outdoor sports (getting good exposure)

[iceblueorbitz]

Hello all. It's been a while since i've been on this site. Lately I've been working on an extreme sport film using an hvx-200 primarily. The one thing throughout shooting this film that we've had the most trouble with is getting good exposure. When shooting wakebarders, or snowcross, or stuntbikes at 80mph down a highway, its very difficult to do much as far as lighting, and it always seems to end up with either ugly blown out highlights or crushed grainy shadows. I've been reading and browsing these forums a bunch, but I'm still having some trouble getting a really professional look at our shoots. What would be the best way of going about setting exposure/settings? I've noticed that cine-d gets good dynamic range at the cost of grain, but when it overexposes at all, it turns a nasty yellow on skin tones. I need help finding good settings, or knowing which settings to play with at the shoots that will help in high contrast situations such as snow and water reflections and having a bright sky in the background 80% of the time. That always makes it difficult as the rider ends up almost a shadow if i want any detail in the sky/clouds. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[FBAS]

You could try a POL filter to make the sky and clouds more contrasty and darker while you won't lose any exposure on the action. I used a POL filter once for skiing/snowboarding shots, and it worked really well. The POL filter doesn't help with the snow, though.
I had been concerned about the different angles to the sun/sky when panning, but it wasn't really noticeable.

For uncontrollable lighting situations with no time to adjust I also like the news gamma setting on the HVX200. You have to see if it produces too much grain for your taste - I don't mind it too much (at least not in SD, haven't used the news gamma in HD so far)

[iceblueorbitz]

pol as in polarizer? i was thinking that would help especially in wakeboarding situations to cut the glare on water.

[Justyn]

Polorizer is a must as well as a haze filter. Also shoot at a faster shutter. I try to be atleast at a 1/500 or 1/1000 for all of my outside shoots. I also tend to shoot Bpress gamma. Lowest noise setting and I just leave it on that the whole time. For a faster shutter getting focus is a bit tricker and you have to keep your movements as smooth as possible but I simply love the results. Here's a couple of examples and all shot with polorizer and fast shutter:

http://www.electriccowtheater.com/RUSTY/RUSTY640x360.mov

http://www.electriccowtheater.com/PANGEA/Pangea2FINECUT.mov