GH4 GH4 Lowlight tips?

[tommetass]

Hello,

I've been trying out my GH4 in different low light settings recently, and I have a real hard time exposing correctly.

This is an example (grab from one scene): This is color corrected (pushed exposure a bit up).

vlcsnap-2021-01-14-11h37m18s035.jpg

This is the BTS photo: (only light source)

bts low red light.jpg

Now.. the look of it is not far from what I wanted, and what I tried to get, but the clip was extremely noisy. I wanted the subject to be backlit by a red light, with a bit darker background, not as much spill as I got there, and also a lot less noise. ISO was not above 800 for the entire shoot, I shot with an aperture of either 1.4 or 1.7 (Sigma 16mm 1.4 and lPanasonic Lumix 25mm 1.7)

When I looked at the Live View, it looked decently exposed, but the histogram showed it as way, way underexposed. And when I pull it into the computer it's so dark.

What should I have done?


One thought I had is maybe have the light closer to the subject.. create less spill from the red light.. and maybe even to fill the entire image with more controlled light.. fill in the background.. to give me more options to correct it the way I want in post?

I don't know... please help!

[Batutta]

That looks okay to me but, if that's not the mood you wanted then yeah, adding more light to bring up the exposure would help. I found the GH4 is good up until 2000 ASA using Cine D. For tricky, contrasty shots, I sometimes switch the exposure tool to spot mode, where it only reads exposure where the crosshair is pointed at, then I put the crosshair on the brightest part of the subject's face and try to get that close to 0 on the exposure meter. So long as nothing in the histogram is too close to the high or the low end of the graph you should be able to recover it in post. I wouldn't stress trying to get a perfect hump in the middle.

[Imamacuser]

Sounds like you just need more light. Doesn't the GH4 have zebras? I find zebras much more useful than a histogram.

Most field monitors these days have false color, which will give you a rough idea of the IRE value of everything in the image, so if you can spare $100 or so for a cheap field monitor you'll gain a better representation of the evenness of your lighting (useful for chroma key), and exposure of each element in the scene.

[tommetass]

That looks okay to me but, if that's not the mood you wanted then yeah, adding more light to bring up the exposure would help. I found the GH4 is good up until 2000 ASA using Cine D. For tricky, contrasty shots, I sometimes switch the exposure tool to spot mode, where it only reads exposure where the crosshair is pointed at, then I put the crosshair on the brightest part of the subject's face and try to get that close to 0 on the exposure meter. So long as nothing in the histogram is too close to the high or the low end of the graph you should be able to recover it in post. I wouldn't stress trying to get a perfect hump in the middle.

I really didn't know it had that ability. That's genious! Thank you!

Sounds like you just need more light. Doesn't the GH4 have zebras? I find zebras much more useful than a histogram.

Most field monitors these days have false color, which will give you a rough idea of the IRE value of everything in the image, so if you can spare $100 or so for a cheap field monitor you'll gain a better representation of the evenness of your lighting (useful for chroma key), and exposure of each element in the scene.

That's true. I don't really know why I haven't been using zebras. But doesn't that just show what's over-exposed?

[Imamacuser]

Some cameras allow you to customize the zebras, setting them as low as 50, which I believe corresponds to 50 IRE on waveform scopes. I only shot with the GH4 once, and that was a few years ago, so I don't remember how customizable the zebra setting are.