FAO Cinematographers/Video editors

[Big_Nothing]

Morning lads and lasses,

I'm sure within the reach of fmttm there's one or two of you who know a bit about this.

Essentially I'm trying to take some footage for a project on my xiaomi m9t Pro. I'm using Filmic Pro with Cinematography kit, settings are as advised for low light conditions, iso at 100, 24 fps and 48 shutter speed. White balance is set.

Essentially when I try filming in low light I'm getting terrible colour change going on making the footage unusable as per the image I'll attach. The native camera app has no such issue. Any ideas what could be causing this and how I get around it?

 

[ThatFragranceGuy]

Was going to tell you to post on Reddit but can see you already have

when you say others with the same kit don’t have the issue are they from the same region? Phone manufacturers often vary component suppliers so someone could be using the same phone and have a ccd in the phone from a different supplier entirely, or a different cpu which behaves differently

 

[nowthen]

The lower the light, the higher you need to go with the iso. That shouldn’t be causing the major colour shifts though.

 

[Big_Nothing]

The lower the light, the higher you need to go with the iso. That shouldn’t be causing the major colour shifts though.

Yeah that's the issue I'm trying to work out, the colour shifts. I think maybe the light sensor could be damaged. Occasionally when taking photos it bugs out and I get a huge change in how the image looks, almost as though an aggressive filter has been placed on it.

 

[Big_Nothing]

Was going to tell you to post on Reddit but can see you already have

when you say others with the same kit don’t have the issue are they from the same region? Phone manufacturers often vary component suppliers so someone could be using the same phone and have a ccd in the phone from a different supplier entirely, or a different cpu which behaves differently

I believe some are from the same region, yeah. My phone was bought in VN and they're Indonesian.

 

[bendylikemendi]

Have you tried bumping the ISO - the screen grab looks quite underexposed (unless that's the look you're going for) and, although unlikely, that could be what's causing the gamma shift. Compared to your native camera app which will manage exposure automatically, Filmic is giving you full control to do this through the settings, so you'll need to adjust something to get it right (apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs there).

 

[Big_Nothing]

Have you tried bumping the ISO - the screen grab looks quite underexposed (unless that's the look you're going for) and, although unlikely, that could be what's causing the gamma shift. Compared to your native camera app which will manage exposure automatically, Filmic is giving you full control to do this through the settings, so you'll need to adjust something to get it right (apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs there).

No apology needed! I have bumped the iso and while it goes gradually improve it doesn't disappear and starts to appear in bands. I was just illustrating the extreme of the problem with the lowest iso. Filmic gives me control and I'd like to think within that control it should provide a combination of settings which shoot lower light better than my native camera app but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe that's pure naivety on my part.

 

[bendylikemendi]

No apology needed! I have bumped the iso and while it goes gradually improve it doesn't disappear and starts to appear in bands. I was just illustrating the extreme of the problem with the lowest iso. Filmic gives me control and I'd like to think within that control it should provide a combination of settings which shoot lower light better than my native camera app but that doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe that's pure naivety on my part.

Even as someone who shoots (albeit somewhat cackhandedly) professionally I struggle sometimes with Filmic. Have you tried pulling the footage into an editing application to see whether you can pull back some of the detail with the correction tools available in there? Also, what white balance settings are you using? Assume you're matching to whatever light source you are using.

 

[pierrequiroule]

Bump this when borolad is around, I'm sure he'll have some ideas.

 

[Big_Nothing]

I haven't as of yet. When I viewed the footage back it was so much worse in quality than I anticipated I assumed, perhaps rashly, that it was useless. I'm going to play around a little further tonight and see if I can improve things at all.

For white balance I'm either letting the ai choose and then locking that in for the full shot or using a sheet of paper and again locking that in.

It's a really bad example of conditions that I intend to shoot in to be honest, I'm just practicing.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to a complete novice!

 

[Big_Nothing]

Bump this when borolad is around, I'm sure he'll have some ideas.

Nice one, Pierre.

 

[bendylikemendi]

I haven't as of yet. When I viewed the footage back it was so much worse in quality than I anticipated I assumed, perhaps rashly, that it was useless. I'm going to play around a little further tonight and see if I can improve things at all.

For white balance I'm either letting the ai choose and then locking that in for the full shot or using a sheet of paper and again locking that in.

It's a really bad example of conditions that I intend to shoot in to be honest, I'm just practicing.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to a complete novice!

No problem - we all had to start somewhere. WB might not be the issue, but I'd try setting it by colour temperature and see if that makes a difference - I tend to use a mix of 3200 (tungsten light), 4300 (mixed) and 5500 (daylight). It might also just be that the camera hardware itself is struggling with the low light - the built in apps often do weird things (like using variable frame rates and weird shutter settings) to make things look OK

 

[Big_Nothing]

So as an update. Tried shooting in my office both on filmic pro and the native app again today in considerably better light.

These images are still showing this strange colour issue... Honestly don't know what the next step is

Not sure if it's the app or my phone.

 

[Big_Nothing]

Additionally when i try to take any outdoor footage from my balcony.

4k, 24fps, auto white balance, 1/48 shutter speed and 100 iso (lowest i can go) this happens.

 

[Big_Nothing]

I would think it was the phone or camera being bust but they work A OK in the native app.

 

[borolad259]

If everything works as it should with the native app, then it's likely to be a conflict between the Filmic Pro software and the phone. Have you checked user forums? Pretty sure there will be forums for Filmic Pro .... post about th eissue on there, you might find others with the same issue or, even better, someone with a workaround/solution.

 

[Big_Nothing]

If everything works as it should with the native app, then it's likely to be a conflict between the Filmic Pro software and the phone. Have you checked user forums? Pretty sure there will be forums for Filmic Pro .... post about th eissue on there, you might find others with the same issue or, even better, someone with a workaround/solution.

Hi Borolad. That was my first port of call and other than one other person with a slightly different model of Xiaomi phone to me, no reports of either issue. The first issue may just be particularly bad low light performance as it continued over on to other none native apps.

The complete over exposure at 1/48 however seems to be specific to the Filmic Pro app, I'm going to speak to their support and get it flagged to devs but I'm not convinced it'll help much.