- Hey, guys. My name's Matti. Let's talk about night shoots. Now, me and Peter did a
little night shoot yesterday and we realized it's so
hard to do night shoots. They're really tough. So, let's talk about five
different things that you can do to take your night
shoots to the next level. (upbeat music) And before we get into it, I just wanna say a huge thanks to all you guys who subscribed
in the last couple days. On the last video I said that only about 52% of you guys who are watching right now
are subscribed to the channel and I really appreciate all you guys who joined this community. And I just love having you guys here. And if you're still part of that percent who aren't subscribed,
subscribe right now. Hit that button, take the time. Just hit that subscribe button. Alright, so night shoots. Night shoots can be really hard and it's kind of obvious why they're hard. It's because there's no light or very little light to work with. And if you do have light,
it's usually this harsh just not very good
light that you're using. The light's not flattering, you're having to boost your
ISO so your footage is noisy, et cetera, et cetera. Night shoots are really tough, but what can we do to make
our footage even better when we're filming at night time? Number one is to use a fast lens. It makes a massive difference
if your lens can do something like F2.8 or even lower, F1.4, F1.8. You can get a lot more light with that. Here's a comparison, the exact same shot, exact same settings at
F2.8 and then at F1.4. It's almost over exposed at F1.4, so I could drop down the ISO and then you're gonna get less noise. So, it really makes a big
difference to use a fast lens. My go to lens for this would
be the Sigma 35 mil 1.4. It's just a really nice lens, and if you're not on a full
frame, you're on a crop sensor, the Sigma 18 to 35 F1.8 is
probably my favorite lens ever. I just wish it fit on full frame. It's what I'm using right now. Its my favorite lens and it's really fast. It's fairly affordable,
I think it's around $800. So, it's a really good
option, a good range. But just because you need a fast lens doesn't mean you have to
shell out a ton of money. You can use something
like the nifty fifty, the 50 mil 1.8, it's only about $100, or you can even use a vintage lens. This one only cost about $30. It's a 58 mil F2, so it's pretty fast, and then you just buy an adapter and use it on whatever came you're using. So, you don't need to spend a ton of money to get a faster lens, but you definitely need
one for night time shoots and in general they're just really nice. Number two is to find a light. Now, for YouTube or documentaries
or anything like that where you're just running and gunning, you're probably not going
to have a light with you, so you need to find a light. And a lot of people would use
something like a street lamp or something like that, but that's a really unflattering light. It's a really harsh small
light just beaming down and it's probably not even that bright, so it's not going to light
your subject very well. I recommend finding a
nice big soft source. So, for example, here I was
just using a storefront. It had a light coming through. And here we found this overhead light that was really cool
looking, I really liked this. Super cinematic, nice soft
light coming from above, and you could even use
something like this. It's just an LED panel sign
thing in front of a building. It looks kinda cool,
it's an interesting look. So, just find a big soft source and big tip here is to
get really close to it. The closer you get, the
brighter it's going to be and the softer it's gonna be. Avoid those small harsh lights and it's going to be way more
flattering for your subject and your just gonna get better footage. Number three, silhouette your subject. So, let's say you don't
have a big soft source. What can you do? You use that harsh light, but use it to silhouette your subject. Especially if you're
using a nice fast lens, let's say an F1.4. You're gonna get really
nice boka in the background and that's just gonna just silhouette your subject really nicely. Just makes it pop or even just
using a brighter background to just silhouette your subject, it just works really well to silhouette because there's so much contrast that your eyes are automatically
drawn to that spot. Don't worry about having perfect
lighting on your subject, having beautiful light on the
face or something like that. As long as you can see
a silhouette like this, your eyes are immediately drawn to it and it just keeps the attention. Number four, don't go too high on the ISO. Now, you're gonna need to
boost your ISO a little bit, but don't go too high with it or else your footage is just
gonna look really really bad. Now, what's too high of an ISO? That totally depends on the
camera that you're using. For example, here I was
using the 1DX Mark II and here we see the footage at ISO 3,200, 6,400, 12,800, and then 25,600. And you can see the footage looks pretty
decent still at 6,400, but after that it starts
falling apart a little bit and there's quite a bit of
noise, especially at 25,600. So, try to keep your ISO down. Don't boost it too high, but it's a bit of a balancing game because it's always better to actually be able to see your subject and
have a little bit more noise than to not be able to
see your subject at all and not have any noise in the frame. And if you use a really high ISO, make sure to denoise in post. Now, unfortunately, most programs
don't come with a denoiser but denoising in post can
really help with the footage that has a lot of that noise, especially that digital
different colored noise. It just doesn't look good. So, make sure to use a denoiser. That's gonna make a huge
difference to your footage. And then number five,
this one's not so obvious, but it's to avoid slow motion. The more frames per second
that you're shooting at the more light you need and
because it's dark outside you don't have very much light. You're basically just gonna
to keep boosting your ISO, which is gonna make your footage worse. Here you can see the exact same
shot with the same settings just changing the shutter speed to fit the different frame
rates at 24, at 60p, and 120p, and you can see the difference
in the amount of light that's coming into the sensor. You need so much more light to go from something like 24
frames per second to 120. It's just a drastic difference. And again, because you're not
adding more light to the scene you basically just have to boost your ISO and eventually just
doesn't look good at all because it's so noisy. So, try to avoid shooting in slow motion, but if you do have to shoot in slow motion make sure you either have lights with you or you're finding really bright lights in the city to work with. Slow motion is one of the hardest
things to do at night time so do your best to avoid it. Alright, there you go. Five tips on how you can take your night shoots to the next level. I really hope these helped you guys because night shoots are so hard. I don't know how much you
guys shoot at night time. It was actually a really fun experience just learning again, trying
to figure out how it all works because I don't do that many night shoots. But it's a really good skill to have because you never know if you're gonna have
to shoot at night time and you need to be able to
use these different tools to get the most out of
your night time footage. There's nothing worse than going home after you've shot a whole night and then just having gross, garbage, noisy, not good footage. So, take these tips, put 'em into practice and get yourself some
better night time footage. I hope you liked this video. Hit that like button,
subscribe to the channel, be a part of the 52% of you
who are watching right now who are subscribed. Guys, enjoy the filmmaking process and go get some of those travel feels. Oh, and if you want photography tips on how to shoot better night time photos then go and check out Peter's video. I'll link it down below. (upbeat music)
