It looks to me like it is worth recording from a Sony EX3 in 10-bit when there will be subsequent Neat Video -type temporal denoising in post.
I tried a quick-and-dirty experiment, confirming that, despite the relatively high noise of the Sony EX3 (as compared to mainstream broadcast video cameras), high bitrate 10-bit 4:2:2 recording offers a greater potential than 8-bit 4:2:0 when the Neat Video type of temporal denoising (motion-compensated, I think) is applied in post.
I have yet to dig-down into this, e.g. to see how it would be affected by dropping down to “8-bit but still high-bandwidth” recording, hence I can only conclude that the combination of high bandwidth, 10-bit and 4:2:2 is beneficial.
The experiment:
- Make an extremely low-light recording on the EX3, in 1080 50i mode.
- Import it to a SD resolution project in Adobe Premiere.
- No “scale to project size”, hence pixel-for-pixel, with the HD clip therefore appearing to be “zoomed”.
- Compare the original to a copy that had the following affects applied:
- Fast Color Corrector
- Input-range (0, 1.6, 114), to brighten the (deliberately) under-exposed image.
- Increase Saturation to 200.
- Remove Noise (Neat Video)
- Temporal noise reduction only, radius 4 (frames).
- Fast Color Corrector
Make the comparison via Preview:
- Set resolution to 100%, image size to Full.
- Render the result, i.e. so timeline had green lines not red.
- Compare by eye.
- The unprocessed 8-bit (XDCAM-EX) and 10-bit (Cineform-High) recordings appeared identical i.e. very noisy.
- The denoised 8-bit looked slightly better but the denoised 10-bit looked very significantly better, indeed just about usable.