Question how to get good night videos from dslr?

luv2liv

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2001
3,491
92
91
i love shooting videos with dslr in the day time. the results are crystal clear and silky smooth videos.
at night, it's a totally different story. my colors are terrible and grainy. i shoot in manual mode, not letting the Canon 80D go past 1600 ISO. and the result does not look anything like others on youtube with their Canon at night.
any idea what i am doing wrong? is there a good youtubve tutorial on this topic? i have been watching tutorials and they are all the same:
1- set F to lowest. mine is lowest at F 1.8
2- set Shutter to 1/50 s when frame rate at 24fps
3. set ISO to adjust, dont go over 1600.

anything else im not awared of?
thanks!
 

Syborg1211

Diamond Member
Jul 29, 2000
3,297
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91
Are you looking at comparable lighting scenarios? Just because they're both night time doesn't mean the ambient light from lamps/other artificial lighting isn't comparable. A lamp pointed in the right direction makes such a huge difference at night.
 

luv2liv

Diamond Member
Dec 27, 2001
3,491
92
91
hard to compare apple to apple's lighting.
i just wonder if it's me or if it's post editting and manipulation, something im not good at :(
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,201
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www.anyf.ca
There's only so much you can do, video cameras will always work better with really good light.

For really good night shots you're looking into the more professional grade cameras and even then they can only do so much.
 

turtile

Senior member
Aug 19, 2014
614
294
136
How is the video compressed? Is is compressed again before upload to Youtube?

I'd assume most Youtubers use color tables and other methods of fixing poor lighting. DaVinci Resolve is free and comes with a lot of these features.
 

Paladin3

Diamond Member
Mar 5, 2004
4,933
877
126
As others have said, the quality of your light at night has a lot to do with the image quality. So either you don't have enough light for those exposure settings or the meter is being fooled by the poor light and underexposing the video. Try turning up your ISO. That 80D should produce good results at ISO 6400 and above. And play with your exposure compensation control by setting it to +1 stop and see if that helps. Remember that in low lighting your exposure latitude is often narrowed with shadow and highlight detail suffering. And it often causes grainy images like you are experiencing.

But no camera will take good photos or video under truly bad lighting conditions. So light your scene well, take a good meter reading off of the most important subject in the photo and get it right in camera. Post processing can only shine up a turd so much.

And if you really want help you will have to show us at least screen shots of how the scene was lit so we can offer better suggestions.
 

kymira13

Junior Member
May 22, 2019
3
0
6
Have you tried de-noising your videos in post?
That may help a bit but won't entirely solve your problem.

For me I just got lazy and found myself a used a7s mk1, its been a great investment.