Advice for filming beamshots

Hi everyone

Im looking for help with regards to filming beamshots.

On playback of my videos via youtube, on particular devices the videos appear heavily pixelated in the dark areas of the screen. This doesnt occur on my laptop, huawei phone or old ipad, but it does happen on my Samsung galaxy S8 and my sons more modern ipad. its as if the device is trying to expose areas of the video that I don't want to be exposed (i.e. I want pitch black contrast)

I use a Canon G40 for filming and Adobe Elements for editing. I have tried recording in AVHDC and MP4, then uploading in 4K, 1080p and 720p but cant eradicate the problem. Im always careful not to over/under expose the image during recording. I see some other youtubers have crystal clear images, this maybe because they are filming with some ambient light from urban areas etc. which helps reduce the harsh contrast between the dark areas and the illuminated areas. I prefer to record in pitch black (if seasons allow) But if anyone can help me out with any advice id really appreciate it.

Thanks

Unlike film, digital media tries to think with algorithms. It knows bright and dark. While bright is easy to record, dark is not. So todays digital media is trying to provide details in shadows that were once just that, shadows.

Very careful metering has become an art form in todays automatic thinking digital video recording platform(s).

I personally stopped buying updated gear because the smarter it got the worse the metering problem became. Trying to match what my eye sees became more and more difficult as the algorithms tried to think for me. I found a camera I liked, dialed in settings and biases deep in the menu then saved those in recallable memory banks. Then use manual adjustments of shutter speed and apperature to tweak for individual projects. All the while compromises had to be accepted.

It's frustrating, but the alternative is film while you guess on correct illumination of the final product only to find out post development something was off one way or another. Too dark or too bright. At least with digital you can see instant results if you use properly calibrated monitor equipment as the view screen. A tripod next to the tripod that allows the computer screen you download your project to. This costs more going in but the results are less time editing and time saved is money saved. For the non pro hobbyists that sounds crazy, but would you rather dazzle your friends with a proper video on the big tv screen on a Saturday night or set hunched over behind a computer screen editing and masking flaws?

I'd rather say honey, please pass the popcorn………

Thanks bykfixer for your advice, i really appreciate it.

I do feel in over my head with it now hahaha. I didnt even know i had a problem until i watched my vids on this samsung galaxy phone recently and i noticed how poor the quality was. On most of my other devices they playback ok. Ive since been trying every screen i can to check at friends and parents houses, and theyre mainly ok. But i think as screens improve, itll be harder to create footage that plays back accurately. As you say, there must be some darkened detail in the image on which some devices try to recreate leaving those areas rendering very poorly.
My camera has a high sensitivity CMOS pro sensor, i wonder if thats trying to hard to capture the dark areas whilst recording. Maybe i should use something a little more simple that wont pick up the detail in the recording. And i need to look into an external monitor, i had considered one for ease of recording tabletop reviews. It hadnt even occured to me about having a correctly calibrated monitor for taking beamshots though.
Thanks again.

There's a couple different concepts happening here that you'll need to know to make it work:

- The exposure: A camera's metering will essentially always attempt to expose the scene evenly so that as much of the composition as possible will come out roughly middling brightness; this is awesome for basic daytime outdoor shooting, but everything goes wrong once you have very dark or very bright areas mixed in that you want exposed correctly versus the entire scene. One example of this is shooting in full snow conditions, where the camera's metering will always make the snow look gray and the overall exposure look somewhat dim - because the camera is going for middling exposure for the average of the scene, so all bright snow will get dialed down and sublimated to dull gray. Any "trick shot" that requires replicating how you saw it as opposed to how the camera meters it will require you to manually set the exposure. With a digital camera of course, no math is required, you can just trial-and-error it until it looks right, but the more you know about exposure settings, the faster you'll arrive at the right combination. With the right device, you can even set the correct exposure later after the picture is taken, which brings us to -

