Comments

cosmo wrote on 10/9/2004, 11:05 PM
Color Curves works well for this. Low light is a really hard problem to fix...
Grazie wrote on 10/9/2004, 11:06 PM
Get your hands OFF the brightness . .stop it! . .What I've found is the Gamma control in the SOny Levels . .give that a go first. THEN do another Search here . . we covered this in more detail not long ago . . but DO try the Gamma . . only a little will go a long way . .yeah?

Grazie
snicholshms wrote on 10/9/2004, 11:07 PM
Try levels, as well. Play around with the Gamma.
johnmeyer wrote on 10/9/2004, 11:23 PM
Gamma is the easiest. Color curves is the best (don't mess with the individual color channels).

In Color Curves, just set a point near the top and another one at the bottom of the line in the color curves, and then move the top one to the left and the bottom to the right until you form an "S" curve. Move the upper point up and to the left until you start to see your highlights "blow out" and then back off. Do the same on the bottom until you start to "crush" your blacks. If you still aren't satisfied, you can also add the color corrector, and then increase the gamma.

As Grazie says, DON'T use the brightness or contrast controls.

Finally, once you have got it just the way you want, go back and make it a little darker. In any correction -- whether it is noise reduction, color correction, or brightness -- there is always the intitial "relief" you get when you see the problem diminish, so you tend to want to push it a little further, and then a little further, etc. Unless you are extremely disciplined, you will almost always do too much. It is generally better, in the case of what you're doing, to have footage that is still a little dark (it was a dark scene to begin with, right?) that to have something that is bright, but grainy as heck and washed out.