1. camera manufacturers and film crews both do their best to produce a noise-free image 2. in post-production, they add fake noise to the image so it looks more "cinematic" 3. to compress better, streaming services try to remove the noise 4. to hide the insane compression and make it look even slightly natural, the decoder/player adds the noise back
Anyone else finding this a bit...insane?
This is not correct, camera manufacturers and filmakers engineer _aesthetically pleasing_ noise (randomized grains appear smoother to the human eye than clean uniform pixels). The rest is still as silly as it sounds.
Does this explain why i dislike 4K content on a 4K TV? Where some series and movies look too realistic, what in turn gives me a amateur film feeling (like somebody made a movie with a smartphone).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera_effect
Which is generally associated with excess denoisong rather than with excess grain.
This comment that I replied to is almost a textbook description of the soap opera effect.
The interpolation adds more FPS, which is traditionally a marker of film vs TV production.
But yes, there are definitely also many DPs that like their grain baked-in and camera companies that design cameras for that kind of use.
It is only an issue in content delivery.
This is patently wrong. The rest builds up on this false premise.
1.2.: Google "how to shoot a night scene" or something like that. You'll find most advice goes something along the lines of "don't crank the ISO up, add artificial lighting to brighten shadows instead". When given a choice, you'll also find cinematographers use cameras with particularly good low-light performance for dark scenes (that's why dark scenes in Planet Earth were shot on the Sony A7 - despite the "unprofessional" form factor, it had simply the best high-ISO performance at the time)
2: Google "film grain effect". You'll find a bunch of colorists explaining why film grain is different from ISO noise and why and how you should add it artificially to your films.
Next, no shit aesthetics are subjective, I never said this is the one objective truth. I said this is a thing that many people believe, as evidenced by the plethora of resources talking about the difference between noise and grain, why tasteful grain is better than a completely clean image and how to add it in post.
And finally, come on, it's obvious to everyone in this thread that I'm referring to digital, which is also not "just a subset" it's by far the biggest subset.
So idk what your point is. Most things are shot digitally. Most camera companies try to reduce sensor noise. Most camera departments try to stick to the optimal ISO for their sensor, both for dynamic range and for noise reasons, adjusting exposure with other means. In my experience, most people don't like the look of sensor/gain/iso/whatever noise. Many cinematographers and directors like the look of film grain and so they often ask for it to be added in post.
Besides the many/most/some qualifiers possibly not matching with how you percieve this (which is normal, we're all different, watch different content, work in different circles...), where exactly am I wrong?
> it's obvious to everyone in this thread that I'm referring to digital
It was blindingly obvious that you meant digital. That’s why I pointed this out. Without mentioning that it is only a concern with digital photography, your points become factually incorrect on more than one level; because the thread wasn’t talking specifically about digital photography, some of your points about noise don’t apply even if they were correct—which they aren’t, by your own admission that photography is subjective. Producing a noise-free image is not the highest priority for film crews (for camera manufacturers it is, but that’s because it means more flexibility in different conditions; it does not mean film crews will always prioritize whatever settings give them the lowest noise, there are plenty of higher priorities), and in some cases they choose to produce image with some noise despite the capability to avoid it.
Sorry, with your googling suggestions it just reads like a newbie’s take on subject matter.