- The processing: Just as in the days of film, you shot the pictures and then took them in to get developed/processed - this is still how it works today, except it's the camera doing the processing by default; any time you take a picture that's a JPG, that's a processed and compressed completed image that was originally a raw pile of data from the sensor, also known as a RAW file. Modern video cameras allow you to shoot in RAW format, so that the camera simply hands over the pile of data to you without doing anything to it/not compressing it so all the data is still there, which allows you to later load the data into an editing program and recover details hidden in shadows and highlights and very precisely set the exposure after the fact. I'm gathering that you're using an older camcorder so this is probably not an option for you, however your Samsung S8 can shoot still images in RAW, which means with some processing you could get a better still image from your phone than video from your camcorder.

This is a RAW + processed nighttime image from my iPhone 7, which is older than your phone:

I figured he was speaking of moving pictures SH.
With still frame, yeah RAW is the way to go.

Processing with photoshop etc in my view is a pain because (unless they've added one) there is no RAW thumbnail viewer. Say you shoot 10 beam pix and want to quickly check your work a thumbnail viewer is very handy versus loading one at a time. I used to use something called Fastone, which was a lightweight editor that allows thumbnail view of RAW pix too. Do basic things to the photo with a before/after split screen setup and BAM! Done.
No white balance feature though and as you know often that does make or break the difference between what our eye sees and what the camera said.

My favorite editor of all time was/is "photo editor" app by MacGeyver for android. That thing is sweet but I've switched to apple now and homie only does his thing on android. Fastone is a windows only thing.

Current cameras shoot RAW video as well as stills, but if you don't like file handling images, wait until you're dealing with 5GB/min video files..

You have to do what you can with what you have, and if it comes down to a current phone versus an older camcorder, I'd get more information out of a "what I actually saw" still image than an "imagine it darker/brighter" video.

Thanks for both your inputs!
In general my videos playback accurately on most of my devices (720p tv, laptop, huawei phone) and they accurately depict the light im featuring.
I was always happy with the results until recently i realised on higher quality screens the videos appear poor in quality. Like you both mentioned, the devices appear to be trying too hard to process the image and make sense of it, leaving it over exposed and grainy.
My camera is entry level professional canon G40 which i bought new about 2 years ago. I will try my sons bridge camera which is an entry level camera otherwise i might try a consumer grade 4k camera and see if it records footage that is more compatible with the latest equipment.
Unfortunately it may end up a fairly expensive series of trial and error.
I like the results that flashaholics achieves and i think he uses a 4k sony. But his videos always have a low level of ambient light which help illuminate the surroundings. Whereas my videos are often shot in near complete darkness, and i think this is where my problems begin.
Thanks again guys!

You get graininess in dark areas because the sensor is being turned up so high to try to expose the scene that it reveals noise, sort of like audio equipment playing back a very quiet sound and turning up the volume so much that you can hear the noise floor. The larger the sensor recording the scene, the less noise there will be (so before noise reduction, the video cam beats the phone handily here, but the phone may process with good noise reduction,) short of that something has to give - there needs to be more light overall or you need to drop the frame rate so each frame takes in more light. If the goal is to just reproduce the beam as you see it in a pitch black scene, that may mean simply dropping exposure so that the beam looks right and empty black areas by the eye look empty black in the video (but this is a boring composition and doesn't illustrate space/distance well.)

Thanks. Ill test out dropping the frame rate and see what results i get from that. I have a new astrolux ec01 to try it out with. Im really grateful for your advice, this is quite hard for a novice (me) to get to grips with. I should do a course really to gain a better understanding

Gotta learn exposure for stills to grasp the base concepts, begin here:

Beam shots are probably in the upper end of the most difficult pictures to take.

Where I live it isn't as difficult as really dark places due to light pollution. I can literally walk around after dark with no flashlight and not bump into a shed or a tree. Shadows are why we need flashlights where I live. Main roads are so well lit you don't even need headlights.

Point being if you have total darkness try some low level lighting like a floody beam putting out 5-10 lumens if you can.

