How do you get awesome 360 video shots at night?
Shooting in low light isn't easy
because it produces some big problems
that you wouldn't have to deal with during the day.
The biggest ones being shots that are too dark,
too blurry, too grainy,
lights that are too overexposed
or lights that keep flickering.
So in this video, Mr. Ben will teach you
how to overcome all of these obstacles
and get awesome shots
like the ones in the opening montage.
Big thanks to Insta360 for sponsoring this video.
I'll link the camera I'm using, the ONE RS 1-inch,
as well as other 360 gear down below.
How cool is the new sign by the way?
I got a custom made.
So to achieve the perfect exposure for low light 360 video,
shooting in manual mode is a must.
When you shoot in auto the camera guesses the settings
and at nighttime gets it very wrong,
which results in too much noise, blur,
and overexposure of any lights that might be in your scene.
Now, each situation you shoot in 360
is going to have varying amounts of light.
Meaning you're going to have to set the exposure manually
at each new location you visit
because no two locations will be the same.
Be sure to use the mobile app preview
to get a sense of where your exposure's at
while you're shooting.
Now, let's go through the manual settings one by one.
So firstly, with whichever camera you're using
make sure the resolution is set to maximum.
With the ONE RS 1-inch 360 that's 6K,
with other cameras it's around 5.7K.
Next we'll tackle exposure settings,
and this is done in a very similar way
to how you'd expose shots when shooting with the DSLR.
The biggest difference being you can't set
the aperture for most point and shoot 360 cameras.
But there are two other major settings
that will strongly influence how your shots turn out.
The first one is ISO.
Turning up the ISO turns up the brightness
but it also turns up the grain.
Also I found turning this up too far
in some situations leads to strobing.
Hence why the goal in any situation you shoot
should always be to keep your ISO as low as possible.
The next big setting is shutter speed
and this is what's causing your shots to be blurry at night.
The reason they're blurry is because auto exposure
chooses a low shutter speed
which doesn't capture motion very well.
With way more light during the day,
these settings would work,
but at nighttime you'll need to make it much faster
in order to capture movement sharply
as well as avoiding motion blur while shooting handheld.
The shutter speed you choose can also cause flickering.
And these settings are slightly different depending
on where you are in the world.
So when you're shooting,
always check to make sure your shots aren't flickering.
If they are change the shutter speed
to one above or one below where you're currently at.
As long as it's in the higher ranges,
ideally between 50 and a hundred.
The final manual setting is white balance.
And I'd recommend choosing this manually
which is very easy to do in the app.
And I just set it by taking a look at my scene
then taking a look at my phone and adjusting it accordingly.
Now it's time to shoot,
and an important point I want to stress
is that you don't need
to expose perfectly while you're shooting.
This is because if you bring up the brightness too much
while you're shooting,
it's very likely going to result
in more noise and more blur.
Whereas don't forget you can color correct
these shots to bring the exposure up or down later.
Now let's put all of this to the test.
So my first scene is here in Sydney
at The Grounds of Alexandria, which is an awesome place.
I strongly recommend visiting if you're ever in Sydney.
And I started in an area where the low light
was still relatively bright.
So, going back to the rules I talked about before
when shooting on a monopod,
I chose to use a 1/50th of a second
shutter speed with ISO 400.
Basically this gives me the best of both worlds,
letting in plenty of light
without compromising on grain or blur,
and this shot turned out super well.
Now in the same situation this time
I'll be moving with the monopod in my hand,
which is why I changed the shutter speed
to 1/100th of a second, which made the shot darker
but I upped the ISO to 800 to compensate.
And again, that shot is looking very good.
Now let's try a hard one.
In this next scene the light was so dark
that I had to make some big changes to my settings
in order to get any kind of shot.
So with the camera on a monopod,
again, I chose 1/50th of a second for shutter speed
since it was way less likely
to have any kind of motion blur
and I had to crank up my ISO to 1000,
this made it just bright enough to color correct.
When shooting this same shot handheld
this was definitely a challenge
because I had to bring the shutter speed up
to 1/100th of a second, and to compensate
I had to bring up that ISO.
I had no choice.
So up, it went to 1600.
And after color correction
this shot looks absolutely fantastic.
If I had have left this to auto
the results would be way worse.
So don't be afraid to crank up
the ISO a little bit if you have to,
as long as your shutter speed is fast,
having more ISO will mean
essentially more light without the blur.
And I even found when I pushed the ISO
with the 1-inch 360 up to ISO 3200,
it wasn't even that grainy.
This is because of the one inch sensors
handling low light a lot better
than the average 360 camera that has smaller sensors.
Now, as I said, underexposing your shots
will keep the brightest lights in your scene under control
but how much should you underexpose?
Well, here are four shots side by side.
I manually set the exposure to what
I thought was the correct exposure,
two stops under,
four stops under,
as well as auto just to see what it would do.
And without color correction,
obviously the correct exposure looks best.
However, after I color corrected all four
to try and match the look,
I found the shot that was only two stops under exposed
to be the best as well as far better
than any of the shots that hadn't been color corrected.
As you can see, it's got better contrast,
less overexposure and less noise.
And how you expose your shots
is definitely a personal choice,
but I find slightly under exposing
gives me enough flexibility in color correction
to bring up the shadows and bring down the highlights
to get an even exposure overall.
Shooting slightly underexposed also gives you the advantage
of using a lower ISO and higher shutter speed,
and that will be invaluable.
Now for a bonus tip.
Always keep your lens clean.
You don't want a smudged lens
when you're going out shooting at night.
And if you're into creating cool 360 video shots
choosing your exposure is one thing
but what's more important is knowing the creative shots
behind the settings so you can really wow your audience
with amazing, unique 360 camera movements.
So check out this video for 30 of my best
and most creative 360 video shots.