Noisy X5R

[Blacksails]

So, I went out and shot a bunch of early morning pre sunrise stuff at 100 and 200 ISO, fairly wide apertures... and I'm getting lots of noise in the dark greens and reds of trees, bracken and grass.

Is this just normal for the X5R sensor? I was exposing the scene so that the sky was blowing out slightly. The highlights have recovered fine on the raw files....but why the noise? Especially on ISO 100 & 200?
What can be done about it?? I'm not pushing the shadows up at all and I'm on the latest osmo raw firmware. Exporting the DNGs from cinelight and opening in DaVinci. No LUT. All I've touched is the CameraRaw settings, although not the exposure, shadows or gain.

 

[InterMurph]

Please post an example.

 

[Blacksails]

I exported from cinelight, dng, untouched and am now uploading a prores 422 example from Resolve, also untouched. Clip is shot at ISO200 and f8. It'll be online tomorrow

 

[AMGPilot]

You will always have noise when underexposed. Expose to the right and pull back in post

 

[ge0se]

Yes, the X5R sensor is VERY noisy, in fact you cannot use an ISO setting higher than 400 or you footage will be completely ruined. Just get used to the idea I guess, I already learned not to expect much from this camera in low light situations.

 

[Blacksails]

Dropbox - Noise 1.mov

Here is an example. Download it for the full quality.

ISO200, f8, 1/50, 25fps

I see it in the grass and the hills that aren't getting the light.
I may just be pixel peeping and paranoid.... maybe not.

 

[ge0se]

Yep, this is perfectly "normal" behavior of X5R sensor, it's that noisy. And yes, Black Magic and other cameras capture far better images but you need a real helicopter to lift them in the air

Just expose the footage as high as highlight recovery will be able to handle and "swallow" the noise issue, its incredible enough to be able to capture RAW in such small form factor, hopefully in the future better cameras with similar weight will be made that'll be much less noisy.

 

[Blacksails]

Ah, thanks Ge0se!
I was starting to think maybe I had a defective unit. I didn't want the stress of dealing with DJI service. If I know it's normal and something I just have to work around then that's ok. Not ideal, but nevertheless, this little camera is still quite something.
I guess I was noticing it more in my stuff because, well it's my stuff and I'm far more critical of it than if I watch somebody else's X5r footage.
I looked at the h264 proxies for the files yesterday evening. They are really, really noisy. Like, unsalvagable. I'm not quite sure how people are using the standard X5 to capture low light stuff, unless they're running neatvideo or something with it in post.

 

[ge0se]

I didn't want to wait until X5R was going to be released so bought X5 when it originally came out hoping that it'd be good enough...

How wrong was I - so I pre-ordered the raw camera and sold the X5 right away. Even though it took many many months until I finally got my X5R I didn't miss the X5 at all. Ok, they sort of made it usable by finally fixing the Cinelike color profile a few firmwares back, but it came too late for me to take that camera seriously.