Cheers! Ill try a few options. Maybe i could attach my zebralight to the front of my tripod for low level illumination of the surroundings.
I got some options to work with, thanks! Ill post back after trials for reference

To report back.
I found some image enhancement options on my camera that were currently enabled, and switched them off.
I changed my frame rate to 24fps.
I filmed in a dimly lit public park area rather then out in the countryside.

All in all, i was pleased with the results during editing. And the video plays well on my laptop and my older ipad and my TV. But unfortunately still plays poorly on my samsung galaxy. It still tries to overexpose the image!
I guess theres just something else about my camera setup which produces this result when played on particular screens. So eventually i will have to try a different camera. I think thats my only option left
Thanks for everybody's help! If anyone is interested my videos are in the link of my signature below.
Thanks again

It just dawned on me that once upon a time I used to take moon pix over water with a point and shoot film camera with various film iso's. They'd be dull and lifeless with iso 100 speed film. Someone suggested 800 speed film so I tried it one night.
That night fish were active so there were lots of chances to see the moon reflection on perfectly flat water with ripples from fish jumping. I shot my little roll of 24 and took them to be developed the next morning. Late that afternoon it was time to pick them up. With great anticipation I opened the envelope to reveal my masterpieces and ……wut-thuh?!? What is this Crap?!?

The background was grainy green like a golf course. Now the iso had picked up stars in the sky and details were awesome but the part that was supposed to be black was anything but.

Later I tried 400, then 200 speed film and found a happy point with 200 speed while sacrificing some details.

I suppose my point is to say try changing the iso around some starting at a high setting then lower it and see if you like the differences. Who knows? It may work.

torchsarecool said:

And the video plays well on my laptop and my older ipad and my TV. But unfortunately still plays poorly on my samsung galaxy. It still tries to overexpose the image!

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There's a couple of different things going on here -

First is the inherent brightness of the source itself; you need to check the histogram of your source material to ensure it's touching both sides, which tells you you're getting the most brightness and contrast out of your camera possible while maintaining detail. This means your pic/vid is objectively properly exposed, so most any brightness issue will be on the display end. The Northrups also have a quick vid on the subject.

Second is the non-uniformity of display hardware; there will obviously be huge differences in what people view your work on, so you'll need what you compose or edit on to be calibrated to a standard. There are expensive pro hardware kits and in-home services that can do this, but for the purposes of brightness, all you need is a simple calibration chart:

Bykfixer- thanks for that. I could work through it methodically, just a short clip at a time with different settings. Then i can review the clips and see what returns best results. Like you say, its the benefit of digital. I used to use my dads old film camera when i was younger, and ive experienced the frustration of getting back poorly exposed photgraphs lol. I was only about 15 years old then and never learnt properly. (I guess i still havent 20 years later haha)

Starhalo- thanks again, the calibration of my monitor makes sense and bykfixer has mentioned this to. Its not something i have considered before so ive learnt some good stuff from the efforts youve both put into this thread. My laptop hasnt got the best screen but i will see what comes of it. Im sure i can run another monitor if needs be.
The histogram tutorial video was very helpful! I expect it should be very extreme at either end of the graph while filming beamshots. Am i right that i shouldnt have much midtones? (And that it maybe where its been going wrong so far)

torchsarecool said:

The histogram tutorial video was very helpful! I expect it should be very extreme at either end of the graph while filming beamshots. Am i right that i shouldnt have much midtones? (And that it maybe where its been going wrong so far)

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A histogram of a beamshot will probably look essentially U-shaped unless you're doing near-field stuff (backyard, street, etc,) the more important issue is that it is touching the right side; the camera by itself will almost always be able to do this, so it's a more important point if you get into editing.

Thats great, getting my head around it now. :thumbsup:

I like the pic. It is now my desktop wallpaper.

TeaSipper said:

I like the pic. It is now my desktop wallpaper.

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That's just me screwing around with my phone, I put the effort into my actual camera: