neila December 8, 2017 Share December 8, 2017 (edited) I started working on a project recently that is intended to be very dark, nearly black. It's a one room setup at night with the goal to seem lit by candles and a window. My approach has been to keep a consistent luminance level on focal points of shots and let the rest fall where it will. Because of this, there's a lot of signal being compressed into the blacks that we're fine with letting go into shadow. The look is essentially what we want, but the inevitable compression that will muddy up shadow detail and add banding is in the back of my mind. What kind of approaches do some of you take for near black looks? Is future compression in mind when you work? Edited December 8, 2017 by neila 1 Link to comment Share on other sites
Abby Bader December 8, 2017 Share December 8, 2017 You could use a splitter combine node and reduce some noise in the different color chanels. Temporal noise reduction will most times give the best results. I would not crush the blacks compltely but spread the information through the low IRE range. Other takes in low light scenes could be to sharpen the eyes and/or add some small color nuances in the skin to gain a better separation from the background since the luminance levels are so close. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites
