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Canon 6D ISO for Concert video?

otwinnzy
Apprentice

Hey guys. I shoot alot of concert photography but want to branch out into getting some footage at these events also. (EDM Events, Lasers, etc.) Wondering what my settings should be for an environment like this. Location would be Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco. Just to help out anyone in who is in the Bay Area haha. Thanks!

4 REPLIES 4

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

Auto ISO.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

TCampbell
Elite
Elite

I can't really answer your question... but I can give you some information that might be helpful to drawing your own conclusions.

 

I use a 5D IV and 5D III and I don't shoot video... so I'm not speaking from experience with 6D video capabilities, but I DO shoot astrophotography and the balance between high ISO vs. noise and dynamic range are a big deal (fortunately in astrophotography we have special techniques to deal with noise because we get to take many pictures of the identical subject knowing that absolutely nothing "real" actually moved between shots and anything that did move or shows up randomly from frame to frame doesn't belong in the picture.)

 

As you increase ISO, you'll get more noise.  But it turns out Canon uses two different techniques to boost gain when you increase ISO.  At the low end of the ISO range, increasing ISO causes the camera to perform "upstream" amplification.  This happens when the information is still analog (before it goes through analog to digital conversion (ADC)).  

 

Then at some point, it reaches the practical limits of what you can expect from analog gain, and switches to digital amplification (simple multiplication of digital values).  This is known as "downstream" amplification.

 

When you increase ISO, you lose some dynamic range.  But it turns out when you increase ISO via straight multplication, you lose a stop of DR per stop of ISO.  There are some techniques to alter how the multiplication is done to try to protect some DR.  Basically when the camera is primarily using "upstream" amplification the result is a tiny loss of DR.  For "downstream" amplification it's a more significant loss of DR.  The inflection point where the graph bends shows where the camera is transitioning from one technique to the other.  

 

For YOUR camera, here's the graph:

 

Best-ISO-for-Canon-6D.png

 

Looking at the graph, you can see that once you get beyond ISO 1600, the camera begins to take a near-lineaar loss of dynamic range for each stop of ISO.  But below 1600... it's non-linear and you don't lose very much DR for each stop of ISO.

 

So based on this data, if you can accept the level of noise you get at ISO 1600, then that's the point where you maximize high ISO while also protecting most of your dynamic range.

 

The 6D seems to be very comparable in sensor performance to a 5D III ... and I do own a 5D III (actually the 6D may be just fractionally better).  With the 5D III, I would use ISO 3200 without even thinking about it... and even ISO 6400 had noise, but I could easily process that in post.  But I do still photography - not video.  In still photography I'm able to use de-noising tools which allow me to tune how aggressive the noise reduction is based on tonality (more aggressive in shadows, less agressive in highlights -- which tends to be where more detail is anyway and typically will have less noise).  There are also ways to generate a mask that selects edges of contrast & detail... this allows you to avoid de-noising (which results in softening and loss of detail) in areas where you want to retain the detail.  These take a bit more time, but give you more selective control than just a global de-noising adjustment that treats every pixel the same.

 

I'm not familiar with video editing so I'm not sure how that works when you attempt to do post processing of video.

 

Best Regards,

Tim

 

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da

Waddizzle
Legend
Legend

@otwinnzy wrote:

Hey guys. I shoot alot of concert photography but want to branch out into getting some footage at these events also. (EDM Events, Lasers, etc.) Wondering what my settings should be for an environment like this. Location would be Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco. Just to help out anyone in who is in the Bay Area haha. Thanks!


Sorry, I cannot give you a specific answer.  But, I can offer some food for thought.

 

First question, will the camera be stationary?  If the camera is fixed, thenyou want to use all manual settings.  Using automatic settings can suddenly create small changes in exposure.  If you have a fully manual lens, one with a manual aperture control ring, then that’s even better.  A wide aperture lens, f/2.8 or better, would be highly desireable.

Second question, what type of lighting will they use?  Find out.  Setting White Balance has become a nightmare in recent years, due to a mixture of different types of lighting technologies that are used in the entertainment industry.  I would recommend setting White Balance to fixed, manual setting, also.  Light flicker can wreak havoc with video, too.

 

If the camera is not fixed, then multiply all of the issues in the second question by a factor of ten.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

otwinnzy
Apprentice
Thanks for the great recommendation! I'll definitely use the info you've given me
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