derrel]

That SLIGHT banding will be hidden once the shadows are dropped to a more-normal, realistic-looking black point. This is about what one would expect with the shadows lifted so,so,so bright. And yes, it looks adequately exposed; his forehead was very bright.

 

[alfaholic]

So, this bending is there no matter which preset I use?